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William Banting‘s “Letter on Corpulence,” was the first diet book published
William Banting's book is likely one of the first diet books ever created. He states he lost weight by replacing an excessive intake of bread, sugar, and potatoes with mostly meat, fish, and vegetables. -
When dieting and looking as "thin as possible" became a trend
Around this time, in the mid-1900s, it was starting to become trendy to restrict food or change the physique they had. -
Atkin diet
This diet blew up amongst the people of the 1970s and it was a popular low-carbohydrate eating plan developed in the 1960s by a cardiologist, Robert Atkins. This is what kick started diet culture and the idea that everything should be smaller. -
Then the 1980's come around...
This is a picture of some of the most common 1980s diet trends. This image demonstrates the grapefruit diet, cottage cheese diet, and vegetable soup diet. image -
Grapefruit diet
The grapefruit diet originated in the 1930s but came to popularity in the 80s because of the slogan "smaller is better." People believed that grapefruits had "fat-burning" enzymes in them and that adding half of one after each meal would help you burn fat. -
The F- plan
Audrey Eyton's book published in 82' promoted a high fiber diet in order to keep you full. She faced a lot of criticism due to this book because people were really just eating under 1500 calories a day. -
Frozen "TV Dinners"
The frozen dinner diet then came to popularity due to its easiness. All you had to do was pull it out of the freezer, pop in in the microwave for 2 minutes and boom, you have a low calorie dinner. This was marketed as the weight watchers plan as well and people were given meal plans to stick to.