Turns out, fad dieting is not a modern phenomenon. In fact, people have been following wacky, popular-one-minute, forgotten-the-next diets for centuries. Here are a few of the weirder diets our forefathers and foremothers swore was the next big thing.
-Tapeworm diet, anyone? In the early 1900s — in an attempt to, as they used to say, “reduce” — dieters would swallow beef tapeworm cysts. On purpose. They believed the mature tapeworms (they can grow to be 30 feet long!) would absorb the food in their intestines. The scheme worked, but, alas, it also caused a lot of vomiting and diarrhea. It was risky because tapeworms can cause a number of health problems including meningitis, epilepsy and dementia.
- Vinegar diet. Lord Byron was one of the first celebrity dieters. In the early 1800s, the poet popularized a diet that encouraged a person to consist mostly on vinegar. No, not on delicious salt-and-vinegar chips — just vinegar. He believed the pungent substance cleaned and purged his body, so he drank lots of it and ate potatoes soaked in it.
Unfortunately, Lord Byron started a bit of a fad. And, once again, side effects included vomiting and diarrhea.”Romantics were restricting themselves to vinegar and rice to get Byron’s fashionably thin and pale look,” says a BBC article on the subject of the oddest diets in history.
To learn about diets that centered around rubber, arsenic, and chewing and spitting, check out the fascinating story here.