Fad Diets From The '70s That Wouldn't Fly Today

It feels like diets have been around forever, always preaching the best ways to lose those last couple of pounds and kick-start a healthier lifestyle. Making them a major throughline in history, diets have long acted as a solution to any and all weight problems. Though yes, diets can promote a healthier connection to eating and one's body, fad diets always seem to take the forefront in the conversation of clean eating. And in the 1970s, that's exactly what happened. 

Unlike actual sustainable diets, fad diets were characterized by their popular quick-fix solutions, often boasting extreme meal plans to shave off a few pounds at astronomical speed. Their restrictive design, at the end of the day, was made to be unsustainable and unhealthy at best, and it didn't help the move toward healthier eating. But, in the 1970s, they were all the rage. 

Fad diets being in gave way for the lean look to take to the mainstream. This body ideal started in the 1960s and extended into the following decade, promoting an almost impossible thinness. Fad diets were assumed to be the perfect solution to accommodate the popular body standards. The meal plans, some even designed by medical doctors, called for individuals to commit to downright dangerous eating habits for the goal of weight loss. 

A physician in cardiology and internal medicine, Dr. Herman Tarnower was certainly the man that many would want weight loss advice from. After all, he was a loved doctor within his community and a veteran of World War II. Over his years practicing medicine, the doctor developed a personalized meal plan, which was later labeled the Scarsdale diet, though at the time it was merely a form he gave to his patients to encourage better heart health. His diet saw great popularity in 1979 when Tarnower released "The Complete Scarsdale Diet" book. 

For many, the Scarsdale diet presented a quick solution to weight loss; however, as medical professionals soon pointed out, the quick-fix structure had an unsustainable plan that promised the fad's followers the inability to maintain the diet's strict rules. The diet went as follows: only consume 1,000 calories a day — ensuring that 43% of those calories are proteins — and avoid foods such as potatoes, avocados, and rice. Given that the medical recommendation for daily caloric intake is well over Tarnower's 1,000-calorie meal plan, the Scarsdale diet essentially sets dieters up for failure or, worse, serious medical emergencies, given its incredibly restrictive structure. 

Though initially popularized in the early 1920s, the grapefruit diet resurfaced during the 1970s. Due to its long-standing existence in dieting culture, specifically fad dieting culture, there have been several variations of the grapefruit diet through the years. Structured on the premise of a detox, the diet was suggested to be practiced over the course of 10 to 12 days to see a loss of 10 pounds, and would require severe cuts to caloric intake. 

The diet essentially encouraged those looking to lose weight to consume grapefruit daily, as it was believed that grapefruit would encourage weight loss in addition to any dieting meal plan. As some variations went, the dieter would be required to consume one entire grapefruit before every meal of the day while also consuming small meals. Whereas other variations suggested only consuming half a grapefruit (or even a glass of grapefruit juice) in the morning for breakfast. Though it's generally encouraged that people consume fruits with some regularity, and though grapefruits are a nutrient-dense food, the severity of the overconsumption of the fruit in combination with the strict calorie cut was simply unsustainable and ill-advised. 

Originally published in the 1962 book, "Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men," the eggs and wine diet made its debut after being penned by Helen Gurley Brown. An American author without a background in nutrition, health sciences, or even medicine of some kind, Brown wrote a series of self-help-style books for women from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s. Before eventually becoming the Editor-in-Chief at Cosmopolitan, Brown had paved a way for herself by preaching fixes to everyday problems and mapping solutions to personal struggles based not in science but in personal experience. Among her acclaimed collection, the diet got lost in the mix but resurfaced in the 1970s thanks to Vogue.  

As detailed in Vogue, the diet consisted of a strict pattern of eating. For breakfast, one was allowed a singular egg (hard-boiled), one cup of black coffee, and one glass of wine. For lunch, an incremental increase to the breakfast layout was promoted: two eggs (hard-boiled), one cup of black coffee, and two glasses of wine. By dinner, the diet ditched its egg base, allowing for a 5-ounce steak, one cup of black coffee, and the remainder of the wine. That's right, the egg and wine diet expected that you drink an entire bottle of wine every day while on the curated meal plan. 

Unlike Helen Gurley Brown, Sten Hegeler did have a background in health — mental and sexual health. A Danish psychologist and sexologist, Hegeler penned the sex-based diet in his 1970s book "The Pineapple Diet." He had come up with the idea for the pineapple diet with his wife, Inge Hegeler, an actor and sex counselor. The pair, who had a sex column together, designed the diet to do more than encourage weight loss. Unlike its many '70s counterparts, the pineapple diet was also meant to improve an individual's health, including their libido. 

The Hegeler's meal plan structure caused the diet to drift even further from other diets at the time. Not requiring any long-term changes, the restrictiveness of the diet lasted only two days a week. While eating well-balanced meals the rest of the week, those two days required that the dieter only consume pineapple. In some variations of the pineapple diet, it was said that the other five days only allowed for fewer than 500 calories a day; the main focus was on increasing pineapple intake. Though yes, pineapple does have its own benefits, like acting as a digestion aid and encouraging fat breakdown, the diet's construction around the fruit requires that individuals eat well below the recommended daily caloric intake. 

Turning to medication for weight loss still has a hold on society, with the 2025 boom of diabetes injection medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. The difference between the use of injectables in the 21st century and the 1970s magic little pill diet is the base drug of the weight loss solutions. Dissimilar from Ozempic, which has the active ingredient of semaglutide, the diet pills that took off decades ago had active bases of amphetamines. Following World War II, when these drugs were prescribed to soldiers to keep themselves awake while on the battlefield, it was noted that the drugs' side effects made the medications great weight loss solutions. 

These amphetamines were appetite suppressants, discouraging users from eating and thus resulting in weight loss. The idea of using these pills as a means of weight loss skyrocketed following the war. By the 1970s, these drugs were no longer prescribed with any hesitation but rather were taking the weight loss industry by storm. The magic little pill diet included getting one of these prescriptions and watching the weight fall off. However, amphetamines are highly addictive. So, while the drug did produce the wanted outcome of weight loss, it also raised issues with millions of Americans who became addicted and was soon restricted by the Controlled Substances Act.