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Ridiculous History
A Ridiculous History of "Fad Diets," Part Two: Beverly Hills, Scarsdale and More
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- [00:00]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning. It is 2026. We're back in our very studios, back from some travels. And that's Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams with a lackluster.
- [00:43]
B
Woo, woo. That's much better. 2026, baby new year.
- [00:48]
A
New you.
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C
Here's a question. Is it a leap year?
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A
Oh, come on, man, don't do that.
- [00:53]
C
Noel, is it a leap year?
- [00:54]
B
God. You know, I have nothing to say or weigh in, no pun intended, for today's topic about leap year. It is out of my purview entirely. All right, is it inquiring minds?
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C
No, no, it's not a leap year.
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B
Okay, cool.
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A
Good.
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B
Thank God.
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A
I mean, if we're guessing, we have a pretty good chance of going with Not a leap year to Fitty Fitty Shot.
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B
We should bet on polymarket on whether or not it's a leap year. Is there a market for that?
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A
I am Ben Bolan. That's Mr. Noel Brown.
- [01:23]
B
Hello.
- [01:24]
A
You know, Noel, there feels some like there's something appropriate for opening 2026 with fad diets because this is the time of year lot of people, for better or worse, say they're going to make some big life changes, some resolutions, maybe eat a little better, maybe go to the gym more often, et cetera, et cetera, or at least drink more water. That's an easy one.
- [01:49]
B
That's a big one, man. I successfully implemented that little health tweak about midway through 2025, and boy, oh boy, if you're looking to lose weight. I was told that being heavily hydrated is a big factor in that and didn't really make sense or read, but turns out it really is true. Just having that water bottle and drinking it instead of like soda or even like soda water, which I was a huge fan of, has really made a huge difference in the way I feel.
- [02:18]
C
As soon as Noel started talking about water, both Ben and I started drinking water.
- [02:23]
A
It's huge to drink water. One pro tip, folks. Often if you're struggling with feeling like you're overeating, overindulging in the culinary arts, remember that often when you feel hungry, it's your body just telling you you're dehydrate.
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B
There's water in food, and if you take care of that aspect of it with actual water, then you might feel a little less peckish.
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A
And we know for a fact that. We know for a fact that, yes, technically there is a threshold where a person can drink too much water, but it's pretty hard to get there.
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B
Hard to achieve. Yeah, yeah. You can't really do it by accident. Let's just put it that way.
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A
You really have to go for it. Also, you cannot live on water alone. At least not for a long time.
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B
Vitamin Water.
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A
No. Also not. Don't believe 50 Cent. He's just trying to make a buck.
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B
Don't believe the hype that 50 is dropping. That guy's having a bit of a moment, isn't he?
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A
Absolutely, yeah.
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B
Have you seen that Diddy doc?
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A
Yes. And he is just a non parallel hater. For better or worse.
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B
He's good at.
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A
He does it with respect, his craft. You could say 50 is a fad, right? Or 50s hating is a fad.
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B
He certainly hasn't had a hit in a hot minute. But he's been famous for other things, right?
- [03:42]
A
Very much so. And one being Vitamin Water, the other one being hilariously spiteful and petty. Like, buy all the tickets for your concert so no one goes, was that Ja Rule? I think that was Ja Rule.
- [03:55]
B
Where was Ja Rule in all of this? Is what we are asking. But that is such a. What a good troll. And he apparently got a real good deal on him. He said they were on a Groupon, which is already. Just him putting that out there is the Ja Rules tickets are. They're like discount bin tickets. And he just bought up a lot of them.
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A
That's just the twist of the knife.
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B
This is an iHeart podcast.
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D
Guaranteed Human.
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A
On to our episode. We know since humans began humaning that people were trying to figure out the science of food, what kind of regimen of nutrition is going to be best for your health, best for your longevity, et cetera. And this leads us to our continuing exploration of fad diets. So do check out the first one and be aware this is round two. Cause there are just so many fad diets for sure.
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B
From our dear friend and research associate, Ren. And since you mentioned humaning, it's one of those things where you get past the point of just pure survival and sustenance and just trying to live. Then you start really drilling down into the minutia of things, whether it be delicious flavors, specific regimens that lead to certain results. And with that pursuit, you get some quackery.
- [05:23]
A
Absolutely. You know, first, let's define a fad diet. A fad diet, according to frontiers in nutrition, is a popular dietary pattern that's often sold as a quick fix for obesity. This is where you see a lot of the quackery we're mentioning, because these diets get marketed with very specific claims that often don't really measure up scientifically. Like, the facts are not there to support this with reality.
- [05:54]
B
Yeah. And no one putting forth any of these diets would qualify or classify them as fad, because a fad inherently is something that is a flash in the pan that has a moment and then disappears. That is the very nature of a fad. So it's almost like no one would call their religion a cult necessarily. It's a designation of, let's just say, less than quality.
- [06:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's a. The term fad diet is a pejorative, and it's often applied in retrospect. Yeah. In our first episode, we talked about stuff like tapeworm supplements, rubber underwear, and then, you know, methamphetamine, which used to have a lot less of a bad reputation when it first hit the scene.
- [06:38]
B
Oh, a hundred percent. As you mentioned, that quote from Frontiers Nutrition, they specifically refer to things that defy the basic principles of biochemistry and nutritional adequacy. I just like the way they put that there. So the collective knowledge that we as a species have of nutritional science has, of course, grown, and we are talking about a lot of stuff from yesteryear where the science has, of course, outpaced many of these potentially effective regimes of nutrition. So let's just throw that out there right now. We're not trying to poop on history too much.
- [07:13]
A
And this is also not to be taken as medical advice. People, please check with a doctor, check with the nutritionist, go check with a podcaster. What if it's your health?
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B
We barely want you to take any of this as historical advice.
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A
Right. Yeah. So now we see that as society learns more about the human body and more about nutrition, a lot of what we still call fad diets or are evolving in step with that stuff, like keto, paleo, Whole 30 and so on. They're less extreme than, you know, poisoning yourself with tapeworms. But. But the 1970s.
- [07:52]
B
No, you swallow it, you swallow the tapeworm, and then it comes out of your body.
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A
It's still poisoning.
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B
It's not good. No, it's introducing a parasite into your digestive tract. And, you know, Ren points out that a lot of these things run in cycles. And interestingly enough, you mentioned body positivity earlier. We are kind of in another sort of skinny, chic cycle right now, and largely that has been pushed forth by the availability of a lot of these drugs that are being used for weight loss. And I have Used these and had some great results. Personally, paired with diet and exercise, I think they can be a great tool. But it does seem like it's sort of replaced a lot of, like, public figures who have now lost a ton of weight. It seems like body positivity has kind of gone out the window now in a way, because of that stuff.
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A
Because of the GLP ones.
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B
That's right. And again, no, no. Ding. I've used them myself. I just think culturally, we're starting to see a swing back to the 90s, heroin chic kind of silhouette, and maybe some of that sort of fad diet.
- [08:57]
A
Era stuff, and the cycle will inevitably swing back again. One thing that I'm a huge fan of, and again, this is not medical advice, is something called intermittent fasting. It's not just what you eat, but it's when you eat that matters. And I did not know until we were diving into the research in this, that back in the 1970s, there was an extreme version of this or a related version of this, the Skarsdale Diet. Starving on purpose.
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B
Not to be confused with the Skarsgard diet, which is being, you know, devilishly attractive from a dynasty of excellent actors.
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A
And also not to be confused with the Christian Bale machinist diet, which no one should ever try.
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B
I know. There was another crazy one. Ryan Gosling, apparently. This is so funny. And then we'll get right back on track. He got a role in that movie the Lovely Bones, and then just unilaterally, without asking anybody involved in the production, decided that his character was supposed to be pudgy. So before he even showed up to set, he just binged on, like, melted Breyer's ice cream and gained a bunch of weight and then turned up to set. And the director was like, what the hell? This isn't. You're out of here. And so he got fired.
- [10:15]
C
I just got to jump in here and, like, the Fat Mac season of Always Sunny as well, where he decided, I'm going to be fat. We shall get fat. No, we're not doing that. All right, well, I'm getting fat.
- [10:23]
B
And I got to say, when I was heavier on the heavier side, I thought that made me feel kind of good. You know, it was like, okay, this is Max showing a little body positivity. Then, of course, he gets crazy ripped later in the series as well.
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A
And this brings us back to the Scarsdale Diet. So it's created by a cardiologist named Herman Tarnower in 1978.
- [10:47]
B
Not Herman Scarsdale. Interesting. Go on.
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A
And here's the pitch. If you follow the Scarsdale Diet, says Herman, you can lose 20 pounds in two weeks, as long as you adhere strictly to the plan from his book, the Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet.
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B
Originally, where'd the Scarsdale bit coming from?
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A
Let's see. Originally, he is a. Like we say, he's a cardiologist. So he's aiming to help people who have cardiovascular issues. And it's really. It's all about caloric restrictions.
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B
Ah, it does turn out by the. Sorry, I just had to throw this out cause it was making me crazy. It's named after Scarsdale, New York, which was a wealthy suburb of New York where Dr. Herman Tarnower found his practice.
- [11:35]
A
And the idea then is that we're attaching this diet to celebrity, right to success. It's aspirational. But going back to the caloric restriction thing, his pitch is this. Eat 1000 calories or less per day and avoid the following butter, pasta, beans, lentils, potatoes, sugar, salad dressing, and alcohol.
- [11:57]
B
Well, and contained in a lot of these fad diets are little nuggets of truth, Little nuggets of things that we could all probably think about, like limiting carbs, et cetera. Being a little more conscious about consuming alcohol, for example, maybe not consuming quite as much oily or fatty foods. But then we also hear opposite perspectives often that there's the good fat and all of that, which makes a lot of this stuff really tough to suss out the truth of. But the red flag here for me, Ben, I think for you too, is that 1,000 calories a day, I mean, we know that 2,000 calories a day is what's recommended. This seems like quite a restriction and not very sustainable.
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A
This is a tough one. I was also surprised to see beans on the list.
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B
Beans. They're the magical fruit.
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A
It's so weird. All right, if you look at the way he schedules this out, then you'll see that there are no breakfasts, there are no snacks, there are no desserts. We have an example from a typical Thursday on the Scarsdale Diet.
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B
We've got some two egg breakfasts. Any style, Any style.
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A
This is lunch.
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B
Hey. Oh, that's lunch. Okay, well, I'm gonna call it breakfast because the eggs for lunch, that's crazy talk. Isn't it funny, though, how we associate certain foods with breakfasts and like it. It's this weird mental block. Eating breakfast for lunch is so bizarre. But in other countries.
- [13:17]
A
Yeah, it doesn't apply in other countries. Fun fact. Pho is a breakfast food in Vietnam.
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B
And It makes a lot of sense. And I will absolutely make a breakfast ramen sometimes or like something like a noodle y ramen with an egg on top. How do you like your eggs, by the way, Ben?
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A
Poached.
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B
Poached is what I was gonna say. It's clearly the best way, texture wise. Great combo.
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A
I like it.
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B
So for lunch on a Thursday, you're gonna have two eggs, any style, but we're gonna say poached. But no fat used in the cooking. Hmm. How are you gonna do that?
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A
Guess a little bit of oil.
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B
And isn't oil fatty, though?
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C
Oil is very fatty. Now you're gonna end up with about an entire egg stuck to the pan.
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B
A real gnarly egg. And this was before the days of hexclad. You know, we got low fat cottage cheese, which is always.
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A
You could poach an egg without fat?
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B
Of course you could. But this says any style. So clearly poached would be the preferred method. You do poach an egg without fat. That would be the way to do it. You kind of boil it and you gotta get the swirl going and then scoop it out so you don't break it. It's a little tough to get right. Low fat co. Really, I've grown. Something about cottage cheese just gives me the willies. Zucchini or string bean or sliced or stewed tomatoes. One slice of protein bread.
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A
Okay, let's hold on to that.
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B
Well, please do.
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C
Yeah, because.
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B
Is that like nutra loaf? What are we talking here?
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A
That stuck out to me when I saw protein bread. Essentially, it's just enriched bread. It has higher amounts of protein, usually from like, like pea protein, P E A or whey protein, as in curds and whey.
- [14:49]
B
And then if you wish, you can have yourself a little coffee or tea.
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A
But no milk in it.
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B
No milk in it, probably. No. No. Good. Moving on to dinner. You want to give us our dinner options for the evening?
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A
So you've been a good kid. You have not had any snacks. You skipped breakfast. It's time to ball out with a Scarsdale dinner. You can roast, broil, or barbecue chicken all you want. And you have to get rid of the best part, the skin and visible fat, before you eat it. You can have all the spinach, green peppers, and string beans you want, even though you ate string beans for lunch earlier. You can finish off with some coffee or some tea.
- [15:29]
B
And again, these veggie options make a lot of sense. You can eat your body weight in spinach and veggies and be in a good place. So in 1980, Tarnower was sadly shot. That was a twist by his girlfriend Jean Harris, who was the headmistress of an illustrious girls school. They met later in life as 40 somethings. Well actually 50 something for Tarnower, 43 for Harris. They never married, but they lived together for quite some time. And after 14 years of that, Tarnower, he was a bad boy and he went for a younger woman, a nurse who was working in his office. The, the whatever the, the self own here is, is pretty stunning.
- [16:18]
A
I also want to go back and note that not only can you eat your body weight in spinach, but you can buy your body weight in spinach and it cooks down to about a cup.
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B
So I just had Always need more than you think.
- [16:31]
A
Yeah, you always need more than you think. And our guy got into much more trouble than he thought with his philandering.
- [16:41]
E
Hi Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan, just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link.
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F
There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
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G
There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company which would have been like unimaginable without AI. And now will happen.
- [17:16]
F
I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.
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D
Oh, hey Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting, interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.
- [17:37]
F
Listen to Shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:47]
A
His partner, Gene Harris, found the other woman's curlers and nightgown in their home. Just not, not good. Obsess.
- [17:57]
B
Sloppy. No sir. So this caused her to fly into a rage, it would seem, and she shot him. And it made the news, made headlines. This trial that she was put on. There was support for her from the feminist community, citing a history of emotional abuse and pointing to this outlandish act as her being pushed beyond the limits that a woman could be pushed.
- [18:30]
A
Right. And then you had the other side where people Were saying from the manosphere. Yeah. Was this an innocent man? Not really, because he was philandering. But he should not have been murdered for it.
- [18:43]
B
Either way, that's fair.
- [18:45]
A
Right. Wherever people found themselves on the spectrum, they were still captivated by Harris because she was an affluent professional. She was polished with pearls. She was from a high socioeconomic standing, and she didn't fit the usual stereotypes of a crazy, violent woman who is scorned. So people were more and more interested in her. Ultimately, she does get convicted of second degree murder. She only serves 12 years in prison. You know, keep in mind, she's. They. They have been together for 14 years. She's older.
- [19:21]
B
He was killed.
- [19:22]
A
Yeah. He was fatally shot. Yes.
- [19:24]
B
Yes. I'm sorry. It was. It was a murder trial. And weirdly enough, if you can imagine, this was kind of great publicity for the Scarsdale D. I guess any publicity is good publicity, as they say.
- [19:37]
A
Yeah. And this leads to another controversy right now. The Scarsdale Medical Diet. The book itself is no longer in print because despite various differences in findings and philosophy, experts now agree it is dangerous for adults, most of them, to consume under 1200 calories per day. And it's also incredibly difficult to actually stick to that meal regimen for any long amount of time.
- [20:10]
B
Correct. And I don't know if it's possible to find these, but I would be curious to check them out. This whole scandal of the shooting in this torrid affair was made into two. Count them, made for TV movies.
- [20:24]
A
Maybe while you pull these up, you can switch out your usual popcorn snack for the next diet on our menu today. Eggs and wine diet.
- [20:38]
B
Oh, boy. And as our wonderful researcher Ren headlined this section, the flirty and the farty, the Eggs and Wine diet. It's exactly what it sounds like, Ben. For three days, dieters were meant to consume only eggs and wine. Not clear whether it's red or white. Imagine it's red. Cause it's always being discussed as something that's like, good for your health and your heart for both breakfast and lunch. And for dinner, they could have a nice 5 ounce steak with wine. Just pour it on top, you know.
- [21:12]
A
Yeah. So you're basically drinking at minimum a bottle of wine a day. Breakfast wine. This makes me. This reminds me of one of my favorite, my favorite jokes about our fair city of Metropolis, our excellent public radio service. For a long time there was a show called Two Cups and Two Cups had just this amazing local celebrity and journalist, Lois Reichsis. And I always wondered, is it two cups of coffee? What if it was? Like two cups of wine. And that explains why she was so chill in the morning.
- [21:49]
B
She was very chill. She retired recently. Yes, Is an absolute legend. She even did some. Remember when she did those adult swim bumpers back in the day?
- [21:57]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:58]
B
Absolute legend.
- [21:59]
A
Very cool. I remember when Lois Reichs, for a little while years back, she did the traffic. And it was just so strange to hear her describe car accidents.
- [22:11]
B
She had a very. Has a very distinct voice. I believe due to some sort of respiratory condition. She has a tough time kind of catching her breath, but it leads to this excellent, relaxing cadence in the way.
- [22:24]
A
She speaks ASMR all day. Big Lois Reichs fans. And there were people who were big fans of the eggs and wine diet. The idea.
- [22:35]
B
Luscious wine mums.
- [22:38]
A
Yeah. The idea was apparently that the regular diet by itself was boring. Just eat eggs and then you get a little steak at the end of the day. So the alcohol makes the menu more palatable.
- [22:53]
B
I don't know about that. That seems a little like a slippery slope. I do love an egg, and they are excellent sources of protein. And I've been trying to consume more eggs lately, but I couldn't live on egg alone. It didn't, however, promise major weight loss. Only about five pounds, but in three days. So this was super attractive for folks who were looking to shed a little bit of weight before, say, a wedding or a holiday or like a beach getaway or something like that. The diet was originally debuted in 1962 in the bestselling book Sex and the Single the Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men, which offered dating advice, advice on things like sexual friendships, affairs, work, life, balance, money, stuff, you know, style, eating, and, of course, drinking.
- [23:49]
A
Yeah, this is very much the kind of thing you would read in later magazines like Cosmo or Vogue. In fact, this got another cyclical splurge of popularity 15 years after its first publication because it's republished in the Vogue Body and Beauty Book in 1977. And the idea is, whatever your age, you can stay cute and petite and sexually attractive. As Ren adds, even if you're drunk off your ass by 11am and your farts smell of sulfur.
- [24:24]
B
Gotta love it. Moving on to the 80s, seems like there was a trend of a lot of these diets being named after the locations in which they were found. Things like the south beach diet, the Scarsdale diet, of course, and the Beverly Hills diet, which we've done episodes in the past about the magic pineapple, how it was a status symbol. You had to rent a pineapple, or you could rent A pineapple. And it was emblazoned in all kinds of metalwork and things as a sign of opium. So it makes sense that this was a feature of the Beverly Hills Diet. Beverly Hills being a place known for its opulence. This was first published in 1981 by Judy Maisel.
- [25:02]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Unlike our pal Herman, Maisel didn't have a background in medicine or nutrition. She did have a lot of moxie, though. And her lack of professional qualifications would not stop her from creating what LA Times calls a theory about food enzymes and the digestion, digestive system that she formulated into a complicated weight reducing plan. She did this because a small still voice inside her told her to leave the freeway and buy cashews in 1974.
- [25:41]
B
Okay. It's a very specific internal voice. I don't know. How did this relate to her ultimate dreams of movie stars?
- [25:50]
A
Yeah, she. I think like so many other people in the area, she was trying to get, Trying to become famous, trying to work in entertainment and Hollywood. And like a lot of people, unfortunately, she struggled with her own body image throughout her life. At the age of nine, she went to her first appointment with what was called a diet doctor. And she said her struggle to, in her mind, her struggle to maintain or control her weight was the reason for her failure to really break through as an actor. And that's just a terrible way to feel about yourself.
- [26:32]
B
Yeah, no acting or no acting, it's not a good way to feel. And as we know and discussed in the last Fad Diets episode, a lot of these quote unquote diet doctors of the time. Pretty sure well into the 90s, may even still be some around. We're just giving people infection.
- [26:47]
A
Oh, 100%. Yeah. And luckily, Maisel's plan is a little bit less heavy on amphetamines, but she is really good at marketing. Again, these diets are aspirational. I want to do what the stars are doing. What are the successful people eating? How can I look like one of them? So her diet plan gets really successful because it gets celebrity supporters. Linda Gray from the soap opera Dallas. The first lady of California at the time, Marie Shriver. Engelbert Humperdinck. I love that name. It's just so weird. Did you know that's not his real name? That's his stage name that he chose that he thought that was a good idea.
- [27:29]
B
Engelbert Humperdinck was a classical composer who wrote the opera Hansel and Gretel. So I think he was just borrowing it from that because it is like an amazingly absurd name. Sort of like our pal Kurt Weill borrowed his stage name, I believe, from the weirdest composer as well at the Threepenny Opera.
- [27:47]
A
Nice. And as this diet, the pineapple diet, we're getting to, as it becomes more and more popular with the swells and the to dos, Maisel does make it to the spotlight. She gets featured on talk shows that are broadcast around the world to promote her diet plan, the Beverly Hills Diet. If you follow it, they say in just 15 days you could lose 35 pounds. Noel, hearing that number in that amount of time makes me really worried for the person on this diet.
- [28:24]
B
Oh, absolutely. That's just. It doesn't seem very safe. You know, typically you'd lose that amount of weight in like, you know, a year.
- [28:31]
A
Yeah. I mean, according to Maisel, it's not just the food that you eat, it's the order in which that food is consumed. You can only eat fruit during breakfast on an empty stomach, and then once.
- [28:46]
B
You ate lean proteins, you could no longer eat fruit for the rest of the day.
- [28:52]
A
Yeah.
- [28:53]
B
These kind of specific order of operations things are a real red flag.
- [28:57]
A
Yeah, agree.
- [28:59]
B
Especially from someone without a science background.
- [29:02]
A
It is a fruit heavy diet, which.
- [29:04]
B
Has a lot of sugar in it.
- [29:05]
A
It has a lot of sugar. But here's the thing, you might hear lean protein. Okay. So if that's my switch, I'll just figure out when I want to eat the lean protein and then no more fruit for a day. Unfortunately, you are supposed to eat nothing but fruit for the first 10 days on the 15 day diet. Yeah. So on day 11, you can have some protein, a little bit of carb as a treat. And that's the second, second phase of the plan. She loved pineapples. She thought fruit enzymes, if you consume them first, they made your digestive tract better at breaking down other foods later.
- [29:45]
B
Yeah. Like a lot of the tenets of these fad diets, that's a myth that has since been discredited by actual doctors and scientists. So as a little aside, all of those fruits, as you can imagine, were not particularly great for other aspects of digestion. AKA pooping.
- [30:05]
A
Yeah. Unless you're super into pooping, you would be disappointed to learn that all this consumption can lead to diarrhea. Now, on the other side, this diet plan, it's still very Beverly Hills. They're not saying you can't have alcohol, but they are saying you have to have some rules. Beer or hard spirits, they have to be consumed with carbohydrates. You can only have Red and white wine with fruit. And champagne per basil is neutral. It can be consumed anytime.
- [30:42]
B
It's almost like there's a certain, like the humors aspect to this.
- [30:46]
C
Yes.
- [30:46]
B
You know what I mean? The champagne is the neutral humor. That is so Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. Old Hollywood. Very Gatsby esque. You know, champagne for all. Yeah.
- [30:56]
A
And someone's like, dear lord, Zelda, it's 9:30 in the morning.
- [31:01]
B
No, it's okay. Champagne is neutral.
- [31:03]
A
Champagne. It's neutral.
- [31:06]
B
So it could be consumed with any of these outline food groups that Maisels came up with. So, you know, of course professional nutritionists were a little skeptical, dare we say wary of Maisel's diet plan because they believed that it was quack science.
- [31:24]
A
Yeah, yeah. And Maisel basically said, I hear you, and then went on to do whatever she wished.
- [31:33]
B
I hear. And yet here I go on this other talk show. To spread the good word, she went.
- [31:37]
A
To publish several war books offering nutritional advice, all inspired by that disembodied voice that told her to chase some cashews.
- [31:47]
B
I think I maybe interrupted you when you brought that up in and I'm sorry, The voice did tell her to get the cashews, at which point she pulled over to a health food store.
- [31:53]
A
Right.
- [31:53]
B
And then found some book that I believe sparked the idea of this whole enterprise.
- [32:00]
A
Yeah, 100%. I mean, you gotta take the inspiration where you find it, right?
- [32:04]
B
Sure. Listen to all the voices. Just listen to them.
- [32:09]
A
Single one. We've got a great episode on Intuition coming up for stuff they don't want.
- [32:13]
B
You to know, folks.
- [32:14]
A
We can't wait for you to tune in for that one. This next one. Full disclosure, I have members of my family who tried out the fad diet known as Slim Fast.
- [32:28]
E
Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link.
- [32:41]
F
There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
- [32:55]
G
There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company which would have been like unimaginable without AI. And now will happen.
- [33:03]
F
I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for My award winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.
- [33:15]
D
Oh, hey, Evan, good to have you join us. I found some real, really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.
- [33:24]
F
Listen to Shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:34]
B
I think we all probably did. It was absolutely huge. The little pre made shakes. Thompson Medical Company founded this enterprise in the late 70s. SlimFast hit a massive, massive commercial stride in the 80s and would continue on to dominate the industry into the millennium. So by 2000, the year 2000, SlimFast generated over $1 billion in global sales, which would look a little closer to 2 billion if you did the old inflation calculator. Beep, boop boop.
- [34:10]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is serious money. Money at first.
- [34:14]
B
What you're buying here, Supplement, kind of.
- [34:16]
A
It's a powder. It's like a packet and you're supposed to mix it with milk. You can still find Slim fast these days. They'll have all these candy flavors, you know, like Vapes or pop tarts.
- [34:29]
B
That's a red flag right there too.
- [34:30]
A
Yes.
- [34:31]
B
Yeah, let's get, let's, let's lose weight by drinking milkshakes.
- [34:35]
A
Yeah, just so. I mean, the flavors too kind of. They are flags like coffee house caramel latte, triple berry, vanilla.
- [34:47]
B
Yum, yum.
- [34:48]
A
Yeah.
- [34:48]
B
But what was the active ingredient that was meant to promote weight loss? Isn't it essentially just like a protein shake? It's meant to be a food replacement and it's a way of limiting your calories by knowing exactly what you're consuming in the form of this shake or this powder. Right? Yeah, yeah.
- [35:06]
A
It's very dense with vitamins and minerals, but it's trying to concentrate all the good stuff and eliminate the calories that usually come along with a full meal. It also reminds me of something funny that happened at our job years and years back. We started getting shipments of something called Huel. Huel sponsor for a while.
- [35:33]
B
Soylent. Let's not forget about Soylent.
- [35:35]
A
Oh, yeah, and Soylent as well. That was a moment for us. Because folks, technically the FCC requires us to actually try out any product if we're going to endorse it on the air, which is a good law to have. Sure. And so we ended up drinking Huel and Soylent. It wasn't that bad.
- [35:56]
B
It's as clean as people. No, no, it's fine. But it's a really good thing to bring up then. Because it very much is a modern equivalent of this exact fad diet. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Soylent and Huel, they do have more nutrients. They've got other vitamins, contents and proteins, et cetera. So there's something to it if that's the route you want to go and you use it responsibly. But they did initially trot this product out as a get thin quick scheme. Right. And their first try at it was in the form of a cherry red. And this really threw me for a loop, Ben. Pre digested liquid protein. It makes me think of the way the mama bird, like, chews up food and spits it into the baby bird's mouth. Yuck. This came out in 1979 and it was quickly recalled, if you can imagine, for containing bacterial contamination. So they had to do a little bit of a pivot.
- [36:50]
A
Yeah. You know, not every first at bat is going to be a home run. But thankfully, they had already been working around the clock at their lab. They had invented a chocolate protein powder. And this was not a huge revolutionary idea at this point in the 70s. So they didn't. Didn't invest too much into the marketing for this thing that would become called Slim Fast and protein powder. The reason it's not revolutionary, per se is because protein powder had first been commercialized and popularized way back in the 1950s by a guy named Irvin Johnson who ran a gym and health studio in Chicago.
- [37:35]
B
100%. It was initially, as it is often today, used as a supplement for bodybuilders to bulk up.
- [37:43]
A
Yeah, yeah. And the demand for the product then starts. It starts in a specialized way with a pretty niche demographic. But Johnson's competitors start catering to the same audience. They're kind of trying to eat his bodybuilder lunch. The Thompson Medical Company, the originators of SlimFast, they say, okay, there are a lot of protein powders on the market. We have to do a serious rebrand. So we've gotta pivot. What if we sold this protein powder? Not to bodybuilders, not to the good folks reading Iron man magazine, but what if we sold it to regular people? What if we specifically targeted women and we said, this is not a quick fix to get, you know, to up your body mass and your muscle mass. This is a way for you to be healthy and maybe lose some weight.
- [38:39]
B
To get slim fast.
- [38:41]
A
Yes. Just like mattress firm is a pun.
- [38:44]
C
Also, if I can jump in here real quick, I want to just make sure that everyone knows that this is Irvin Johnson with An I, not E, who is. Or E A, R, V, I, N. Johnson, who is also more commonly known as Magic Johnson.
- [39:01]
B
Irving Johnson. Okay, great.
- [39:02]
A
Max with the facts.
- [39:05]
B
Who's that sneaking in the phone? It's Magic Facts and he's full of knowledge. Just for you right now. Here he comes. It's smacked with the facts indeed. There it is.
- [39:18]
A
And well done. Happy 2026. So this, this is not a pretty great idea. But then they run into a catch. It's something called the Cambridge Diet. To the point again, about diets being named after places.
- [39:33]
B
That's right. The Cambridge Diet was developed by a doctor named Alan Howard. He was a professor at Cambridge University. That's the one. The Cambridge University. This diet plan was pretty straightforward. You drink three of these Cambridge shakes a day instead of eating meals. Meal replacement. And you know, they did contain some of the valuable nutrients that our bodies need. Vitamins and minerals, et cetera. But the total daily caloric content clocked it in an estimated 330 calories, which is way too low. Like starvation territory.
- [40:06]
A
Right. It's the epitome of feeling like you're eating but not actually eating. So much so that the FDA stepped forward and warned the public about the Cambridge Diet. And when that happened, Slim fast, wheedling its fingers, steepling them like Monty Burns, they did a swoop. Yeah. They saw the position, they took the advantage and. And they popped through the marketplace and they started advertising directly against the Cambridge Diet with a killer slogan that would.
- [40:38]
B
Have made Don Draper very proud.
- [40:41]
A
A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, then a sensible dinner. That's the slogan they adopted.
- [40:47]
B
Sensible dinner. Yeah. Same model just packaged a little differently. Same model as the Cambridge Diet in the way the Thompson company packaged it and distanced itself from this FDA scrutiny on Cambridge Diet was by suggesting that its consumer should not rely solely on their product for sustenance. That sensible dinner recommendation, and then it's outside of the purview of their slop that they're feeding you.
- [41:11]
A
Exactly.
- [41:12]
B
I'm sorry, that sounds mean. It's probably fine for some people. It just. It is kind of gross and it's. I don't like the idea of subsisting on shakes. There is a better way. Fruits and vegetables, just eating a well balanced diet, all of this stuff, it just seems so missing the point.
- [41:25]
A
You know, people do anything but exercise, man. That's part of it. So let me just have a magic cup of something and not change my shooting. Yeah, but. Okay, let's fast forward. It's the 1990s Slim Fast is still very well known at the tippity top of the fad diet pyramid. But by the late 2000s, we see the cycles shift once more. And now people are going away from this pseudo medical diet philosophy and aesthetic and they're going back to what we would call the ancestral diet trends. Like what do the cavemen eat? Why can't I eat like a cave boy?
- [42:10]
B
A hundred percent, the paleo, all that. And the thing is, man bodies are different. Like everybody is different. And some things work well for some and not well for others. So it's important to try different things and figure out, you know, like Anthony Kiedis, for example, like of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Recently I saw a clip where he was talking about how when he was dating a nutritionist at some point in the past and she recommended that he eat like wild meats, that he felt great and that he had all this energy and that he was able to build all this muscle and stuff. So I don't know, maybe Anthony Kida's wild meats was the answer that he needed. But it's also a lot of it's relative. I mean, I think the biggest takeaway is just don't overdo it. It just try to be a little bit sensible.
- [42:58]
A
Yeah. I would also say, folks, most importantly, at least from my perspective, be kind to yourself. Don't let society tell you that. Don't let them foist expectations or requirements on you. It's okay to be who you are. And that's something that I think we miss a lot of times, not just in the entertainment world, but especially in the age of ubiquitous social media. You can also bet to your bottom dollar that there are going to be more fad diets on the way because of what they promise. Right. Or what they imply. It's just too nice for it not to happen again and it's too profitable. And when you run into a fad diet that seems too good to be true, history is proven. It probably is.
- [43:50]
B
Yeah, for sure. And not to mention that we're in a era particularly fraught with misinformation right now. You have a lot folks that are pitching things like bone broths and all of this kind of like doomsday supplements and things like that. And they just, they don't have your best interest at heart. And it's just important to do your own research and again figure out what works best for you. But know that there really isn't a magic bullet. And even if that those epic of it all, you know, seems like A magic bullet. There are people that take that and they don't do any exercise and they don't change their diet and they kind of. They are skinny, but they look. They don't. It's not. I don't know, they just don't look healthy. And I just think it's important to pair any quote unquote magic bullet treatment with sensible behavior and changing the way that you approach, you know, eating and living.
- [44:41]
A
And then when you get off of the GLP1, unless there's serious behavior change, what we've seen so far, even with the relatively new rollout of this, is that the weight returns. Mm.
- [44:53]
B
You know, so it is key to learn a little bit of restraint and try to just, you know, just get your steps in. Just little things like that can make a huge difference in your mental health and in your, you know, the way you look and the way you feel. So, yeah, no preaching here. Something to chew on.
- [45:11]
A
Or we could all just do meth. Kidding. Kidding. Nobody. That's not the great. That's not a great way to start 2026.
- [45:18]
B
Fistful of Mommy's little helpers.
- [45:20]
A
And thank you so much for starting your year with folks. We're so happy that you're joining us. Big, big thanks to Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams and Alex Williams, who composed this track.
- [45:33]
B
Huge thanks again to our research associate and pal Ren, for this excellent part two of fad diets to kick off 2026 with you ridiculous historians. Also huge thanks to Christopher Ciotes and Eve's Jeff Coates here in spirit.
- [45:46]
A
Big, big thanks, of course, to Gary Dorsey, also known as Ingo Hubert Humperdink.
- [45:52]
B
I don't know the name like that. I could see maybe why he changed his name. It was a little dull.
- [45:55]
A
Okay. Yeah. Big thanks to Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance AJ Bahamas Jacobs, the puzzler, and a a civil yet cold acknowledgment of Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Quizter.
- [46:10]
B
A fine.
- [46:10]
A
Howdy, Jonathan.
- [46:13]
B
Man, how much spinach do you think Dr. Lance has to cook down to make a big spinach?
- [46:18]
A
Oh, man, it's so much. I think she owns land dedicated to growing spinach crops.
- [46:25]
B
Dr. Rachel Big spinach Lands Landed Gentry, the spinach tycoon. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show shows. This is an iHeart podcast.
- [46:48]
D
Guaranteed Human.