Latest features Top 10 fat-busting diets

Date Published:

06/08/2009

In recent years, omega acids have been the kings of healthy fats but it turns out sausages could be as beneficial as salmon. As a new recipe book, extolling the virtue of eating animal fat, hits the shelves (Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient), Charlie Cottrell looks at the rise and fall of fatty diets through the decades

Corpulent Englishman, William Banting, had grown so lardy, grinding joint pain forced him to walk downstairs backwards. After his doctor advised cutting out sugar and starch, the weight began to drop off and Banting published his slimming success in Letter On Corpulence, Addressed to the Public and so created the world's first diet book. Little did we know it would be the first of many.

Eat: Protein, green veg, unsweetened fruit and dry toast
Don't eat: Pork - back then it was considered a starchy food

Horace Fletcher believed the secret to fighting flab lay in chewing every mouthful 32 times to make a foodie paste, then tipping back your head and letting it trickle down the gullet. Any remaining chunks had to be spat out. This unappetising diet earned Fletcher the witty moniker, 'The Great Masticator'.

Eat: Potatoes, cornbread, beans, eggs
Don't eat: Meat, alcohol, coffee, or tea

Former chunky kid, Dr Lulu Hunt Peters, shifted the fat focus away from food types and forwarded the idea that counting calories was the way to watch weight. Her book, Diet and Health, with a Key to the Calories, advised a stingy 1200 calorie per day regimen. Peters saw poor weight control as evidence of poor self control and considered obesity immoral. The 2 million people who bought her book agreed.
Eat: Whatever you like
Don't eat: More than 1200 calories worth of it

Flapper fashion left no place for fat and women went to extremes to banish their boobs in favour of a boyish, flat-chested figure. The grapefruit diet, supposedly favoured by Hollywood starlets, limited food intake to 800 calories a day, largely comprising grapefruit and black coffee for their apparent metabolism boosting and fat-burning properties.

Eat: Grapefruit
Don't eat: Anything else

William H. Hay believed fat was an unwanted by-product of the body's inability to process food when inharmonious food groups were eaten together. So beef is ok, baps are ok but beef in baps is bad. The solution? Eat proteins, starches, and fruits separately. He also advised a daily enema to flush out the poisons he thought caused the body to lay down fat.

Eat: Fruit salad
Don't eat: Fruit salad with cream

In 1943 Ms Marion White decided the reason people were fat was not because they ate fat, but because they ate the wrong type of fat. Her Diet Without Despair book advised using mineral oil, rather than olive oil in cooking. Since the human body cannot digest mineral oil, any weight loss was most likely due to diarrhoea.

Eat: Mineral oil-based salad dressing
Don't eat: Tapas

Dr Herman Taller thought calories were bunkum and the secret to losing fat was… eating fat. He sold 2 million copies of his book, Calories Don't Count, after losing 30kg on a 5000kcal a day, oil rich diet convinced him polyunsaturated fat stimulated the body to burn fat.

Eat: 4oz safflower oil per day
Don't eat: Carbs

Celebrities and glamour pusses were encouraged to bring on the butter when Dr Robert C. Atkins's Diet Revolution claimed eating fat was good for you. Animal products were in vogue again but this meant bad news for bakers and potato farmers, as the blame for our blubber was levelled at carbs.

Eat: Bacon
Don't eat: Bacon sarnies

In the high powered, spandex-loving eighties, fat was the enemy. Thankfully husband and wife duo, Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, knew the best way to lose lard was to match your body clock to the kitchen clock. Their multi-million copy selling Fit for Life book suggested we have scientific needs for different foods at different times of the day and recognising them meant goodbye to fat-building toxins and hello to skinny thighs.

Eat: High water foods such as fruit and vegetables
Don't eat: Dairy

Wonder why your pot belly is poking over your jeans? According to James D'Adamo's Blood Type Diet, it's because you're eating the wrong food for your blood group. The body is left trying to break down foods it's not biologically designed to digest and as a result, you get a chubby bum.

Eat: If you're blood group is A, go for a wheat-heavy vegetarian diet. Bs can feast on cheese. Type O should follow a fat and protein rich regimen and ABs can eat tofu, seafood and green veg.
Don't eat: Against type

Eat slim with our low fat recipes

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