New Year’s means resolutions, with the most popular one being to lose weight, or at least not gain it. Millions of diets, some successful and other completely useful and deceiving, have been invented. There are quite a few that go beyond weird.
Arsenic Diet
Deadly poison? Well, during the Victorian period they actually put Arsenic into everything, especially face creams and diet pills. There’s a very good chance that after a few fatalities the practice stopped.
Fletcherism
The idea that Horace “The Great Masticator” Fletcher came up with during the Victorian era involved chewing your food and what you drink quite a lot. How much? About 32 times for each bite. That’s not the weirdest thing about him – he carried some of his poop in a jar to give people a whiff and show them what a great smell it has.
Lord Byron’s Vinegar Diet
Despite being the Ladies man of the period, he was quite insecure about his body, feeling he was a bit too chubby. The diet? Drinking tea and eating potatoes that were drenched in vinegar, while wearing clothes waaaay too heavy for him so he’d sweat off the extra weight. The result was him looking quite frail and weak, although maybe being Bulimic helped as well.
Meat Byproducts Smoothie Diet
A doctor named Richard Linn came up with the idea of drinking a 400 calorie smoothie, which included “pre-digested” ground animal horns, hooves, hides, offal, tendons, bones and other slaughterhouse byproducts that were treated with artificial flavors, colors and enzymes to break them down. It worked, until you died from heart attack.
One Egg Yolk a Day
A book written by Venitian merchant Luigi Cornaro, deciding that in order to lose the weight he gained due to a life of indlugence was eating one egg yolk a day. Cornaro lived till his 90’s, but in general it sounds like the perfect recipe to starve yourself to death.
The Tapeworm Diet
The thing with the tapeworm diet is that people still try to do it, even though it’s illegal in some countries like the United States. The basic idea is swallowing a pill that contains the head of a tapeworm, and let the monster grow inside you, eating the calories away. It might work, until the worm grows quite big, and then it might actually kill you. Having 30-feet long creatures inside do that to you.
Via: Robyn Pennacchia
In a less serious view on diets check out this 8-Bit Diet: What Do The NES Heroes Have For Lunch post.
