History of Dieting: How The Whole Idea Started

It not really clear how the history of dieting started but one is clear, dieting has been around for several generations. People from all over the world control their food intake for both health and aesthetic reasons. Since being overweight often brings about a lot of diseases, people from all over the world tired to control their size and their weight by controlling what they eat. On the other hand, since being thin is considered as a measure for beauty, a lot of people, especially women tried to control their diet to achieve a slimmer figure.

History of Dieting in the 20th century

The history of dieting in the 20th century is quite colorful. In the early 1930’s the grapefruit diet was so popular. Experts at that time believed that seaweeds and grapes are the best choice for people who want to end their weight problems. Unfortunately, the result of this diet was not really good and a lot of people soon turned to other means and methods of losing weight.

From the 1940s to the 1950s, the history of dieting in the country took another turn. At this time, the first diet pills were introduced to the market. A lot of companies that manufactured diet pills flooded the radios with advertisement about their products that sales of diet pills at that time soared. However, after a few years, people soon discovered that diet pills have some severe side effects on their health. According to the history of dieting, the discovery that diet pills can cause severe side effects on people prompted experts to revert back to the natural weight loss methods such as exercise and eating a balance diet. Many people stopped taking the diet pills but there a lot of people who do not want to spend so much time working out still opted to use the diet pills despite the fact that these diet pills caused side effects.

Eating Disorders

Many people became obsessed with dieting throughout the years. Women are mostly very susceptible to the idea that being thin means being beautiful that many women tried to drastically reduce their weights be eating very little. The eating disorder anorexia nervosa was first recorded in the history of dieting in the early 1970s. Anorexia nervosa is a result of a distorted perception of ones body resulting to severe dieting. According to the history of dieting, anorexia nervosa claimed several lives in the 70s. People who wanted to get slim fast starved themselves to death.