Here’s a list of some of the world’s most ridiculous diets ever:
The booze diet
William, King of England went about eating choice food with great gusto – he simply loved anything well cooked. Inevitably, he developed complications that ultimately led him to go on a crash diet – eat nothing. Yup! But drinking was not eating so King William began drinking. Morning to nightfall he would drink all manner of wines and alcohols. Instead of anything that was cooked he now took to anything that was brewed with equally great gusto. As could be expected, he lost weight! He dropped sizes faster than a stone dropping to the ground. In fact, he could now get on to a horse without having to be lifted on to it. So one fine day he set off on the horse which I’m guessing must have been pretty relived to be carrying less weight. A short distance ahead, King William drunkenly fell off the horse and died.
Tube Steak
About a thousand year ago, in ancient Greece, the breakfast of sports champions wasn’t Kellogg’s; it was a pound or two of smoked pork. Back then the sports experts felt that to get ripped muscular bodies, you should only eat meat. This probably explains why “speed crapping” never made it as an Olympic event.
Acupuncture
Ancient Chinese believed that the answer to all bodily ills (and quite often other ills too), was to stick thin needles into various parts of the body. And what do these needles do? – Absolutely nothing!
The fat rub
The fat rub consisted of a large contraption that looked like a sex toy designed by the devil himself. The device had many variations the most popular being a sort of belt that oscillated back and forth, giving fat people a thrill of a lifetime. The idea was to simply rub the fat away.
Horace Fletcher’s Liquid Diet
Some time in the last century, a bright quack by the name of Horace Fletcher stumbled upon a brilliant idea that he succeed in selling to tens of thousands of people (Didn’t someone say there’s one born every day?). The brilliant idea was that you chew your food until it turned into liquid in your mouth. Anything that did not liquefy was to be spat out. All those people who bought into the idea ended up suffering from severe constipation – do you know why? Fiber is the only food that cannot be turned into liquid.
The vinegar diet
A few hundred years ago, makers of vinegar found that if you drink the foul stuff, you ended up with almost uncontrolled diarrhea. They therefore deduced that diarrhea would lead to weight loss and the product could also be marketed as a cleansing agent. God alone knows how many might have died from this cleansing agent.
Monkey see monkey do
Back during the Colonial period, there was this Presbyterian Reverend called Sylvester Graham. Now Sylvester Graham was a dietary reformer who noticed that monkeys were never fat. So came up with the brilliant idea that humans too should eat the same food the monkeys did.
Tapeworm your way to good health
Opera star Maria Callas loved eating raw meat – a fantastic source of tapeworms. The tapeworms digested and ate all the food she shoved down her mouth. She lost weight and a new fad diet was created. The lesser known fact was that the presence of the tapeworms ultimately led her to seek urgent medical treatment. The alternative was death.
The caveman diet
Similar to Reverend Sylvester Graham’s monkey diet is the caveman diet proposed by Walter Voegtlin in the 70’s. Walter Voegtlin figured that if we eat like the caveman, we would be healthy again and have muscles like the caveman. What he conveniently seemed to overlook was the difference in the level of activity of the caveman and modern day man. Besides, the caveman was probably too busy starving to death to care about being fat.
Eat Air
A lady named Jasmuheen heard that ancient Indian, Buddhist and Chinese monks could meditate for many years at a stretch without eating anything. No, she never met any of these monks – she just heard about it. So she came up with this wonderful idea that you could survive on air.
Through the ages, hundreds of downright ridiculous diets have been created and followed by gullible people.
There truly is no such thing as a diet.
You need to eat good healthy food in the right portions and exercise daily. That, my dear people, is the key to good health.