A Look Back at Fad Diets People Have Tried Over the Years (2023)

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1960

The cabbage soup diet had already been popular for decades, but its lofty claims helped it gain popularity among housewives in the 1950s and early '60s. Eaten three or four times a day, the soup did help with weight loss–if you didn't mind the side effects like dizziness and fatigue. Plus, most of the weight you lost was water anyway—so it was nothing more than a quick fix.

1961

Years before Slim Fast there was Sego. The meal replacement drink was later described as "baby formula mixed with water" (yum!), but it did come in flavors like chocolate, chocolate coconut, chocolate malt, vanilla, strawberry, banana and orange, all at 225 calories a pop. The tagline? "See The Calories Go With Sego."

1962

Helen Gurley Brown, in her 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl, recommended a diet composed of mostly wine and eggs. Breakfast was one egg any style, no butter, with one glass of white wine. Lunch added another egg and another glass of white wine. Dinner consisted of one steak and the instructions to finish that glass of wine. The author, who later became the editor of Cosmopolitan, said the diet would make you feel “sexy, exuberant, full of the joie de vivre.”

1963

We've all heard of Weight Watchers (thanks, Oprah!) but did you know it started way back in 1961? The story goes that a 214-pound housewife named Jean Nidetch started holding private weight-loss meetings in her home in New York City. The company went public in 1963—and it's still one of the most popular weight loss brands today.

1964

Tab, Diet Pepsi, Patio—1964 was the year that artificially sweetened colas hit it big. Just a few years later, seven million cases of Diet Delight fruit cocktail, which used a sweetener called cyclamate, were reportedly pulled from store shelves after a study showed it could cause bladder cancer in lab rats.

1965-1966

The Drinking Man's Diet was one of the first low-carb diets—but with a sexist twist. It proposed that eating a diet of so-called "manly" protein-rich foods like steak and lobster, together with tons of alcohol, would result in weight loss. Over two million copies of the book were sold in just two years.

1967

The Stillman Diet was another low-carb diet published years before Atkins. It allowed lean cuts of meat and low-fat dairy. The diet gained popularity when Karen Carpenter reportedly went on it. She abandoned the diet, but later tragically died of complications from anorexia.

1968

By the end of the decade, diet pills were the new diet shake. A January 1968 Life magazine cover highlighted the potential health impacts from taking the pills—but their popularity continued to surge as new drugs hit the market in the coming years.

1969-1973

It's taken many forms and many names over the years, but the grapefruit diet, in which you eat a grapefruit at every meal and sometimes as the entire meal, was a popular weight loss hack in the early 1970s. Any weight loss achieved through the diet was likely attributable to increased fiber and caloric restriction, not any magical component in the grapefruit itself.

1974

In the world of dieting, if it sounds too good to be true, it definitely is. The Cookie Diet was introduced in 1974 and quickly gained popularity because...who doesn't want to eat cookies and lose weight? The diet spread like wildfire once Hollywood got a hold of it. The doctor-prescribed cookies were protein-packed to curb hunger, but did nothing more than create a calorific deficit (which you can achieve by eating something other than six cookies a day).

1975

1976

The Last Chance diet was a dangerous liquid diet created by Dr. Robert Linn in the 1970s. Though it became quite popular later in the decade (he made $40 million from book and product sales), the FDA ultimately intervened after 30 of the diet's followers died. The concept: drink something called Prolinn, high-protein drink made from slaughterhouse scraps like cowhide and tendon.

1977

Elvis Presley was reportedly a fan of The Sleeping Beauty Diet, in which participants were sedated for hours or days at a time. If you're sleeping then you're not eating–except the risk of death, sleep problems and other major health complications makes this diet one of the worst ways to lose weight.

1978

1979

Though founded two years earlier, Slim Fast started to take-off as a diet fad in 1979. Mixed with milk or slurped out of an aluminum can, the creamy and sweet shakes were meant to replace both breakfast and lunch.

1980

Ayds appetite-suppressing candies were a popular weight loss product in the late '70s and early 1980s. With an unfortunate name, they quickly disappeared from shelves after the AIDS health crisis early in the decade.

1981

1982-1983

A new diet pill called Dexatrim, which contained the decongestant phenylpropanolamine (PPA) and the amphetamine-like ephedra, hit the market. The formula remained the same until 2000 when it was linked to an increased risk of stroke (like so many other diet pills.)

1984

The Australian company Jenny Craig makes its way to the States and becomes a household name in the early '80s. Celebrities like Valerie Bertinelli, Mariah Carey, and Kirstie Alley have fronted campaigns for the meal-replacement company in the years since, and it continues to be one of the most recognizable weight loss brands today.

1985

The current popularity of the Paleo diet can be traced back to 1985, when S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner published "Paleolithic Nutrition—A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implications" in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985. The groundbreaking research is considered the precursor to today’s popular Paleo diet, which allows lean meats, nuts, seeds and some fruits and vegetables, but doesn’t allow dairy, grains, and processed foods.

1986-1987

1988

Elizabeth Taylor releases a self-help book called Elizabeth Takes Off, and naturally the world jumps through hoops to live just like her. Her best diet tip? Eat raw vegetables and dip at 3 p.m. on the dot every single day. Her worst diet tip? Pin a fat picture of yourself on your fridge door. Maybe only try the veggies.

1989-1990

In one of the most memorable moments in TV history, Oprah Winfrey wheels a wagon full of fat across the stage of her talk show wearing a pair of size-10 Calvin Klein jeans. The TV legend lost 67 pounds on a liquid protein diet—but the weight eventually came back. Even Oprah can fall prey to a quick diet fix.

1991

The early '90s marked the beginning of the misinformed low-fat and no-fat diet era. Even McDonald's got in on the trend, releasing something called a McLean Deluxe, made with a 91% fat-free beef patty.

1992

Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution. The basic low-carb, high-protein formula stays the same but is modernized and updated. His diet would gain popularity again when Kim Kardashian West credited it for helping her lose weight after her first child.

1993

Ask anyone who took the pill Fen-Phen in the early 1990s and they’ll tell you that it was crazy-effective for weight loss. But it came with serious and deadly risks. According to WebMD, "the FDA ordered fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine off the market in September 1997 after those drugs were linked to heart valve problems." In 2008, a study showed that the heart valve problems caused by the drug continued to linger even years after stopping the pills.

1994

1995-1999

1996

2000

There was a time when Jared Fogle was praised as a modern American success story. The man from Indiana dropped a whopping 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches, starring in the restaurant's ad campaigns for much of the early 2000s. In 2015, Fogle pled guilty to federal charges of possessing child pornography and traveling to pay for sex with minors.

2011

It was as if one day in 2011, Americans woke up and all collectively agreed to start throwing coconut oil in everything. The superfood that kicked off the superfood movement, coconut oil has been touted as a miracle cure for hair, skin, nails, and as a do-all replacement for baking and frying. But studies have shown that just because it's sourced from plants doesn't mean it's inherently healthy. Coconut oil's ultra-high saturated fat content has been described as one of the "most potent agents" for increasing bad cholesterol in the blood. "So while coconut oil certainly isn’t the magic bullet some claim, there’s no need to avoid it completely, especially if it is used instead of butter or shortening in baked goods or to impart flavor in something like a curry dish. As a general rule, though, cooking with olive oil is the better choice for overall health," writes Sophie Egan in the New York Times.

2012

Jamba Juice, Juice Generation, Pressed Juicery, Juice Press, Joe & The Juice, Organic Avenue—we once joked about having a Starbucks on every corner, but we now live in a world where a cold-pressed, organic, and local juice can be found in almost every city in America. Juicing or doing a juice "cleanse" became the diet du jour in 2010. Drinking nothing but juice for a week will cause weight loss (but it comes right back). Nonetheless, juicing fans love how it makes them feel.

2015

While going gluten-free is not a fad diet but a life-saving measure for the 1-2-percent of Americans with Celiac's disease, choosing to follow a gluten-free diet gained popularity in the last 2010s (almost a third of Americans were said to be avoiding gluten in recent data). "Although a gluten-free diet is the primary treatment for celiac disease and may help to alleviate symptoms in various conditions related to gluten sensitivity, there is currently no evidence showing that a gluten-free diet is effective for weight loss or for general health benefits," concludes an article in Harvard University's The Nutrition Source.