vintage dieting

Nowadays we have a polite name for clothes sizing: Plus-size.

Back in the 1950s Lane Bryant had different words for larger sizes.

The 1920s was the age of the flapper - short skirts and bobbed haircuts were all the rage - as were quick weight loss remedies.

One enterprising marketeer managed to sell Jad Salts as a weight loss cure.

Check out this cartoon: Fat Jane becomes Slim Jane.

This photo from the 1960s shows French women sitting in "slim-down coveralls" while being served low-calorie meals.

Found on eBay: A vintage exercise device that can... well, uh... I don't know.

Can you figure it out?

Very few of us women seem to feel completely happy with our bodies. Despite all the helpful pep talks we get about how "every woman is beautiful in her own way," we know, deep down, that it isn't really true. Right? There really are "attractive" and "unattractive" body types, and we could all use some help. So here’s how to get that figure any woman would want:

First you take an ounce and a half of oyl of foxes, oyl of lillies, and capons grease…

Oh, wait. This isn’t the 17th Century.

"I just love to dance - always did. But it got so the men simply would not ask me. I could see them looking my way and shrugging their shoulders. It was heartbreaking."

So goes a newspaper advertisement from the 1930s. What was the answer to the heartbreak?

Marmola. 4 times a day.

In the March 1922 issue of Physical Culture, a man called Wallace announced that a "scientific secret of weight regulation had been discovered".

Wallace had "found a way to prevent the system from turning too much of what is eaten, into fat".

His secret? Phonograph records (remember those?) that had music on them.

In the 1960s the makers of Jello introduced "JELL-O® Gelatin for Salads".

There were 4 flavors: Celery, Italian Salad, Mixed Vegetable and Seasoned Tomato.

This is a clipping from a newspaper advertisement (from 1924).

It's not often you seen an ad for a weight gain product. This one (from Physical Culture magazine 1934) claims that Kelp-O-Malt tablets will cause a gain of 5 pounds in one week.

In the early 1900s a "nutrient absorption" product appeared. Call it an early version of Xenical...

"No diet, no baths, no exercise. FAT - the enemy that is shortening your life - BANISHED. How? With sanitized tapeworms - jar-packed"

No baths? What?

The image on the right is from a 1960s TV commercial for low-calorie tinned fruit.

It's not funny, it's just plain sad. One cannot help wondering: What has decades of dieting done for us?

"Non-fattening Libby's... 3 times a day... makes it easy to stay on your slimming program."

Thanks to the proliferation of Internet video a number of commercials from the early 1980s have made a reappearance - one of which is for the unfortunately named "AYDS".

The AYDS diet pill is neither a hoax or an urban myth.

This picture is like a historical equivalent of Curves for Women.

Can anyone remember those gadgets?

Did you know that Heinz Ketchup appeared on 1876? Or that Dr Pepper was first sold in 1885? Oreo biscuits were first made in 1912 by the National Biscuit Company: ...two beautifully embossed chocolate-flavored wafers with a rich cream filling at 30 cents per pound.