By Tess Thompson
It is not surprising that people prefer crash diets over exercise in their quest for weight reduction. It is a natural human tendency to first look for an easy way out even if it is risky. It is probably because of this human trait that fad diets, crash diets and weight loss supplements score over natural weight loss remedies that recommend exercise and yoga.
Obesity and diets are not a recent phenomenon and have been around for a long time. Although it is difficult to imagine people working ten times harder than the modern man and still putting on excess fat, the reality is that people did manage to do exactly that even then.
People have gone to ridiculous limits to get rid of excess fat at all times. People have tried sedation and deliberate passing out by drinking only alcohol to avoid eating. England’s William the Conqueror may be excused for recourse to an alcohol diet due to evident reasons of ignorance but can the same be said about Elvis Presley who got himself sedated for two weeks and fed with a ‘special’ liquid diet?
The history of diets or crash diets, whichever way one looks at them, is extremely interesting. The Romans were apparently as fond of eating as they were conscious of their weight. They chose vomiting as an easy method of getting rid of food before it was digested and turned to fat.
In the 1820s, a Presbyterian minister came up with the Graham Diet, (obviously named after him) which was bland. His contention was that spicy foods gave rise to lust and that sexual desire caused disease. He probably chose to ignore the rampant whoring that prisoners and sailors (both are used to eating bland foods regularly) are known for.
In the 1900s, Horace Fletcher suggested that foods be masticated (instead of chewed) to such an extent that they are converted to liquid. As fibrous foods resist such conversion, they were stuck off the list of allowed foods.
Over the years people have realized the negative effects of repeated vomiting. It can cause tooth decay, heart and kidney disease, osteoporosis and damage to the esophagus. Since the human body shuts down and consumed minimum energy when asleep, it is obvious that one cannot lose weight by sleeping or passing out. Though chewing food properly before it is swallowed is a good idea, eliminating fiber from the diet can cause alimentary canal problems. Spicy foods may or not provoke sexual desire, but bland food can only motivate you to banish food completely.
Despite this, a vast majority of the population is still enamored by crash diets that pay scant regard to general health. To add to an unhealthy trend, proponents of crash diets develop new theories that are fairly unacceptable to standard theories of nutrition, energy and health.
