The 1930s Diet, grapefruit & my first week

 
 Diets really became popular in the 1930s.  The Hollywood, or Grapefruit, diet was developed then, with lots of women striving to look like their favourite actress. In this low calorie diet (800-1,000), most people will lose weight, but it has nothing to do with grapefruit having a fat burning enzyme, it’s just a nutritious low-calorie fruit (66-84 calories per serving), loaded with vitamin C and fibre. Unfortunately unless it’s a pink grapefruit, it’s also quite horrible without sugar. Most versions of the Grapefruit Diet include a small variety of foods for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and at bedtime, with half a grapefruit at each meal.  If  could replace the grapefruit with, say, mango, I’d do it. But grapefruit, you have to be kidding.

And what to do with all those grapefruit peels? Make a dress of course.

To celebrate the beginning of harvest in the fertile Rio Grand Delta. 1930s.

‘The Lancet’ noted in 1933 that in “these days of ‘slimming’ there was no more popular subject of discussion among the ladies than the reduction in weight”. Anxiety about excess weight was exploited in weight loss books and advertisements of “slimming” foods such as Ryvita and Ryebic crisp bread, slimming teas, tablets, remedial products such as Linia Shorts intended to massage away the abdominal “danger curve” and vibration machines which promised to exercise “All the body without effort” and reduce obesity “without drugs or dieting”.

 

The new middle class of the 1930s with it’s sedentary lifestyle, particularly among the men, saw an average daily intake of 3,500 calories, compared to about 2,500 calories for working class people.  The working class were of course facing economic depression, high unemployment and poverty – much like now really – getting enough to eat would have been more of a problem for them than losing weight.

Free coffee and soup for the unemployed during the 1930s

The fashions of the 1930s also employed a long, lean silhouette. Women wanted to look like their favourite movie stars – Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard. Bette Davis – but often these woman also had to struggle with their weight.

 

In between films, Jean Harlow would eat whatever she wanted and gain some weight.  When it came time for filming a new movie,  Harlow would have to put herself on a strict diet of salads and vegetables to get back to her thin movie weight. 

Meanwhile other affluent women were going to weight loss camps, as these photos from a 1930s Life Magazine show.
 

Don’t you love the high heels for exercise?!

Another secret to a girlish figure was Bile Beans, a quack remedy for the flu in the late 1800s, and used for “biliousness” and weight loss in the 1930s. Basically they were laxatives, thanks to a bitter ingredient called aloin disguised by cardamom, peppermint oil, and wheat flour, and wrapped in an attractive black gelatine coating. Delicious!

1930s

On a personal note, I have lost a whole 2.5 kg this week, in my first week on the Fatty liver diet!!.

Deb xx

1920s Weight Loss & Fatty Liver

I have decided to lose weight this year – it was one of my new year resolutions, and part of my getting healthy plan. It's strange how it sort of creeps up on you - If I'd had a great vintage wardrobe it wouldn't have happened, I'm sure.   My last blood test showed my blood count is almost back to normal (I was severely anaemic), although my blood pressure is too high, and I am now on blood pressure medication.  I also have abnormal liver function, and now that hepatitis has been ruled out, I apparently have a ‘fatty liver.’  This is how I look now, more or less. I would never wear shorts that short though!

Over weight and at fat-camp in the 1930s

The cause of this, my doctor tells me, is a ‘typical western diet.’  My diet over the years has been anything but typical.  I grew up whole wheat everything and NO soft drink, was vegetarian for 8 years, vegan for two of those, did raw food for one year and for my last pregnancy in 2005, with twins, gave up sugar.  I have newer smoked or ‘done drugs’, or taken excessive amounts of medications or painkillers and I am a moderate drinker, who has abstained before during and after each pregnancy (all four of them). I don’t have a sweet tooth, drink only two cups of tea or coffee a day and drink lots of water.  There must be more to it than ‘typical western diet.’

According to fatty liver guru, Sandra Cabot, grains as well as sugar is a major cause of fatty liver. So those whole grains I have been eating over the years – brown rice, whole wheat, oats – may not have been as good for me as I was lead to believe. Bugger!  So now I am cutting out all grains and sugar for 8 weeks, to see if there is any improvement.

Not the safest way to weight loss, 1960s

At present, according to this BMI calculator, I am borderline obese (its about 29) and need to lose at lest 20 kg.  I have known that I’m overweight for some time, but I have been struggling to lose it, even before I became ill.  Apparently having a fatty liver prevents you from losing weight.  If I can get my liver healthy, I can apparently lose weight!

weight loss in 1929, when an economic depression is not enough

Apart from being overweight, especially around the abdomen, the other major signs of fatty liver are high blood pressure and bad skin.  Well, I have had both of those things for ever – why didn't someone mention this to me years ago?!

Miss Camilla Clifford (The Gibson girl) - American musical comedy star

One hundred years ago the female physical ideal was very different, the curvy Gibson Girl look was in, and my BMI, had it been a thought of concept, wouldn't have seemed so bad.  A series of articles in 1912 and early 1913 saw Brooklyn-born Cornell student Elsie Scheel, 24, hailed 'the most nearly perfect physical specimen of womanhood'. At 5ft 7in tall and 171 pounds (12 stone 3 pounds), with a pear-shaped chest-waist-hips ratio of 35-30-40 inches (close to the proportions of the Venus de Milo), her BMI would have been close to 27, which is also in the overweight category.   Elsie, however,  who was selected by university medical examiner Dr Esther Parker from a group of over 400 women, was described by the New York Times as 'a light-haired, blue-eyed girl whose very presence bespeaks perfect health.'

1912

Elsie  said that 'She has never been ill and doesn't know what fear is' - indeed, she believes women would be happier if they 'got over the fear of things'.  Her tips for a healthy diet and lifestyle? She rarely ate breakfast, candy and avoided tea and coffee but loved beef steak, and thought walking better than staying up late dancing or studying.   She called herself an ardent suffragette and said that 'if she were a man, she would study mechanical engineering as she likes to work about an automobile.'   As a woman, however, an a  student of horticulture, her ambition as was grow vegetables on her father's farm.  Quite a healthy pursuit indeed – I would love to be a farmer. I wonder what her liver looked like.
I can imagine the taller, thinner and darker girls reading this article one hundred years ago and despairing, or at least feeling inadequate.  Maybe they would have resorted to something like this:

Yes, tapeworms!

By the 1920s the ideal was for a much slimmer body. Curves were out. Which was good really, because after WWI many people were extremely thin, due to food shortages and rationing, soldiering and working. One things settled down after the war the 20s lifestyle became one of excess for many, including the new middle class with their sedentary jobs, and it became easier to overeat. Weight loss again became a hot topic. especially as scientists had just discovered the connection between weight and diabetes. Every newspaper and magazine had articles about diet and losing weight, and weight loss products like pills, rubber clothing and reducing creams flooded the market.  Advertisers knew that fat was scary.

Cashing in on fear, 1920s Kelloggs ad

Many middle class women, many already quite slim, wanted to lose even more weight in order to look good in the slimline fashions of the 1920s that exposed ankles, calves and even upper arms and knees!. Many doctors considered this harmful, saying that extreme thinness and women’s “thin and scraggy” figures and “haggard, drawn expression” were the very opposite of beauty and a threat to women’s responsibility as mothers. Somehow I don't think all women were concerned about that.

Cigarette smoking was also becoming accepted for women, and advertisers homed in on their desire to keep slim, creating a strange link between smoking and beauty that is finally starting to disappear ninety years later. Obviously cigarettes don't give you diabetes!

Lucky Strike, 1927

I am not about to take up smoking, try tape worms or slimming vibrators, but I am aiming to lose weight.  Not for beauty, but for health. More importantly I want to lose fat, especially in my liver.  As my health improves with diet, I aim to excessive more - beginning with walking the dogs at least half an hour per day, a nice gentle exercise my doctors recommends. If only it would stop raining!

An English lady walking her Russian Borzois, 1930s

 I’ll keep you updated.

And if you know anything about fatty liver, let me know!

Deb xxx