Among many of our New Year’s resolutions will be attempting to become trimmer and fitter after the usual extravagances of Christmas, especially in these strange times when many physical and social activities have been curtailed and more time spent indoors. Dieting, health and, for some, preoccupation with body image may have reached extremes in our modern world, yet such concerns are far from new. History reveals myriad attempts at weight management, from use of alcohol, pills, cigarettes and soap to healthy eating programmes.

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (c.460–c.375 BC), known as the ‘Father of Medicine’, was an early advocate of a balanced diet and exercise for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. At around the same time, Olympian athletes were urged to follow specific guidelines to attain the strength and agility needed for victory in sporting events: initially dried figs, bread and fresh cheese were recommended, but Pythagoras (probably a gymnastics teacher rather than the philosopher of the same name, given the latter was a staunch advocate of vegetarianism) made substantial portions of red meat a priority. Subsequent athletics trainers, understanding the need for protein, reiterated the importance of meat, one adding ‘you have to… keep away from desserts; you must not drink cold water nor can you have a drink of wine whenever you want’.

By contrast, by the Middle Ages, royalty and the nobility enjoyed a luxurious, high-status diet, including copious quantities of wine. William the Conqueror, King of England 1066–1087, retained good health until old age, when he grew dangerously corpulent: adopting a liquid diet comprising mainly alcohol, he lost sufficient weight to get back in the saddle, but died soon afterwards from a riding accident. William’s successor, Henry I, King of England 1068–1135, famously expired due to ‘a surfeit of lampreys’: lampreys were eel-like fish that Henry ate to excess even in his twilight years, going against medical advice that they were too heavy for his feeble constitution. Richard III was the last English king to die on the battlefield in 1485, aged 32, and studies of his body (discovered in Leicester in 2012) revealed a rich diet of game such as swan, crane and heron, freshwater fish like pike and large amounts of wine. Medieval and Renaissance kings and princes enjoyed seemingly unlimited wine, liquid-based diets often being recommended to counter obesity at this time. Italian nobleman Luigi Cornaro, author of The Art of Living Long (1558), who reputedly lived until about 100 years of age, put his longevity down to a daily intake of 12oz food and 14oz wine – an approach referred to as ‘The Immortality Diet’.

From the 17th century onwards and especially during the 1700s, close attention to diet increasingly formed part of broader medical regimes. George Cheyne (1671–1743), an influential Scottish medical practitioner who specialised in treating sedentary urban, middle- and upper-class male patients in fashionable London and Bath, favoured a spiritual, ethical approach. He advocated a diet based on milk and vegetables, plus regular sleep, exercise and temperance, to keep men feeling relaxed and happy; conversely, erratic eating habits and heavy drinking sessions ‘inflamed the passions’, prompting riotous and dissolute behaviour. Such rational concepts, which largely reflected Enlightenment philosophy, were overturned somewhat in the early 1800s when emotion-conscious Romantic writers, artists and their followers tended to favour a pale, thin and languid fashionable ideal. To this end, the poet, politician and traveller Lord Byron (1788–1824) spent much of his tortured youth trialling a sequence of bizarre diets, including hard biscuits with soda water and potatoes drenched in vinegar.

During the Victorian era, a low carbohydrate diet became the most widely accepted method of losing excess weight. The first serious work on dieting is recognised as the booklet entitled Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public published by eminent undertaker William Banting in 1864, which began: ‘Of all the parasites that affect humanity I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more distressing than that of Obesity.’ Banting (c.1796–1878), once obese himself and having tried in vain various spas, diets and exercise plans, now espoused a weight loss programme based on limiting consumption of carbohydrates, especially those high in starch and sugar. Making his dietary changes at the suggestion of London physician Dr William Harvey, Banting successfully replaced excessive intakes of beer, bread, sugar, potatoes, milk and butter with mainly meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and dry wine. The immense and enduring popularity of his pamphlet and diet plan ensured that the verb ‘banting’ (as in ‘Are you banting?’) remained a colloquialism for dieting well into the 20th century.

In the early 1900s, overweight American businessman Horace Fletcher slimmed down significantly and introduced a new phenomenon with his ‘Chewing Diet’, based on the chewing of each mouthful of food at least 32 times, or until it attained liquid form. Fletcher, dubbed ‘The Great Masticator’, believed his method could help with weight loss and avoidance of disease. Others also agreed that how one ate was more significant than the quantity or quality of food, although there was a more widespread understanding that people became obese mainly because they were eating more food than they needed for energy. Around the turn of the century there was particular interest in the general state and health of society. Popular writer George Craston spoke for many concerned about the Victorian predilection for sugary sweets and starchy foods when he claimed that ‘the love of muck, and the sweet-tooth of many who clog themselves with toffee, jam, cake, ice-cream, nauseous chip-potatoes, fried fish, nuts, and other indigestible matter, do a great deal of injury to the health of body and mind.’ Instead, people should be eating wholemeal bread and plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Such sound advice resonates today and indeed modern ideas about nutrition were already circulating well over a century ago, and yet some truly bizarre dieting fads were yet to emerge. Rumours of another technique in the early 1900s concerned the ‘Tapeworm Diet’ by which, in theory, the dieter swallowed a tapeworm that would live in the stomach as a parasite, consuming a proportion of his/her food. While vintage advertisements do survive, there is little firm evidence of the use of tapeworms, although urban legend has it that the renowned opera singer Maria Callas used this repellent method in the 1950s to achieve her substantial and much-publicised weight loss.

During the 1910s as dancing and sports advanced, the desire for a more slender and supple body developed, aided by new elastic corsetry, vigorous floor exercises and popularity of effervescent ‘weight loss’ pills. By the 1920s a minimalist, linear art deco aesthetic line was firmly established, high fashion demanding a wiry, boyish ‘garcon’ look that denied natural feminine curves. However, some women struggled to attain the idealised lithe, youthful image, continuing to use questionable medicines and pills that claimed to banish superfluous flesh. Among the many quack products trialled by those determined to shed pounds was the strange ‘reducing soap’ that promised to ‘wash away fat and years of age’. It was also no coincidence that smoking was becoming highly fashionable during the 1920s, with many cigarette companies actively publicising the health benefits of their products. In 1929 one advert proclaimed: ‘Light a Lucky and you’ll never miss sweets that make you fat.’

A cult of health and fitness developed during the 1930s, as the great outdoors beckoned with lashings of fresh air, sunshine and physical exercise. However, extreme fads including periods of starvation were fashionable, while the grapefruit diet first made its appearance, an eating programme advocating protein- and fat-rich foods alongside the grapefruits that would miraculously burn unwanted fat, producing the perfect streamlined body.

Some diets devised years ago such as minimising intake of sugary, starchy and fatty foods remain a core element of current thinking, yet there will always be crash diets and other novel approaches aimed at those seeking assistance. Perhaps as Covid and Brexit shape our changing world, we will become accustomed to taking more regular outdoor exercise and eating more nutritious locally produced foods. Here’s to a healthy year in 2021!

For the full text of Banting’s Letter on Corpulence, see the Histories newsletter for 15 January 2021, gethistories.com