Will your low-carb diet be history, too?
By Jeanne McManus
Washington Post
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| Gannett News Service illustration |
You've lost so much weight on your Atkins or South Beach diet that you can't imagine returning to your old ways of eating rice, potatoes and bread. You'll never abandon your high-protein regimen, right? This is it: You're low-carb for life.
Well, consider some of the diets that have previously held Americans in their thrall. They were created by prestigious doctors, well-meaning nutritionists or quacks; menus required daily deliveries from the banana boat, a mere cup of spinach per week, a watery soup every night or steaks the size of catcher's mitts; dieters were directed to eat lots of fat, lots of carbs or lots of protein. Whether through plans, pills, capsules, cans, magic, science or sheer starvation, the plump among us were promised happiness, health and thinner thighs.
Where are these diets now? And is it quite possible that low-carb mania will join them?
If you get half of the answers correct, perhaps it's time for a different weight-loss strategy. If you get all 20 right, sit down and eat a piece of cake. We don't know what you've been through, but you deserve some chocolate.
1. In the late 1970s, the Centers for Disease Control investigated more than 40 deaths linked to:
a) Powdered appetite suppressant
b) Bran tablet
c) Liquid protein
2. Weight Watchers was started by:
a) H.J. Heinz Co.
b) an overweight Queens housewife
c) a Philadelphia psychotherapist
3. Participants in this weight-loss program were put into a semi-comatose sleep for two weeks and woke up pounds lighter. They were described in:
a) Jacqueline Susann's 1960s fiction bestseller, "Valley of the Dolls"
b) Ira Levin's 1970s fiction thriller, "Stepford Wives"
c) Joel R. Karnow's 1980s bestseller, "Two Weeks to Weight Loss"
4. This diet included recipes for cold shrimp-stuffed avocados and lemon thyme pesto chicken:
a) "The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom," by Phil McGraw
b) "Neanderthin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body," by Ray Audette
c) "Eat to Succeed," by Robert Haas
5. In "Calories Don't Count," author Herman Taller promoted a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet. In 1961, he was found guilty of mail fraud for selling:
a) beef-marrow gelatin
b) safflower capsules
c) wheat-bran tablets
6. According to the ads for this diet, it "actually reduces body fat as fast as fasting or complete starvation ... yet is so delicious and totally satisfies all the body's daily recommended needs of vitamins and minerals." It averaged 330 calories a day. It was:
a) The Crash Diet
b) The Cambridge Diet
c) The Russian Air Force Diet
7. In a 1965 song, comedian Allan Sherman sang that this diet "came from a book I was loaned/It's really terrific/And quite scientific/And I'm half-stoned." It was:
a) The Drinking Man's Diet
b) The Marijuana Diet
c) The Hippy Diet
8. Herman Tarnower, creator of the Scarsdale Diet, was killed by Jean Harris, former headmistress at the Madeira School, in 1980. Which of the following is (are) true?
a) She shot him four times.
b) He had jilted her for a younger woman.
c) She stabbed him with a kitchen knife.
9. Two diet mavens feuded openly on a national TV show, one charging that the rival's diet led to cancer, heart disease, constipation and bad breath; the other countercharging that the rival's low-fat, heavily vegetarian diet was boring. They were, respectively:
a) Herman Tarnower and Ewell Gibbons
b) Dean Ornish and Robert Atkins
c) Nathan Pritikin and Robert Atkins
10. In "The Last Chance Diet" of the late 1970s, osteopath Robert Linn recommended:
a) a mixture of fasting and liquid-protein drinks made from animal tendons and hides
b) a high-protein diet accompanied by 64 ounces of ice water a day
c) a diet of dried fish and beef jerky that had kept shipwrecked whalers alive
11. Fill in the blank: In 1963's "The Feminine Mystique," Betty Friedan wrote: "They ate a chalk called ———— instead of food, to shrink to the size of the thin young models." She was referring to:
a) Milk of Magnesia
b) Sego
c) Metrecal
12. In the early 1900s, Upton Sinclair, Henry James and William James were adherents of Fletcherizing. This alleged weight-loss strategy involved:
a) Taking diuretics with breakfast and dinner
b) Chewing food to liquid before swallowing it
c) Mincing food, then swallowing it whole
13. In the 1950s, D.C. Jarvis, a Vermont country doctor, contended that this ingredient — when combined with honey, kelp, lecithin and Vitamin B6 — not only cured arthritis but also produced weight loss:
a) vinegar
b) apple cider
c) cabbage juice
14. Two-part question: How far apart in years are the publication dates of "Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution" and "Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution" and the publication dates of "The Beverly Hills Diet" by Judy Mazel and her "The New Beverly Hills Diet"?
a) 20 years and 15 years
b) 15 years and 20 years
c) 10 years and 5 years
15. This diet claimed that dieters would not gain pounds if they accompanied meals with fruit such as pineapples, mangoes and papayas:
a) The Beverly Hills Diet
b) The Tropics Diet
c) The Jamaican Diet
16. Which of the following is (are) true? Nathan Pritikin, the author of the "Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise":
a) was not a doctor
b) operated "longevity centers" where patients learned to eat a diet nearly free of animal fats
c) committed suicide
d) suffered from leukemia
17. Thirty executives lost a total of 500 pounds on this company's diet — including the company chairman, who dropped 19 pounds. The diet called for a decrease in sugars and animal fats, an increase in complex carbohydrates and vegetable proteins and suggested ratatouille for breakfast. The company:
a) Neiman Marcus
b) Ralph Lauren Polo
c) Bloomingdale's
d) ABC TV
18. This diet maintains: "This is a program with no portion control and no forbidden foods, a program that actually allows you to indulge yourself and your every food fantasy":
a) The Marathoner's Diet
b) The New Beverly Hills Diet
c) The Hollywood Diet
d) The Runner's High Diet
19. This eating plan required no portion control and called for as much of one item as the dieter wanted every day, with different accompaniments that varied each day, such as fruit the first day; vegetables the second; fruits and vegetables the third; bananas and skim milk the fourth. Name that item:
a) brown rice
b) cabbage soup
c) grapefruit
d) garlic steeped in vinegar
20. Blake Donaldson, a New York cardiologist, stated which of the following in his 1960 diet book, "Strong Medicine"?
a) To lose weight, a dieter must first flush all toxins from his liver.
b) Meat with fat on it and water are two biologically perfect foods.
c) Calories don't count.
• • •
Diet-quiz answers
1. c) Liquid protein diets eliminated the intake of solid foods and allowed for only about 300 calories of the liquid protein to be ingested each day. Were the deaths caused by the protein or the extreme reduction of calories? Federal officials never established the cause with any certainty.
2. b) In the early 1960s, Jean Nidetch gathered friends together in her home to talk about weight loss.
3. a) It was Susann's book, not Levin's. The Karnow book does not exist.
4. b) According to Audette, the successful diet relies on what humans ate before modern technology and agriculture evolved. Did Neanderthals eat thyme pesto?
5. b) Taller's low-carbohydrate plan ran into legal trouble when he advocated the safflower capsules as a necessary part of the diet.
6. b) The Cambridge Diet's severe regimen relied on powdered protein supplements.
7. a) Sherman's song poked fun at the 1964 hit book "The Drinking Man's Diet," which encouraged a low-carbohydrate meal plan and moderation in drinking. One fan of the plan was actress Elizabeth Taylor, along with her then-husband Richard Burton. The diet worked for a while, she said, until the troubled couple dropped the diet part but kept on drinking.
8. a) and b) Harris, jilted by Tarnower, was found guilty of second-degree murder and spent 12 years in prison.
9. c) When Robert Atkins and Nathan Pritikin met on the set of the "Tomorrow" show in June 1981, it was indigestion all around the table, according to news accounts in The Washington Post. "We kept them in separate dressing rooms," said a TV executive, "so the sparks would really be flying by the time they were on camera."
10. a) Linn, a Philadelphia physician, also operated weight-loss clinics where liquid protein diets were administered under medical supervision.
11. c) Metrecal came on the market in the early 1960s as a powder, to which water was added. It later became a canned drink in either vanilla, chocolate or butterscotch flavor.
12. b) Horace Fletcher, also known as "The Great Masticator," was a San Francisco art dealer who advocated chewing each bite 32 times before swallowing.
13. a) Jarvis may have been taking a tip from the romantic poet Lord Byron, who reportedly lost more than 60 pounds by drenching his food in vinegar.
14. a) Atkins' books were published in 1972 and 1992; Mazel's in 1981 and 1996.
15. a) Judy Mazel's 1981 "Beverly Hills Diet" maintains that it's not so much what you eat, but in what order, so someone on her diet could, for example, delight one day in hot fudge and chocolate if the next day he ate watermelon only.
16. a), b), c) and d) Nathan Pritikin, a self-taught nutritionist, died of lacerations to both forearms in February 1985, shortly after his leukemia came out of remission. His diet reduced the amount of meat, milk and eggs but also banned salt, sugar, caffeine and alcohol.
17. c) On this 1980s diet, Bloomingdale's chairman Marvin Traub lost 19 pounds.
18. b) Judy Mazel updated her Beverly Hills diet in 1996 and called it "The New Beverly Hills Diet."
19. b) This low-fat, high-fiber diet, revolving around a somewhat bland cabbage soup, was recommended for moderate weight loss over a seven-day period.
20. b) Blake Donaldson's plan was inspired by the meat-only diet of the Inuits, whose culture he studied on visits to New York's Museum of Natural History.
