Dieting started with questionable eating advice from an English poet, evolved to incorporate chewing techniques to make you crap less, and really went off the rails with the invention of amphetamines, cigarettes, and laxatives. Hey everyone, let’s talk about “The Bizarre History of Dieting”.
And who better to start with Lord Byron, thep Pale and thin, Byron worked hard at maintaining his image as his go-to slimming tactics? Wearing layers of clothes to sweat, staving off hunger by smoking cigars, and eating flattened potatoes soaked in vinegar. And young women everywhere tried to emulate him. (sigh) But one thing the Romantic Period didn’t romanticize was Nearly 200 years before Keto in 1825, a French lawyer and politician, Jean-Anthelme. Jean-Anthelme recommended the first low-carb diet. And his advice was actually pretty solid. In his popular book, Physiologie du Goût he wrote the cause of obesity is too much starch and flour-based foods.
And he recognized that people should avoid too much starch and flour-based foods — that’s actually really good advice. Then why are we still coming up with crazy diet trends today? Well, it might be because his book also included lines like: In the U.S., things were a little more uptight with a minister named Sylvester Graham, who lectured to crowds about the advantages of a vegetarian diet and the evils of alcohol.
I’m drunk! Not only was Graham basically the first wellness Instagrammer, he’s also responsible for another dietary innovation: Graham Crackers….What about these is healthy? They’re literally cookies. The idea behind the cracker- and his whole diet- was to help repress hunger… So, yes. We can thank Graham for laying the foundation for s’mores.
But let’s not forget the whole point of these celibacy crackers. It’s good for keeping down the urges. You know how grocery aisles are packed with gossip magazines filled with personal diet tips from the stars? Well, it was like that back in the 1860s, too. But instead of gossip magazines, it was pamphlets.
And instead of taking advice from famous people, Specifically, William Banting, who wrote about how he lost 46 pounds through a protein-rich, high-fat, low-carb diet— that included wine at every meal, even breakfast. His diet was so well-known, it became its own verb. Joe’s drinking has really gotten out of control since he started banting.
.. but he looks great! Wait, All these diets seem a little too mainstream. I’m looking for something that will let me grind my food into liquefied gruel, while ensuring I never poop again. Well, you’re in luck! Enter Fletcherism. The early 1900s diet promoted intense chewing. As in, chew your food at least 100 times until it becomes a liquid, and all trace of taste has disappeared.
Then, One…two… (spits) A key sign of success in this diet was a lack of bowel movements. mmm that looks good! Fletcher himself bragged about going number two once every two weeks. Ugh! The turn of the century and the Industrial Revolution brought a massive shift in not only who was dieting, but how they were doing it.
Before, being overweight was mostly a middle- and upper-class problem. But working-class people were now moving to cities. They had a little more cash and were eating fewer fresh foods. Couple that with the arrival of semi-modern medicine, Open a magazine anywhere in the U.S. in the in the early 1900s, and you’d see ads for diet pills and drugs.
Like, “loaded with small amounts of arsenic” dangerous. But if you didn’t want to choke down dangerous pills to fit into your flapper dress, there were alternatives, (coughs) Lucky Strike started an ad campaign encouraging people to smoke instead of reaching for that cupcake. And if smoking wasn’t your bag, you could’ve tried this chewing gum that’s laced with laxatives.
As the early 20th century brought a wave of scientific and industrial progress, some weight-loss trends seemed downright medieval. This lead to a whole mess of mechanical, vibrating contraptions that supposedly slimmed you down with you having to move at all. And then diet pills. They were known as amphetamines and filled the medicine cabinets of mid-century housewives everywhere.
Most of the pills were a mix of amphetamines and other questionable chemicals. And some people died from using them. But amphetamines had a few problems. What with the fact that they stopped working after a while and you know, So companies started to get creative. Diet industry mad men brought forward a head-spinning array of pills, books and diet systems, along with celebrity faces to market them.
Since then, so many diets have been invented, it’ll probably take me 10 minutes to name them all. And they are sustained by two things: people who are dying to lose weight, and companies that are more than willing to help them thin out— In fact, the weight loss industry is now worth 66 Billion dollars. So how do we break the cycle? Well, we could remember what that French lawyer said all the way back in the 1800’s , it sure as hell beats a diet of cigarettes, amphetamines and laxatives.
Have you seen the Okinawa Flat Belly Diet?
