Fat Nation by Jonathan Engel

Author:Jonathan Engel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538117750
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

STRANGER DIETS

Over the past fifty years, various fad diets have cycled in and out favor, with the banana diet, the buttermilk diet, and the eighteen-day Hollywood diet each having its day.43 Likewise, desperate dieters sought refuge, at various times in the seawater diet, the fish-and-celery diet, and (a recurring favorite) the yogurt diet.44 In the annals of kooky dieting, however, none exceeds the ice-cream diet, touted in the late 1960s as the path to “reduce your calorie intake and make pounds disappear.” The author of the idea did caution that “regular daily exercise” was probably a good idea to use in conjunction with the diet.45

In general, wacky diets restricted the dieter to a particular food group, or even to a specific food, and insofar as they removed appetizing variety from the diet, they worked. That is, most people did lose weight when their food choices were sharply restricted, regardless of what they were limited to. Low-protein diets gained popularity in the early 1970s for this reason, finding form in such odd approaches as the Duke University rice diet in the early 1970s, and other diets where protein was sharply restricted even as sugars and fats were promoted—“patients could have all the butter, sugar, jelly, and rock candy they wanted.”46

Almost all of these diets worked for a time, but all were unsustainable. Moreover, some of the diets, such as the rice diet, required a residency that always worked; virtually anybody could lose weight when they ceded control of their food supply to an outside authority.47 This was why inmates, prisoners of war, marine recruits, and spa aficionados all reliably lost weight. The challenge was in sustaining the weight loss once the regimentation was removed, and this challenge was actually undermined by the bizarre eating rule that many of these diets subjected their clients to. One thoughtful physician noted in 1956 that for losing weight, “the concept of a single specific factor is not sufficient, since the routine of treatment (limitation in choice of food, fixed times of meals)” was the true proximate cause of the weight loss.48

The liquid protein craze of the 1970s took this sort of dieting to a new extreme. Tracing its roots to experimental adult formula supplements popularized in the decade after World War II, millions of Americans starting “drinking” their meals out of a bottle in the mid-1970s, and the vast majority reliably lost weight.49 Most people who went on liquid proteins consumed 100 percent of their calories in the drink, although some took the protein formula prophylactically before a meal of regular food to dull their appetite.50

Liquid protein worked for a variety of reasons. It weaned its adherents from sugar (always helpful) and allowed the diets’ designers to adjust caloric intake to very low levels—sometimes as low as 400 calories per day.51 However, the diet worked primarily because it tightly controlled dieters’ food choices. Although this seemed somewhat counterintuitive—the dieter was not being physically restrained, and could easily override the diet by supplementing it with outside food—the severe choice restraint worked.

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