Dan John shares a history of dieting — which wasn’t always about weight loss:
As you wander around the grocery store this week, notice that yesterday’s diet crazes are today’s staples. Oddly, some of the oldest “diets” were designed to battle not only corpulence but immorality. The remnants of these diets can be found on grocery store shelves even today.
In the 1830’s, Reverend Sylvester Graham believed that gluttony was the gateway to lust. Any such “venereal excess” was deemed evil. Graham thought men should remain virgins until age 30, and then should only have sex once a month after marriage. Masturbation was off limits too as that particular act leads to “a body full of disease” and mental illness.
To get rid of hunger, both sexual and nutritional, Graham prescribed a vegetarian diet that included a biscuit he’d created which later became known as the Graham Cracker.
Within a few decades of Graham, another noted dietician and full-time undertaker, William Banting, lost 50 pounds on lean meat, dry toast, eggs and vegetables. “Banting” became the verb for weight loss in America not long after the book, Letter on Corpulence, became a best seller.
At the same time, Dr. James Salisbury proposed a high protein diet of ground meat patties and hot water. He preached against “starches” and thought these would turn into poisonous substances during digestion. The solution was ground meat three times per day with limited amounts of vegetables, fruits and starchy foods. Today you can still order Salisbury steaks in most family restaurants.
The most noted of the pre-1900 health enthusiasts was enema enthusiast Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Yep, the same guy who basically invented cold cereal and whose name probably appears on the cereal boxes in your cabinet. Kellogg invented Corn Flakes and an early version of granola to reduce sexual desire and curb the “epidemic” of masturbation.
He also recommended that small boys be circumcised without anesthetic so they would forever associate the penis with pain. Women should have their clitorises treated with carbolic acid to prevent what he called “abnormal excitement.” Yes, Kellogg was a real winner.