It is in todays quick diets world hard to imagine there once was a time when people did not diet. There really wasn't a word called diet never mind the thousands of diet plans available now.
The official definition of the word diet means "those things that are customarily eaten". However when we talk or rather obsess about diets today we are describing a food regime which will hopefully change our weight.
I mean lets have a quick look at some statistics so show you how the use of the word has really changed. In 1993 Americans were spending approximately 30 billion dollars on books and diet related products. Well today we spend so much more and a lot of that goes on quick diets that don't and will never work.
Lets have a quick look at dieting stories from a bygone age and see how they compare to our modern day diets.
The Liquid Diet....
In 1087 William The Conqueror developed an interesting alcohol only diet. He was so overweight he couldn't get on his horse so he took to his bed, refused all food and just drank copious amounts of alcohol all day. No record as to how it went!!
It probably seems amazing in this diet orientated world we live in now that it has only been recently that we started to work out the relation between food and weight. I guess we were all too busy trying to survive. People realised that food was important because if they didn't consume enough of it they would waste away but they didn't get the concept that if they were overweight they needed to reduce their intake.
Years ago people just ate what they could basically get their hands on. They would quite often just eat what they grew or could scavenge. They had absolutely no idea whether or not the food was healthy.
Although as a human race we were not remotely interested in nutrition we did not eat refined foods. Well there weren't any.
Once food did become available to all we really did start to take an interest in what we were eating and why. At one point it was even seen as sinful to eat too much.
Our bodies have always had the ability to store fat but it has only been in the last couple of hundred years that there has been an excess of food. Before that the majority of people were just trying to survive. Diets and weight loss plans really only started to become apparent in the 1800's.
The official definition of the word diet means "those things that are customarily eaten". However when we talk or rather obsess about diets today we are describing a food regime which will hopefully change our weight.
I mean lets have a quick look at some statistics so show you how the use of the word has really changed. In 1993 Americans were spending approximately 30 billion dollars on books and diet related products. Well today we spend so much more and a lot of that goes on quick diets that don't and will never work.
Lets have a quick look at dieting stories from a bygone age and see how they compare to our modern day diets.
The Liquid Diet....
In 1087 William The Conqueror developed an interesting alcohol only diet. He was so overweight he couldn't get on his horse so he took to his bed, refused all food and just drank copious amounts of alcohol all day. No record as to how it went!!
It probably seems amazing in this diet orientated world we live in now that it has only been recently that we started to work out the relation between food and weight. I guess we were all too busy trying to survive. People realised that food was important because if they didn't consume enough of it they would waste away but they didn't get the concept that if they were overweight they needed to reduce their intake.
Years ago people just ate what they could basically get their hands on. They would quite often just eat what they grew or could scavenge. They had absolutely no idea whether or not the food was healthy.
Although as a human race we were not remotely interested in nutrition we did not eat refined foods. Well there weren't any.
Once food did become available to all we really did start to take an interest in what we were eating and why. At one point it was even seen as sinful to eat too much.
Our bodies have always had the ability to store fat but it has only been in the last couple of hundred years that there has been an excess of food. Before that the majority of people were just trying to survive. Diets and weight loss plans really only started to become apparent in the 1800's.
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