January 8, 2026 • 44 mins
As the Western world embarks on 2026, Ben, Max and Noel welcome everyone's New Year's resolutions. (Here's hoping that gym schedule continues through February!) In celebration of a "New Year, New Me" mentality, the boys return to the Ridiculous History of Fad Diets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. It is twenty twenty six. We're
back in our very studios, back from some travels, and
that's our super producer mister Max Williams with a lackluster
whoo whoo. Twenty six Baby, New Year, New you question,
(00:50):
is it a leaper Come on? Man told you that? No?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Is it a I do know I I have nothing
to say or weigh in, no pun intended for today's
topic about leap year.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It is out of my per view entirely. All right,
is it? No? It's not a leap year? Okay? Cool? Good?
Thank god. I mean, if we're guessing we have a
pretty good chance of going with not a leap yer, fitty.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Shot, I should bet on polymarket on whether or not
it is a leap here is there is there a
market for that?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I am Ben Bolden. That's mister Noel Brown. Hello, you
know no, there feels some like there's something appropriate for
opening twenty twenty six with fad diets because this is
the time of year when a lot of people, for
better worse, say they're going to make some big life changes,
some resolutions, maybe eat a little better, maybe go to
(01:43):
the gym more often, et cetera, et cetera, or at
least drink more water. That's an easy one. That's a
big one. Man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I successfully implemented that little health tweak about midway through
twenty twenty five, and boy o boy, if you're looking
to lose weight, I was told that being heavily hydrated
is a big factor in that, and it didn't really
make sense or read for me, But it turns out
it really is true. Just having that water bottle and
drinking it instead of like soda or even like soda, water,
(02:13):
which I was a huge fan of, has really made
a huge difference in the way I feel.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
As soon as they'll start talking about water, both Ben
and I started drinking water.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's huge to drink water. One pro tip, folks, Often
if you're struggling with feeling like you're overeating over indulging
in the culinary arts, remember that often when you feel hungry,
it's your body just telling you you're dehydrated.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Because there's water in food, and if you take care
of that aspect of it with actual water, then you
might feel a little less peckish.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We know for a fact that we owe for a
fact that, yes, technically there is a threshold where a
person can drink too much water, but it's pretty hard
to get there to achieve. Yeah, yeah, you can't really
do it by accident. Let's just put it right. You
really have to go for it. Also, you cannot live
on water alone, at least not for a long time.
(03:10):
What about vitamin water? Nope? Also not. Don't believe fifty
he's just trying to make a buck. Don't believe that
the fifties drop.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That guy's having a bit of a moment, isn't he
Absolutely Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Have you seen that diddy doc? Yes, And he is
just a non parallel hater for better or worse, and
he's good at it. He doesn't affect his craft. You
could save fifties a fad, right, or fifties hating is
a fad.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
He certainly hasn't had a hit in a hot minute.
But he's been famous for other things, right, very much.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
So, And one being vitamin water, the other one being
hilariously spiteful and petty, like buy all the tickets for
your concert so no one goes was that job rule.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I think that was job rule. Where was jaw rule
in all of this is what we are asking. But
that is such a what a good troll, and he
apparently got a real good deal on him. He said
they were on a groupon, which is already just him
putting that out there is the jarals dikets. They're like
discount ben diketts, and he just bought up a lot
of them.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That's just the twist of the knife. On to our episode.
We know since humans began human ing that people were
trying to figure out the science of food, what kind
of regimen of nutrition is going to be best for
(04:34):
your health, best for your longevity, et cetera. And this
leads us to our continuing exploration of fad diets. So
do check out the first one and be aware this
is round two because there are just so many fad
diets for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
From our dear friend and research associate Wren. And you know,
since you mentioned human ing, it's one of those things
where like you get past the point of just pure
survival and sustenance and just trying to live, then you
start really drilling down into the minutia of like things,
whether it be delicious flavors or specific regimens that lead
(05:13):
to certain results, and with that pursuit you get some quackery.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Absolutely. You know, first, let's define a fad diet. A
fad diet, according to Frontiers and Nutrition, is a popular
dietary pattern that's often sold as a quick fix for obesity.
This is where you see a lot of the quackery
we're mentioning, because these diets get marketed with very specific
(05:40):
claims that often don't really measure up scientifically, like the
facts are not there to support this with reality.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, and no one putting forth any of these diets
would qualify or classify them as fad because if that
inherently is something that is a flash in the pan
that has a moment and then disappears, that is the
very nature of a fad. So it's almost like no
one would call their religion a cult necessarily.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's a designation of let's just say less than quality. Yeah, Yeah,
it's a The term fad diet is a pejorative and
it's often applied in retrospect. In our Yeah, in our
first episode we talked about stuff like tapeworm supplements, rubber underwear,
and then you know, methamphetamine, which used to have a lot,
(06:29):
a lot less of a bad reputation when it first
hit the scene, oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
As you mentioned that quote from Frontier's nutrition, they specifically
refer to things that defy the basic principles of biochemistry
and nutritional adequacy.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I just like the way they put that there.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So the collective knowledge that we as a species have
of nutritional science has of course grown, and we are
talking about a lot of stuff from yesteryear where the
science says, of course, outpaced many of these potentially effective
regimes you know, of nutrition. So let's just throw that
out there right now. We're not trying to poop on
(07:07):
history too much.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And this is also not to be taken as medical advice. People.
Please check with a doctor, check with the nutritionist, go
check with a podcaster your health. It barely wants you
to take any of us as historical advice, right. Yeah.
So now we see that as society learns more about
(07:28):
the human body and more about nutrition, a lot of
what we still call fad diets are evolving in step
with that. Stuff like keto, paleo, whole thirty and so on.
They're less extreme than you know, poisoning yourself with tapeworms.
But but the night Right and seventy No.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You swallow it. You swallow the tapeworm and then it
comes out of your body.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's still poisoning.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's not good introducing a parasite into your digestive tract.
And you know, Ren points out that a lot of
these things run in cycles, and interestingly enough, you mentioned
a body positivity earlier. We are kind of in another
sort of skinny chic cycle right now, and largely that
(08:14):
has been pushed forth by the availability of a lot
of these drugs that are being used for weight loss.
And I have used these and had some great results personally,
paired with diet and exercise. I think they can be
a great tool. But it does seem like it's sort
of replaced a lot of like public figures who have
now lost a ton of weight. It seems like body
(08:35):
positivity has kind of gone out the window now in
a way because of that stuff, because of the golp ones.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And again no ding have used them myself.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I just think culturally we're starting to see a swing
back to the nineties heroin chic kind of silhouettes, and
maybe some of that sort of fad diet era.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Stuff, and the cycle will inevitably swing back again. One
thing that I'm a huge fan of, and again this
is not medical advice, is something called intermittent fasting. It's
not just what you eat, but it's when you eat
that matters. And I did not know until we're diving
into the research of this, so that back in the
(09:13):
nineteen seventies there was an extreme version of this, or
a related version of this, the Scarsdale diet, starving on purpose.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Not to be confused with the scars Guard diet, which
is being devilishly attractive from a dynasty of excellent actors.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And also not to be confused with the Christian Bale
Machinist diet, which everyone should ever try. I know.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
There was another crazy one, Ryan Gosling. Apparently this is
so funny, And then we'll get right back on track.
He got a role in that movie The Lovely Bones,
and then just unilaterally, without asking anybody involved in the production,
decide that his character was supposed to be pudgy. So
before he even showed up the set, he just binged
on like melted bra ice cream and gained a bunch
(10:02):
of weight, and then turned up to set and.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
The director was like, what the hell this is? You're
out of here, and he got fired. I just gotta
jump in here.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
In the Fat Mac season of Always Sonny as well,
Yes I'm.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Gonna be fat, we shall get fat. No we're not
doing that. All right, Well I'm getting fat.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
And I gotta say when I was heavier on the
heavier side, I thought that made me feel kind of good.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It was like, Okay, this is Max showing a little
body positivity.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And then of course he gets crazy ripped later in
the series as well. And this brings us back to
the Scarsdale diet. So what's created by a cardiologist named
Herman Tarnower in nineteen seventy eight, not Herman Scarsdale. Interesting,
go on, and here's the pitch. If you follow the
(10:48):
Scarsdale Diet, says Herman, you can lose twenty pounds in
two weeks as long as you adhere strictly to the
plan from his book, The Complete Scarrsdale Medical Diet. Originally
Scarsdale bit coming from let's see, originally he is a
lake we said, he's a cardiologist. So he's aiming to
(11:11):
help people who have cardiovascular issues, and it's really it's
all about caloric restriction.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
It does turn out by them. Sorry, I just had
to throw this out because it was making me crazy.
It's named after Scarsdale, New York, which was a wealthy
suburb of New York where doctor Herman Tarnauer found his practice.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And the idea then is that we're attaching this diet
to celebrity, right to success. It's aspirational. But going back
to the caloric restriction thing, his pitch is this eat
one thousand calories or less per day and avoid the
following butter, pasta, beans, lentils, potatoes, sugar, salad, dressing, and alcohol.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well and contained in a lot of these fad diets
are little nuggets of truth, little nuggets of things that
we could all probably think about, like limiting cars, et cetera,
being a little more conscious about consuming alcohol, for example,
maybe not consuming quite as much oily or fatty foods.
But then we also hear opposite perspectives often that there's
(12:13):
the good fat and all of that, which makes all
lot of this stuff really tough to suss out, the
the you know, the truth of But the red flag
here for me, Ben, I think for you too, is
that one thousand calories a day. I mean, we know
that two thousand calories a day is what's recommended. This
seems like quite a restriction and not very sustainable.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
This is a tough one. I was also surprised to
see beans on the list. Beans they're the magical fruit.
It's it's so weird, all right. If you look at
the way he schedules this out, then you'll see that
there are no breakfasts, there are no snacks, there are
no desserts. We have an example from a typical Thursday
on the Scarsdale Diet.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
We've got some two egg breakfasts any style, any style.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
This is lunch.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Hey, oh that's lunch. Okay, well I'm gonna call it
breakfast because the eggs for lunch. That's crazy talk, Isn't
it funny?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Though?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
How we associate certain foods with breakfasts and like it's
this weird mental block. Eating breakfast for lunch is so bizarre.
But in other countries, yeah, it doesn't apply in other countries.
No fun fact, fu is a breakfast food in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And I will absolutely make a breakfast ramen sometimes or
like something like a noodlely, you know, ramen with an
egg on top. How do you like your eggs? By
the way, Ben poached, poached is what I was gonna say.
It's clearly the best way, texture wise, great combo. So
for lunch on a Thursday, you're gonna have two eggs
any style, but we're gonna say poached, but no fat
(13:39):
used in the cooking.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Hmm, how are you gonna do that? I guess a
little bit of oil, and isn't oil.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Fatty though oil is very fatty. Now you're gonna end
up with about an entire egg stuck.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
To the pan, a real gnarly egg. And this was
before the days of hexclad. You know, we got low
fat cottage cheese, which is alone's always you could poach
an egg without fat, of course you could, but this
says any style, so clearly poached would be the preferred method.
You do poach an egg without fat, that's would be
the way to do it. You kind of boil it
and you got to get the swirl going and then
scoop it out so you don't break it.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It's a little tough to get right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Low fat cottage cheese, really, I grew something about cottage
es just gives me the willies.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Zucchini or string bean or sliced or stewed tomatoes. One
slice of protein bread. Okay, let's hold on, let's please
do Yeah? Is that like neutral loaf what we're talking here?
That stuck out to me when I saw protein bread? Essentially,
it's just it's just enriched bread. It has higher amounts
of protein, usually from like Pea protein Pea or Way
(14:42):
proteinage Way.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And then if you wish, you can have yourself a
little coffee or tea, but no.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Milk in it. No milk eley, no no good. Moving
on to dinner, you want to give us our dinner
options for the evening. So you've been a good kid,
you have not had any you skip to breakfast. It's
time to ball out with a Scarsdale dinner. You can roast,
broil or barbecue chicken all you want, and you have
(15:10):
to get rid of the best part, the skin invisible
fat before you eat it. You can have all the spinach,
green peppers, and string beans you want, even though you
ate string beans for lunch earlier. You can finish off
with some coffee or some tea.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
You know you know again this veggie. These veggie options
make a lot of sense. You can eat your body
weight in spinach and veggies and be in a good place.
So in nineteen eighty Tarnhauer was sadly shot. That was
a twist by his girlfriend, Jean Harris, who was the
headmistress of an illustrious girls school. They met later in
(15:47):
life as forty somethings, well actually fifty something for tarnaw
Er forty three for Harris. They never married, but they
lived together for quite some time, and after fourteen years
of that hour he was a bad boy and he
went for a younger woman, a nurse who was working
in his office.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
The whatever the self own here is pretty stunning. I
also want to go back and note that not only
can you eat your body weight in spinach, but you
can buy your body weight in spinach and it cooks
down to about a cup cooks. Don I just had
away more than you think. Yeah, you always need more
than you think. And our guy got into much more
(16:32):
trouble than he thought with his philandering. His partner, Gene Harris,
found the other woman's curlers and nightgown in their home.
Just not good opsite sloppy, no, sir. So this.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Caused Sure to fly into a raid, it would seem,
and she shot him, and it made the news, made headlines,
this trial that she was put on. There was support
for her from the feminist community, citing a history of
emotional abuse and pointing to this outlandish act as her
(17:20):
being pushed beyond the limits that a woman could be pushed.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right, And then you had the other side, where people
were saying from the matmosphere, yeah, was this innocent man,
not really, because he was philandering, but he should not
have been murdered for it. Either way, it's so right.
Wherever people found themselves on the spectrum, they were still
captivated by Harris. Because she was an affluent professional, She
(17:49):
was polished with pearls, she was from a high socioeconomic standing,
and she didn't fit the usual stereotypes of a crazy,
violent woman who was scorn. People were more and more
interested in her. Ultimately, she does get convicted of second
degree murder. She only serves twelve years in prison. You know,
(18:10):
keep in mind they have been together for fourteen years.
She's older. He was killed, Yeah, he was fatally shot. Yes, Yes,
I'm sorry, it was a murder. Trial.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And weirdly enough, if you can imagine, this was kind
of great publicity for the Scarsdale Diet. I guess any
publicity is good publicity, as they say, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And this leads to this leads to another controversy right now,
the Scarsdale Medical Diet, the book itself is no longer
in print because despite various differences in findings in philosophy,
experts now agree it is dangerous for adults, most of
them to consume under twelve hundred calories per day. And
(18:55):
it's also incredibly difficult to action stick to that meal
regimen for any long amount of time. Correct.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
And I don't know if it's possible to find these,
but I would be curious to check them out. This
whole scandal of the shooting in this you know, torrid
affair was made into two count them made for TV movies.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Maybe while you pull these up, you can switch out
your usual popcorn snack for the next diet on our
menu today, eggs and Wine diet.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Boy And as our wonderful researcher REND headlined this section,
the flirty and the farty the eggs and Wine Diet,
It's exactly what it sounds like. Ben for three days.
Dieters were meant to consume only eggs and wine. Not
clear whether it's red or white. Imagine it's red because
(19:52):
it's always, you know, being discussed as something that's like
good for your health and your heart. For both breakfast
and lunch, and for dinner they could have a nice
five ounce steak with wine pour it on top, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah, so you're basically drinking at minimum a bottle of
wine a day. I didn't diet breakfast wine. This makes me.
This reminds me of one of my favorite My favorite
jokes about our fair city of Metropolis are excellent public
radio service. For a long time, there was a show
(20:26):
called two Cups and Two Cups had just this amazing
local celebrity and journalist Lewis Reixes, And I always wondered,
is it two cups of coffee? What if it was
like two cups of wine? And Dad explains why she
was so chill in the morning.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
She was very chill. She retired recently. Yes, this is
an absolute legend. She even did some remember when she
did those adult swim bumpers back in the day. Yeah,
absolute legend.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
I remember, I remember when Lewis Reix's for a little
while years back. She did the traffic and it was
just so strange to hear her described car accident.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
She had a very has a very distinct voice. I
believe due to some sort of respiratory condition.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
She has a tough time kind of catching her breath,
but it leads to this excellent, relaxing cadence in the
way she speaks. Asmr all day big Lois Reis's fans
and there were people who were big fans of the
eggs wine diet. The idea rusher wine moms. Yeah. The
(21:33):
idea was apparently that the regular diet by itself was boring.
Just eat eggs and then you get a little steak
at the end of the day, So the alcohol makes
the menu more palatable. I don't know about that. That
seems a little little like a slippery slope.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I do love an egg and they are excellent sources
of protein, and I've been trying to consume more eggs lately,
but I couldn't live on egg It didn't, however, promise
major weight loss, only about five.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Pounds but in three days. So this was super attractive
for folks who were looking to shed a little bit
of weight before say a wedding or a holiday or
like a beach getaway or something like that. The diet
was originally debuted in nineteen sixty two in the best
selling book Sex and the Single Girl, The Unmarried Woman's
(22:27):
Guide to Men, which offered dating advice, advice on things
like sexual friendships, affairs, work, life balance, money stuff, you know, style, eating,
and of course drinking. Yeah, this is very much the
kind of thing you would read in later magazines like
(22:48):
Cosmo or Vogue. In fact, got this got another cyclical
splurge of popularity fifteen years after its first publication because
it's re published in the Vogue Body and Beauty Book
in nineteen seventy seven. And the idea is, whatever your age,
(23:08):
you can stay cute and petite and sexually attractive as
red ads, even if you're drunk off your ass by
eleven am and your fart smell of sulfur. Gotta love it.
Moving on to the eighties, seems like a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
There was a trend of a lot of these diets
being named after the locations in which were found, things
like the South Beach Diet, the Scarsdale Diet, of course,
and the Beverly Hills Diet, which we've done episodes in
the past about the magic pineapple, how it was a
status symbol. You had to rent a pineapple, or you
could rent a pineapple, and it was emblazoned and all
(23:42):
kinds of metal work and things as a sign of opulence.
So it makes sense that this was a feature of
the Beverly Hills Diet, of the Beverly Hills being a
place known for its opulence.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
This was first published in nineteen eighty one by Judy Masel. Yeah. Absolutely,
Unlike our pal her Masl didn't have a background in
medicine or nutrition. She did have a lot of moxy though,
and her lack of professional qualifications would not stop her
from creating what La Times calls a theory about food
(24:16):
enzymes and the digestive system that she formulated into a
complicated weight reducing plan. She did this because a small,
still voice inside her told her to leave the freeway
and buy cashews in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Okay, it's a very specific internal voice. I don't know
how did this relate to her ultimate dreams of movie stardom?
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, she I think, like so many other people in
the area, she was trying to get trying to become famous,
trying to work in entertainment and Hollywood, and like a
lot of people, unfortunately, she struggled with her own body
(25:04):
image throughout her life. At the age of nine, she
went to her first appointment with what was called a
diet doctor, and she said her struggle to in her mind,
her struggle to maintain or control her weight, was the
reason for her failure to really break through as an actor.
And that's just a terrible way to feel about yourself.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, no acting or no acting, it's not a good
way to feel. And as we know and discussed in
the last Fad Diets episode, a lot of these quote
unquote diet doctors of the time, pretty sure, well into
the nineties, may even still be somewhere around.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
We're just giving people amphetamines. Oh one hundred percent. Yeah,
And luckily Masl's plan is a little bit less heavy
on amphetamines. But she is really good at marketing. Again,
these diets are aspirational. I want to do what the
stars are doing. What are the successful people eating? How
can I look like one of them? So her diet
(26:02):
plan gets really successful because it gets celebrity supporters Linda
Gray from the soap opera Dallas. The first Lady of
California at the time, Maria Shriver Inglebert Humperdink. I love
that name. It's just so weird. Did you know that's
not his real name, that's his stage name that he
chose that he thought that was a good idea.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Ingolbert Humperdink was a classical composer who wrote the opera
Henzel and Gretel. So I think he was just borrowing
it from that, because it is like an amazingly absurd name,
sort of like our pal Kurt Vile borrowed his stage name,
I believe from the weirdo composer as well the threepenny opera.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Nice. And as as this diet, the Pineapple diet, we're
getting to as it becomes more and more popular with
the swells and the to do's, Mazel does make it
to the spotlight. She gets featured on talk shows. They're
broadcast around the world to promote her diet plant, the
(27:02):
Beverly Hills Diet. If you follow it, they say, in
just fifteen days you could lose thirty five pounds. Nope.
Hearing that number and that amount of time makes me
really worried for the person on this diet. Oh.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Absolutely, that's just it doesn't seem very safe. You know,
typically you'd lose that amount of weight in like, you know.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
A year. Yeah, I mean, according to masl it's not
just the food that you eat, it's the order in
which that food is consumed. You can only eat fruit
during breakfast on an empty stomach, and then once you
ate lean proteins, you could no longer eat fruit for
(27:44):
the rest of the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
These kind of specific order of operations things that are
real red flag y. Yeah, agree, especially from someone without
a science back.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Uh, it is a fruit heavy diet, but which has
a lot of sugar in it. It has a lot
of sugar. But here's the thing you might hear lean protein. Okay,
so if that's my switch, I'll just figure out when
I want to eat the lean protein and then no
more fruit for a day. Unfortunately, you are supposed to
eat nothing but fruit for the first ten days on
(28:18):
the fifteen day diet, so no protein. Yeah, so on
day eleven you can have some protein a little bit
of carb as a treat, and that's the second phase
of the plan. She loved pineapples, she thought fruit enzymes,
if you consume them first, they made your digestive tract
better at breaking down other foods later.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, like a lot of the tenets of these fad diets,
that's a myth that has since been discredited by actual
doctors and scientists. So as a little aside, all of
those fruits, as you can imagine, were not particularly great
for other aspects of digestion aka pooping.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, us, you're super into pooping. You would be disappointed
to learn that all this consumption can lead to diarrhea.
Now on the other side, this diet plan, it's still
very Beverly Hills. They're not saying you can't have alcohol,
but they are saying you have to have some rules.
(29:21):
Beer or hard spirits, they have to be consumed with carbohydrates.
You can only have red and white wine with fruit.
And champagne per masal is neutral. It can be consumed anytime.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
It's almost like there's a certain like the humor's aspect
to this, Yes, in the champagne is the neutral humor
that is so Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, yeah, old Hollywood, very Gatsby esque, you know, champagne. Yeah,
And someone's like, dear Lord Zelda it's nine to thirty
in the morning. No, it's okay. Champagne isn't the champagne.
It's neutral.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
It could be consumed with any of these outline food
groups that Masls came up with. So you know, of course,
professional nutritionists were a little skeptical, dare we say wary
of Mezel's diet plan because they believed that it was
quack science.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah. Yeah, And Masil basically said, I hear you, and
then went on to do whatever she wished. And yet
here I go on there another talk show. To spread
the good word. She went to publish several war books
offering nutritional advice, all inspired by that disembodied voice that
(30:39):
told her to chase some cashowes. I think I maybe
interrupted you when you brought that up in and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
The voice did tell her to get the cashoes, at
which point she pulled over to a health food store, right,
and then found some book that I believe.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Sparked the idea of this whole enterprise. Yeah, one hundred percent.
I mean, you got to take the inspiration where you
find it, right.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Listen to all the voices as listen to them, single one.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
We've got a great episode on intuition coming up for
stuff that'll want you to know, folks, we can't wait
for you to tune in for that one. This next one.
Full disclosure. I have members of my family who tried
out the fad diet known as slim Fast. I think
(31:28):
we all probably did. It was absolutely huge.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
The little pre made Sheiks Thompson Medical Company founded this
enterprise in the late seventies. Slim Fast hit a massive
commercial stride in the eighties and would continue on to
dominate the industry into the millennium. So by two thousand,
the year two thousand, slim Fast generated over one billion
(31:54):
dollars in global sales, which would look a little closer
to two billion if you did the old inflation calculator.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Bee boopo. Yeah, I mean this is serious money. At first.
What you're buying a supplement kind of it's a powder
sick a packet and you're supposed to mix it with milk.
You can still find slim fast these days. They'll have
all these candy flavors, you know, like vapes or pop tarts.
(32:22):
That's a red flag right there too.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yes, yeah, let's get let's let's lose weight by drinking
milk shakes just so, I mean, we're the flavors to
kind of.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
They they are flags like coffee House, Caramel Latte, triple
Berry vanilla.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah yeah, but it was not even ingredient that was
meant to promote weight loss, isn't it Essentially just like
a protein shake, it's meant to be a food replacement,
and it's a way of limiting your calories by knowing
exactly what you're consuming, you know, in the form of
this this shake or this powder.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Right, Yeah, yeah, it's it's very dense with vitamins and minerals,
but it's it's trying to concentrate all the good stuff
and eliminate the calories that usually come along with a
full meal. It also reminds me of something funny that
happened at our job years and years back. We started
(33:22):
getting shipments of something called fuel sponsor for let's not
forget about soilin Oh yeah, soilent as well. That was
a moment for us because folks, technically the FCC requires
us to actually try out any product if we're going
to endorse it on the air, which is a good
law to have, And so we ended up drinking fuel
(33:46):
and soilent. It wasn't that mass people. No, No, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
But it's a really good thing to bring up in
because it very much is a modern equivalent of this
exact bad diet. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken
soil intent Chuel, they do have more nutrients in them.
They've got other vitamin content and.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Proteins, etc.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
So there's something to it if that's the route you
want to go and you use it responsibly. But they
did initially, you know, truck this product out as a
get thin quick scheme, right, and their first try at
it was in the form of a cherry red and
this really threw me for a loop and.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Predigested liquid protein.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It makes me think of the way the mama bird
like choose up food and spits it into the baby
bird's mouth.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yuck.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
This came out in nineteen seventy seven and it was
quickly recalled, if you can imagine, for containing bacterial contamination.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
So they had to do a little bit of a pivot. Yeah,
you know, not every first at bat is going to
be a home run. But thankfully they had already been
working around the clock at their lab. They had invented
a chocolate protein powder. And this was not a huge
revolutionary idea at this point in the seventies, so they
(35:04):
didn't invest too much into the marketing for this thing
that would become called slim fast in protein powder. The
reason it's not revolutionary per se is because protein powder
had first been commercialized and popularized way back in the
nineteen fifties by a guy named Irvin Johnson who ran
(35:26):
a gym in health studio in Chicago one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
It was initially, you know, as it is often today,
used as a supplement for bodybuilders to bulk up.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah. Yeah, And the demand for the product then starts.
It starts in a specialized way with a pretty niche demographic,
but Johnson's competitors start catering to the same audience. They're
kind of trying to eat his bodybuilder lunch. The Thompson
Medical Company, the originators of slim Fast, they say, Okay,
(35:58):
there are a lot of protein powder is on the market.
We have to do a serious rebrand. Uh, So we've
got to pivot. What if we sold this protein powder
not to bodybuilders, not to the good folks reading Ironman magazine,
but what if we sold it to regular people? What
if we specifically targeted women and we said, this is
(36:21):
not a quick fix to get you know, to up
your your body mass and your your muscle mass. This
is a way for you to be healthy and maybe
lose some weight to get slim fasts. Yes, just like
mattress firm is a pusful.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
So if I can jump in here real quick, I
want to just make sure that everyone knows that this
is Irvin Johnson with an.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I, not E, who is or E A R V
I N.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Johnson, who is also more commonly known as Magic Johnson.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Great max with the facts in phona and peaceful in knowledge.
It's just for you right now, the fact indeed there
it is well done, Happy twenty twenty six. So this
(37:16):
this is not a pretty great idea. But then they
run into a catch. It's something called the Cambridge diet.
To the point to get about diets being named after places,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
The Cambridge diet was developed by a doctor named Alan Howard.
He was a professor at Cambridge University. That's the one,
the Cambridge University. This diet plan was pretty straightforward. You'd
drink three of these Cambridge shakes a day instead of
eating meals meal replacement. And you know, they did contain
some of the valuable nutrients that our bodies need, vitamins
(37:48):
and minerals, et cetera, but the total daily caloric content
cocked it in an estimated three hundred and thirty calories,
which is way too low, like starvation territory, right.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
It's the epitome of feeling like you're eating but not
actually eating. So much so that the FDA stepped forward
and warned the public about the Cambridge diet. And when
that happened, slim fast weedling its fingers, steepling them like
Monty Byrn. Is it a swoop? Yeah, they saw it,
(38:21):
They saw the position, they took the advantage, and they
popped through the marketplace and they started advertising directly against
the Cambridge Diet with a slogan that would have made
Don Draper very proud. A shake for breakfast, a shake
for lunch, then a sensible dinner. That's the slogan they adopted. Yeah,
(38:42):
same model, just packaged a little differently.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Same model as the Cambridge Diet in the way the
Thompson Company packaged it and distanced itself from this FDA
scrutiny on Cambridge diet was by suggesting that its consumers
should not rely solely on their product for assustenance, that
sensible dinner recommendation, and then it's outside of the purview
of their slop that they're feeding you exactly. Yeah, that
(39:06):
sounds mean, it's probably fine for some people. Just it
is kind of gross and it's I don't like the
idea of subsisting on shakes. There is a better way,
fruits and vegetables, just eating a well balanced diet.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
All of this stuff, it just seems so missing the point.
You know, people will do anything but exercise. Man, that's
part of it. So let me just have a magic
coupo something not change my shoot behavior. Yeah, but okay,
let's fast forwards the nineteen nineties, slim Fast is still
(39:37):
very well known at the tippity top of the fat
diet pyramid. But by the late two thousands we see
the cycles shift once more, and now people are going
away from this pseudo medical diet philosophy and aesthetic and
they're going back to what we would call the ancestral
(39:59):
diet trends, like what are the cavemen eat? Why can't
I eat like a cave boy?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
The paleo all this, and the thing is man bodies
are different, like everybody is different, and some things work
well for some and not well for others. So it's
important to try different things and figure out, you know,
like Anthony Keatas for example, like of the red Hot
chili peppers. Recently, I saw a clip where he was
talking about how when he was dating a nutritionist at
(40:27):
some point in the past and she recommended that he
eat like wild meats, that he felt great and then
he had all this energy and that he was able
to build all this muscle and stuff. So I don't know,
maybe uh, Anthony Keta's wild meats was was the answer
that he needed. But it's also a lot of it's relative,
you know. I mean, I think the biggest takeaway is
just don't overdo it. Just try to be a little
(40:51):
bit sensible.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah. I would also say, folks, most importantly, at least
from my perspective, be kind to yourself. Don't let society
tell you that, don't let them foist expectations or requirements
on you. It's okay to be who you are, you know,
And that's something that I think we miss a lot
(41:13):
of times, not just in the entertainment world, but especially
in the age of ubiquitous social media. You can also
bet to your bottom dollar that there are going to
be more fad diets on the way because of what
they promise, right or what they imply. It's just it's
just too nice for it not to happen again, and
(41:34):
it's too profitable. And when you run into a fad
diet that seems too good to be true, history has
proven it probably is, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
And not to mention that we're in an era particularly
fraught with misinformation right now. You have a lot of
these folks that are pitching things like bone broths and
all of this kind of like doomsday.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Supplements and things like that, and they just.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
They don't have your best interest in heart, and it's
just important to do your own research and again figure
out what works best for you. But know that there
really isn't a magic bullet. And even if that those
z epic of it all, you know, seems like a
magic bullet, there are people that take that and they
don't do any exercise, and they don't change their diet,
and they kind of they are skinny, but they look
(42:21):
they don't. It's not I don't know, they just don't
look healthy. And I just think it's important to pair
any quote unquote magic bullet treatment with sensible behavior in
changing the way that you approach you know, eating and living.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
And then when you get off of the gop one,
unless there's serious behavior change, what we've seen so far,
even with the relatively new rollout of this, is that
the weight returns, you know.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So it is key to learn a little bit of
restraint and try to just you know, just get your
steps in. Just little things like that can make a
huge difference in your mental health and in your you know,
the way you look and the way you feel.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
So yeah, none, no preaching here, something at you on
or we could all just do meth Kitty kitty nobody.
That's not the great. That's not a great way to
start twenty twenty six. Fist full of Mommy's little helpers,
and thank you so much for starting your year with us, folks.
We're so happy that you're joining us. Big, big thanks
to our super producer mister Max Williams and Alex Williams
(43:25):
who composed this track.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Huge thanks again to our reach Asso Shit and pal
Ran for this excellent part two of fad diets to
kick off twenty twenty six with you ridiculous Historians. Also
a huge thanks to Chris Frasciotis and he's Jef Coates,
Kier and Spirit.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Big big thanks of course to Gary Dorsey also known
as Ingolbert Humperding. I don't know the name like that.
I guess see maybe why I had changed the name.
It was a little dull. Okay, yeah, Big things to
doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance A J. Bahamas Jacobs, the
Puzzler and a civil yet cold acknowledgment of Jonathan Strickland
(44:02):
aka the Quister to find how to Jonathan Man?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
How much spinach do you think doctor Lance has to
cook down to make a big spinach?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Oh? Man, it's so much. I think she owns its
land dedicated to growing spinach.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Crops, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance Landed.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Gentry the spinach Tycoon. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. It is twenty twenty six. We're
back in our very studios, back from some travels, and
that's our super producer mister Max Williams with a lackluster
whoo whoo. Twenty six Baby, New Year, New you question,
(00:50):
is it a leaper Come on? Man told you that? No?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Is it a I do know I I have nothing
to say or weigh in, no pun intended for today's
topic about leap year.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It is out of my per view entirely. All right,
is it? No? It's not a leap year? Okay? Cool? Good?
Thank god. I mean, if we're guessing we have a
pretty good chance of going with not a leap yer, fitty.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Shot, I should bet on polymarket on whether or not
it is a leap here is there is there a
market for that?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I am Ben Bolden. That's mister Noel Brown. Hello, you
know no, there feels some like there's something appropriate for
opening twenty twenty six with fad diets because this is
the time of year when a lot of people, for
better worse, say they're going to make some big life changes,
some resolutions, maybe eat a little better, maybe go to
(01:43):
the gym more often, et cetera, et cetera, or at
least drink more water. That's an easy one. That's a
big one. Man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I successfully implemented that little health tweak about midway through
twenty twenty five, and boy o boy, if you're looking
to lose weight, I was told that being heavily hydrated
is a big factor in that, and it didn't really
make sense or read for me, But it turns out
it really is true. Just having that water bottle and
drinking it instead of like soda or even like soda, water,
(02:13):
which I was a huge fan of, has really made
a huge difference in the way I feel.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
As soon as they'll start talking about water, both Ben
and I started drinking water.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's huge to drink water. One pro tip, folks, Often
if you're struggling with feeling like you're overeating over indulging
in the culinary arts, remember that often when you feel hungry,
it's your body just telling you you're dehydrated.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Because there's water in food, and if you take care
of that aspect of it with actual water, then you
might feel a little less peckish.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We know for a fact that we owe for a
fact that, yes, technically there is a threshold where a
person can drink too much water, but it's pretty hard
to get there to achieve. Yeah, yeah, you can't really
do it by accident. Let's just put it right. You
really have to go for it. Also, you cannot live
on water alone, at least not for a long time.
(03:10):
What about vitamin water? Nope? Also not. Don't believe fifty
he's just trying to make a buck. Don't believe that
the fifties drop.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That guy's having a bit of a moment, isn't he
Absolutely Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Have you seen that diddy doc? Yes, And he is
just a non parallel hater for better or worse, and
he's good at it. He doesn't affect his craft. You
could save fifties a fad, right, or fifties hating is
a fad.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
He certainly hasn't had a hit in a hot minute.
But he's been famous for other things, right, very much.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
So, And one being vitamin water, the other one being
hilariously spiteful and petty, like buy all the tickets for
your concert so no one goes was that job rule.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I think that was job rule. Where was jaw rule
in all of this is what we are asking. But
that is such a what a good troll, and he
apparently got a real good deal on him. He said
they were on a groupon, which is already just him
putting that out there is the jarals dikets. They're like
discount ben diketts, and he just bought up a lot
of them.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That's just the twist of the knife. On to our episode.
We know since humans began human ing that people were
trying to figure out the science of food, what kind
of regimen of nutrition is going to be best for
(04:34):
your health, best for your longevity, et cetera. And this
leads us to our continuing exploration of fad diets. So
do check out the first one and be aware this
is round two because there are just so many fad
diets for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
From our dear friend and research associate Wren. And you know,
since you mentioned human ing, it's one of those things
where like you get past the point of just pure
survival and sustenance and just trying to live, then you
start really drilling down into the minutia of like things,
whether it be delicious flavors or specific regimens that lead
(05:13):
to certain results, and with that pursuit you get some quackery.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Absolutely. You know, first, let's define a fad diet. A
fad diet, according to Frontiers and Nutrition, is a popular
dietary pattern that's often sold as a quick fix for obesity.
This is where you see a lot of the quackery
we're mentioning, because these diets get marketed with very specific
(05:40):
claims that often don't really measure up scientifically, like the
facts are not there to support this with reality.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, and no one putting forth any of these diets
would qualify or classify them as fad because if that
inherently is something that is a flash in the pan
that has a moment and then disappears, that is the
very nature of a fad. So it's almost like no
one would call their religion a cult necessarily.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's a designation of let's just say less than quality. Yeah, Yeah,
it's a The term fad diet is a pejorative and
it's often applied in retrospect. In our Yeah, in our
first episode we talked about stuff like tapeworm supplements, rubber underwear,
and then you know, methamphetamine, which used to have a lot,
(06:29):
a lot less of a bad reputation when it first
hit the scene, oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
As you mentioned that quote from Frontier's nutrition, they specifically
refer to things that defy the basic principles of biochemistry
and nutritional adequacy.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I just like the way they put that there.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So the collective knowledge that we as a species have
of nutritional science has of course grown, and we are
talking about a lot of stuff from yesteryear where the
science says, of course, outpaced many of these potentially effective
regimes you know, of nutrition. So let's just throw that
out there right now. We're not trying to poop on
(07:07):
history too much.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And this is also not to be taken as medical advice. People.
Please check with a doctor, check with the nutritionist, go
check with a podcaster your health. It barely wants you
to take any of us as historical advice, right. Yeah.
So now we see that as society learns more about
(07:28):
the human body and more about nutrition, a lot of
what we still call fad diets are evolving in step
with that. Stuff like keto, paleo, whole thirty and so on.
They're less extreme than you know, poisoning yourself with tapeworms.
But but the night Right and seventy No.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You swallow it. You swallow the tapeworm and then it
comes out of your body.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's still poisoning.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's not good introducing a parasite into your digestive tract.
And you know, Ren points out that a lot of
these things run in cycles, and interestingly enough, you mentioned
a body positivity earlier. We are kind of in another
sort of skinny chic cycle right now, and largely that
(08:14):
has been pushed forth by the availability of a lot
of these drugs that are being used for weight loss.
And I have used these and had some great results personally,
paired with diet and exercise. I think they can be
a great tool. But it does seem like it's sort
of replaced a lot of like public figures who have
now lost a ton of weight. It seems like body
(08:35):
positivity has kind of gone out the window now in
a way because of that stuff, because of the golp ones.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And again no ding have used them myself.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I just think culturally we're starting to see a swing
back to the nineties heroin chic kind of silhouettes, and
maybe some of that sort of fad diet era.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Stuff, and the cycle will inevitably swing back again. One
thing that I'm a huge fan of, and again this
is not medical advice, is something called intermittent fasting. It's
not just what you eat, but it's when you eat
that matters. And I did not know until we're diving
into the research of this, so that back in the
(09:13):
nineteen seventies there was an extreme version of this, or
a related version of this, the Scarsdale diet, starving on purpose.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Not to be confused with the scars Guard diet, which
is being devilishly attractive from a dynasty of excellent actors.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And also not to be confused with the Christian Bale
Machinist diet, which everyone should ever try. I know.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
There was another crazy one, Ryan Gosling. Apparently this is
so funny, And then we'll get right back on track.
He got a role in that movie The Lovely Bones,
and then just unilaterally, without asking anybody involved in the production,
decide that his character was supposed to be pudgy. So
before he even showed up the set, he just binged
on like melted bra ice cream and gained a bunch
(10:02):
of weight, and then turned up to set and.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
The director was like, what the hell this is? You're
out of here, and he got fired. I just gotta
jump in here.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
In the Fat Mac season of Always Sonny as well,
Yes I'm.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Gonna be fat, we shall get fat. No we're not
doing that. All right, Well I'm getting fat.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
And I gotta say when I was heavier on the
heavier side, I thought that made me feel kind of good.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It was like, Okay, this is Max showing a little
body positivity.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And then of course he gets crazy ripped later in
the series as well. And this brings us back to
the Scarsdale diet. So what's created by a cardiologist named
Herman Tarnower in nineteen seventy eight, not Herman Scarsdale. Interesting,
go on, and here's the pitch. If you follow the
(10:48):
Scarsdale Diet, says Herman, you can lose twenty pounds in
two weeks as long as you adhere strictly to the
plan from his book, The Complete Scarrsdale Medical Diet. Originally
Scarsdale bit coming from let's see, originally he is a
lake we said, he's a cardiologist. So he's aiming to
(11:11):
help people who have cardiovascular issues, and it's really it's
all about caloric restriction.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
It does turn out by them. Sorry, I just had
to throw this out because it was making me crazy.
It's named after Scarsdale, New York, which was a wealthy
suburb of New York where doctor Herman Tarnauer found his practice.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And the idea then is that we're attaching this diet
to celebrity, right to success. It's aspirational. But going back
to the caloric restriction thing, his pitch is this eat
one thousand calories or less per day and avoid the
following butter, pasta, beans, lentils, potatoes, sugar, salad, dressing, and alcohol.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well and contained in a lot of these fad diets
are little nuggets of truth, little nuggets of things that
we could all probably think about, like limiting cars, et cetera,
being a little more conscious about consuming alcohol, for example,
maybe not consuming quite as much oily or fatty foods.
But then we also hear opposite perspectives often that there's
(12:13):
the good fat and all of that, which makes all
lot of this stuff really tough to suss out, the
the you know, the truth of But the red flag
here for me, Ben, I think for you too, is
that one thousand calories a day. I mean, we know
that two thousand calories a day is what's recommended. This
seems like quite a restriction and not very sustainable.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
This is a tough one. I was also surprised to
see beans on the list. Beans they're the magical fruit.
It's it's so weird, all right. If you look at
the way he schedules this out, then you'll see that
there are no breakfasts, there are no snacks, there are
no desserts. We have an example from a typical Thursday
on the Scarsdale Diet.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
We've got some two egg breakfasts any style, any style.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
This is lunch.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Hey, oh that's lunch. Okay, well I'm gonna call it
breakfast because the eggs for lunch. That's crazy talk, Isn't
it funny?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Though?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
How we associate certain foods with breakfasts and like it's
this weird mental block. Eating breakfast for lunch is so bizarre.
But in other countries, yeah, it doesn't apply in other countries.
No fun fact, fu is a breakfast food in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
And I will absolutely make a breakfast ramen sometimes or
like something like a noodlely, you know, ramen with an
egg on top. How do you like your eggs? By
the way, Ben poached, poached is what I was gonna say.
It's clearly the best way, texture wise, great combo. So
for lunch on a Thursday, you're gonna have two eggs
any style, but we're gonna say poached, but no fat
(13:39):
used in the cooking.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Hmm, how are you gonna do that? I guess a
little bit of oil, and isn't oil.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Fatty though oil is very fatty. Now you're gonna end
up with about an entire egg stuck.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
To the pan, a real gnarly egg. And this was
before the days of hexclad. You know, we got low
fat cottage cheese, which is alone's always you could poach
an egg without fat, of course you could, but this
says any style, so clearly poached would be the preferred method.
You do poach an egg without fat, that's would be
the way to do it. You kind of boil it
and you got to get the swirl going and then
scoop it out so you don't break it.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It's a little tough to get right.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Low fat cottage cheese, really, I grew something about cottage
es just gives me the willies.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Zucchini or string bean or sliced or stewed tomatoes. One
slice of protein bread. Okay, let's hold on, let's please
do Yeah? Is that like neutral loaf what we're talking here?
That stuck out to me when I saw protein bread? Essentially,
it's just it's just enriched bread. It has higher amounts
of protein, usually from like Pea protein Pea or Way
(14:42):
proteinage Way.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And then if you wish, you can have yourself a
little coffee or tea, but no.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Milk in it. No milk eley, no no good. Moving
on to dinner, you want to give us our dinner
options for the evening. So you've been a good kid,
you have not had any you skip to breakfast. It's
time to ball out with a Scarsdale dinner. You can roast,
broil or barbecue chicken all you want, and you have
(15:10):
to get rid of the best part, the skin invisible
fat before you eat it. You can have all the spinach,
green peppers, and string beans you want, even though you
ate string beans for lunch earlier. You can finish off
with some coffee or some tea.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
You know you know again this veggie. These veggie options
make a lot of sense. You can eat your body
weight in spinach and veggies and be in a good place.
So in nineteen eighty Tarnhauer was sadly shot. That was
a twist by his girlfriend, Jean Harris, who was the
headmistress of an illustrious girls school. They met later in
(15:47):
life as forty somethings, well actually fifty something for tarnaw
Er forty three for Harris. They never married, but they
lived together for quite some time, and after fourteen years
of that hour he was a bad boy and he
went for a younger woman, a nurse who was working
in his office.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
The whatever the self own here is pretty stunning. I
also want to go back and note that not only
can you eat your body weight in spinach, but you
can buy your body weight in spinach and it cooks
down to about a cup cooks. Don I just had
away more than you think. Yeah, you always need more
than you think. And our guy got into much more
(16:32):
trouble than he thought with his philandering. His partner, Gene Harris,
found the other woman's curlers and nightgown in their home.
Just not good opsite sloppy, no, sir. So this.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Caused Sure to fly into a raid, it would seem,
and she shot him, and it made the news, made headlines,
this trial that she was put on. There was support
for her from the feminist community, citing a history of
emotional abuse and pointing to this outlandish act as her
(17:20):
being pushed beyond the limits that a woman could be pushed.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right, And then you had the other side, where people
were saying from the matmosphere, yeah, was this innocent man,
not really, because he was philandering, but he should not
have been murdered for it. Either way, it's so right.
Wherever people found themselves on the spectrum, they were still
captivated by Harris. Because she was an affluent professional, She
(17:49):
was polished with pearls, she was from a high socioeconomic standing,
and she didn't fit the usual stereotypes of a crazy,
violent woman who was scorn. People were more and more
interested in her. Ultimately, she does get convicted of second
degree murder. She only serves twelve years in prison. You know,
(18:10):
keep in mind they have been together for fourteen years.
She's older. He was killed, Yeah, he was fatally shot. Yes, Yes,
I'm sorry, it was a murder. Trial.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And weirdly enough, if you can imagine, this was kind
of great publicity for the Scarsdale Diet. I guess any
publicity is good publicity, as they say, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And this leads to this leads to another controversy right now,
the Scarsdale Medical Diet, the book itself is no longer
in print because despite various differences in findings in philosophy,
experts now agree it is dangerous for adults, most of
them to consume under twelve hundred calories per day. And
(18:55):
it's also incredibly difficult to action stick to that meal
regimen for any long amount of time. Correct.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
And I don't know if it's possible to find these,
but I would be curious to check them out. This
whole scandal of the shooting in this you know, torrid
affair was made into two count them made for TV movies.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Maybe while you pull these up, you can switch out
your usual popcorn snack for the next diet on our
menu today, eggs and Wine diet.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Boy And as our wonderful researcher REND headlined this section,
the flirty and the farty the eggs and Wine Diet,
It's exactly what it sounds like. Ben for three days.
Dieters were meant to consume only eggs and wine. Not
clear whether it's red or white. Imagine it's red because
(19:52):
it's always, you know, being discussed as something that's like
good for your health and your heart. For both breakfast
and lunch, and for dinner they could have a nice
five ounce steak with wine pour it on top, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah, so you're basically drinking at minimum a bottle of
wine a day. I didn't diet breakfast wine. This makes me.
This reminds me of one of my favorite My favorite
jokes about our fair city of Metropolis are excellent public
radio service. For a long time, there was a show
(20:26):
called two Cups and Two Cups had just this amazing
local celebrity and journalist Lewis Reixes, And I always wondered,
is it two cups of coffee? What if it was
like two cups of wine? And Dad explains why she
was so chill in the morning.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
She was very chill. She retired recently. Yes, this is
an absolute legend. She even did some remember when she
did those adult swim bumpers back in the day. Yeah,
absolute legend.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
I remember, I remember when Lewis Reix's for a little
while years back. She did the traffic and it was
just so strange to hear her described car accident.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
She had a very has a very distinct voice. I
believe due to some sort of respiratory condition.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
She has a tough time kind of catching her breath,
but it leads to this excellent, relaxing cadence in the
way she speaks. Asmr all day big Lois Reis's fans
and there were people who were big fans of the
eggs wine diet. The idea rusher wine moms. Yeah. The
(21:33):
idea was apparently that the regular diet by itself was boring.
Just eat eggs and then you get a little steak
at the end of the day, So the alcohol makes
the menu more palatable. I don't know about that. That
seems a little little like a slippery slope.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I do love an egg and they are excellent sources
of protein, and I've been trying to consume more eggs lately,
but I couldn't live on egg It didn't, however, promise
major weight loss, only about five.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Pounds but in three days. So this was super attractive
for folks who were looking to shed a little bit
of weight before say a wedding or a holiday or
like a beach getaway or something like that. The diet
was originally debuted in nineteen sixty two in the best
selling book Sex and the Single Girl, The Unmarried Woman's
(22:27):
Guide to Men, which offered dating advice, advice on things
like sexual friendships, affairs, work, life balance, money stuff, you know, style, eating,
and of course drinking. Yeah, this is very much the
kind of thing you would read in later magazines like
(22:48):
Cosmo or Vogue. In fact, got this got another cyclical
splurge of popularity fifteen years after its first publication because
it's re published in the Vogue Body and Beauty Book
in nineteen seventy seven. And the idea is, whatever your age,
(23:08):
you can stay cute and petite and sexually attractive as
red ads, even if you're drunk off your ass by
eleven am and your fart smell of sulfur. Gotta love it.
Moving on to the eighties, seems like a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
There was a trend of a lot of these diets
being named after the locations in which were found, things
like the South Beach Diet, the Scarsdale Diet, of course,
and the Beverly Hills Diet, which we've done episodes in
the past about the magic pineapple, how it was a
status symbol. You had to rent a pineapple, or you
could rent a pineapple, and it was emblazoned and all
(23:42):
kinds of metal work and things as a sign of opulence.
So it makes sense that this was a feature of
the Beverly Hills Diet, of the Beverly Hills being a
place known for its opulence.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
This was first published in nineteen eighty one by Judy Masel. Yeah. Absolutely,
Unlike our pal her Masl didn't have a background in
medicine or nutrition. She did have a lot of moxy though,
and her lack of professional qualifications would not stop her
from creating what La Times calls a theory about food
(24:16):
enzymes and the digestive system that she formulated into a
complicated weight reducing plan. She did this because a small,
still voice inside her told her to leave the freeway
and buy cashews in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Okay, it's a very specific internal voice. I don't know
how did this relate to her ultimate dreams of movie stardom?
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, she I think, like so many other people in
the area, she was trying to get trying to become famous,
trying to work in entertainment and Hollywood, and like a
lot of people, unfortunately, she struggled with her own body
(25:04):
image throughout her life. At the age of nine, she
went to her first appointment with what was called a
diet doctor, and she said her struggle to in her mind,
her struggle to maintain or control her weight, was the
reason for her failure to really break through as an actor.
And that's just a terrible way to feel about yourself.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, no acting or no acting, it's not a good
way to feel. And as we know and discussed in
the last Fad Diets episode, a lot of these quote
unquote diet doctors of the time, pretty sure, well into
the nineties, may even still be somewhere around.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
We're just giving people amphetamines. Oh one hundred percent. Yeah,
And luckily Masl's plan is a little bit less heavy
on amphetamines. But she is really good at marketing. Again,
these diets are aspirational. I want to do what the
stars are doing. What are the successful people eating? How
can I look like one of them? So her diet
(26:02):
plan gets really successful because it gets celebrity supporters Linda
Gray from the soap opera Dallas. The first Lady of
California at the time, Maria Shriver Inglebert Humperdink. I love
that name. It's just so weird. Did you know that's
not his real name, that's his stage name that he
chose that he thought that was a good idea.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Ingolbert Humperdink was a classical composer who wrote the opera
Henzel and Gretel. So I think he was just borrowing
it from that, because it is like an amazingly absurd name,
sort of like our pal Kurt Vile borrowed his stage name,
I believe from the weirdo composer as well the threepenny opera.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Nice. And as as this diet, the Pineapple diet, we're
getting to as it becomes more and more popular with
the swells and the to do's, Mazel does make it
to the spotlight. She gets featured on talk shows. They're
broadcast around the world to promote her diet plant, the
(27:02):
Beverly Hills Diet. If you follow it, they say, in
just fifteen days you could lose thirty five pounds. Nope.
Hearing that number and that amount of time makes me
really worried for the person on this diet. Oh.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Absolutely, that's just it doesn't seem very safe. You know,
typically you'd lose that amount of weight in like, you know.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
A year. Yeah, I mean, according to masl it's not
just the food that you eat, it's the order in
which that food is consumed. You can only eat fruit
during breakfast on an empty stomach, and then once you
ate lean proteins, you could no longer eat fruit for
(27:44):
the rest of the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
These kind of specific order of operations things that are
real red flag y. Yeah, agree, especially from someone without
a science back.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Uh, it is a fruit heavy diet, but which has
a lot of sugar in it. It has a lot
of sugar. But here's the thing you might hear lean protein. Okay,
so if that's my switch, I'll just figure out when
I want to eat the lean protein and then no
more fruit for a day. Unfortunately, you are supposed to
eat nothing but fruit for the first ten days on
(28:18):
the fifteen day diet, so no protein. Yeah, so on
day eleven you can have some protein a little bit
of carb as a treat, and that's the second phase
of the plan. She loved pineapples, she thought fruit enzymes,
if you consume them first, they made your digestive tract
better at breaking down other foods later.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, like a lot of the tenets of these fad diets,
that's a myth that has since been discredited by actual
doctors and scientists. So as a little aside, all of
those fruits, as you can imagine, were not particularly great
for other aspects of digestion aka pooping.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, us, you're super into pooping. You would be disappointed
to learn that all this consumption can lead to diarrhea.
Now on the other side, this diet plan, it's still
very Beverly Hills. They're not saying you can't have alcohol,
but they are saying you have to have some rules.
(29:21):
Beer or hard spirits, they have to be consumed with carbohydrates.
You can only have red and white wine with fruit.
And champagne per masal is neutral. It can be consumed anytime.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
It's almost like there's a certain like the humor's aspect
to this, Yes, in the champagne is the neutral humor
that is so Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, yeah, old Hollywood, very Gatsby esque, you know, champagne. Yeah,
And someone's like, dear Lord Zelda it's nine to thirty
in the morning. No, it's okay. Champagne isn't the champagne.
It's neutral.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
It could be consumed with any of these outline food
groups that Masls came up with. So you know, of course,
professional nutritionists were a little skeptical, dare we say wary
of Mezel's diet plan because they believed that it was
quack science.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah. Yeah, And Masil basically said, I hear you, and
then went on to do whatever she wished. And yet
here I go on there another talk show. To spread
the good word. She went to publish several war books
offering nutritional advice, all inspired by that disembodied voice that
(30:39):
told her to chase some cashowes. I think I maybe
interrupted you when you brought that up in and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
The voice did tell her to get the cashoes, at
which point she pulled over to a health food store, right,
and then found some book that I believe.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Sparked the idea of this whole enterprise. Yeah, one hundred percent.
I mean, you got to take the inspiration where you
find it, right.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Listen to all the voices as listen to them, single one.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
We've got a great episode on intuition coming up for
stuff that'll want you to know, folks, we can't wait
for you to tune in for that one. This next one.
Full disclosure. I have members of my family who tried
out the fad diet known as slim Fast. I think
(31:28):
we all probably did. It was absolutely huge.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
The little pre made Sheiks Thompson Medical Company founded this
enterprise in the late seventies. Slim Fast hit a massive
commercial stride in the eighties and would continue on to
dominate the industry into the millennium. So by two thousand,
the year two thousand, slim Fast generated over one billion
(31:54):
dollars in global sales, which would look a little closer
to two billion if you did the old inflation calculator.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Bee boopo. Yeah, I mean this is serious money. At first.
What you're buying a supplement kind of it's a powder
sick a packet and you're supposed to mix it with milk.
You can still find slim fast these days. They'll have
all these candy flavors, you know, like vapes or pop tarts.
(32:22):
That's a red flag right there too.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yes, yeah, let's get let's let's lose weight by drinking
milk shakes just so, I mean, we're the flavors to
kind of.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
They they are flags like coffee House, Caramel Latte, triple
Berry vanilla.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah yeah, but it was not even ingredient that was
meant to promote weight loss, isn't it Essentially just like
a protein shake, it's meant to be a food replacement,
and it's a way of limiting your calories by knowing
exactly what you're consuming, you know, in the form of
this this shake or this powder.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Right, Yeah, yeah, it's it's very dense with vitamins and minerals,
but it's it's trying to concentrate all the good stuff
and eliminate the calories that usually come along with a
full meal. It also reminds me of something funny that
happened at our job years and years back. We started
(33:22):
getting shipments of something called fuel sponsor for let's not
forget about soilin Oh yeah, soilent as well. That was
a moment for us because folks, technically the FCC requires
us to actually try out any product if we're going
to endorse it on the air, which is a good
law to have, And so we ended up drinking fuel
(33:46):
and soilent. It wasn't that mass people. No, No, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
But it's a really good thing to bring up in
because it very much is a modern equivalent of this
exact bad diet. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken
soil intent Chuel, they do have more nutrients in them.
They've got other vitamin content and.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Proteins, etc.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
So there's something to it if that's the route you
want to go and you use it responsibly. But they
did initially, you know, truck this product out as a
get thin quick scheme, right, and their first try at
it was in the form of a cherry red and
this really threw me for a loop and.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Predigested liquid protein.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It makes me think of the way the mama bird
like choose up food and spits it into the baby
bird's mouth.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yuck.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
This came out in nineteen seventy seven and it was
quickly recalled, if you can imagine, for containing bacterial contamination.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
So they had to do a little bit of a pivot. Yeah,
you know, not every first at bat is going to
be a home run. But thankfully they had already been
working around the clock at their lab. They had invented
a chocolate protein powder. And this was not a huge
revolutionary idea at this point in the seventies, so they
(35:04):
didn't invest too much into the marketing for this thing
that would become called slim fast in protein powder. The
reason it's not revolutionary per se is because protein powder
had first been commercialized and popularized way back in the
nineteen fifties by a guy named Irvin Johnson who ran
(35:26):
a gym in health studio in Chicago one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
It was initially, you know, as it is often today,
used as a supplement for bodybuilders to bulk up.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah. Yeah, And the demand for the product then starts.
It starts in a specialized way with a pretty niche demographic,
but Johnson's competitors start catering to the same audience. They're
kind of trying to eat his bodybuilder lunch. The Thompson
Medical Company, the originators of slim Fast, they say, Okay,
(35:58):
there are a lot of protein powder is on the market.
We have to do a serious rebrand. Uh, So we've
got to pivot. What if we sold this protein powder
not to bodybuilders, not to the good folks reading Ironman magazine,
but what if we sold it to regular people? What
if we specifically targeted women and we said, this is
(36:21):
not a quick fix to get you know, to up
your your body mass and your your muscle mass. This
is a way for you to be healthy and maybe
lose some weight to get slim fasts. Yes, just like
mattress firm is a pusful.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
So if I can jump in here real quick, I
want to just make sure that everyone knows that this
is Irvin Johnson with an.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I, not E, who is or E A R V
I N.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Johnson, who is also more commonly known as Magic Johnson.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Great max with the facts in phona and peaceful in knowledge.
It's just for you right now, the fact indeed there
it is well done, Happy twenty twenty six. So this
(37:16):
this is not a pretty great idea. But then they
run into a catch. It's something called the Cambridge diet.
To the point to get about diets being named after places,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
The Cambridge diet was developed by a doctor named Alan Howard.
He was a professor at Cambridge University. That's the one,
the Cambridge University. This diet plan was pretty straightforward. You'd
drink three of these Cambridge shakes a day instead of
eating meals meal replacement. And you know, they did contain
some of the valuable nutrients that our bodies need, vitamins
(37:48):
and minerals, et cetera, but the total daily caloric content
cocked it in an estimated three hundred and thirty calories,
which is way too low, like starvation territory, right.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
It's the epitome of feeling like you're eating but not
actually eating. So much so that the FDA stepped forward
and warned the public about the Cambridge diet. And when
that happened, slim fast weedling its fingers, steepling them like
Monty Byrn. Is it a swoop? Yeah, they saw it,
(38:21):
They saw the position, they took the advantage, and they
popped through the marketplace and they started advertising directly against
the Cambridge Diet with a slogan that would have made
Don Draper very proud. A shake for breakfast, a shake
for lunch, then a sensible dinner. That's the slogan they adopted. Yeah,
(38:42):
same model, just packaged a little differently.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Same model as the Cambridge Diet in the way the
Thompson Company packaged it and distanced itself from this FDA
scrutiny on Cambridge diet was by suggesting that its consumers
should not rely solely on their product for assustenance, that
sensible dinner recommendation, and then it's outside of the purview
of their slop that they're feeding you exactly. Yeah, that
(39:06):
sounds mean, it's probably fine for some people. Just it
is kind of gross and it's I don't like the
idea of subsisting on shakes. There is a better way,
fruits and vegetables, just eating a well balanced diet.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
All of this stuff, it just seems so missing the point.
You know, people will do anything but exercise. Man, that's
part of it. So let me just have a magic
coupo something not change my shoot behavior. Yeah, but okay,
let's fast forwards the nineteen nineties, slim Fast is still
(39:37):
very well known at the tippity top of the fat
diet pyramid. But by the late two thousands we see
the cycles shift once more, and now people are going
away from this pseudo medical diet philosophy and aesthetic and
they're going back to what we would call the ancestral
(39:59):
diet trends, like what are the cavemen eat? Why can't
I eat like a cave boy?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
The paleo all this, and the thing is man bodies
are different, like everybody is different, and some things work
well for some and not well for others. So it's
important to try different things and figure out, you know,
like Anthony Keatas for example, like of the red Hot
chili peppers. Recently, I saw a clip where he was
talking about how when he was dating a nutritionist at
(40:27):
some point in the past and she recommended that he
eat like wild meats, that he felt great and then
he had all this energy and that he was able
to build all this muscle and stuff. So I don't know,
maybe uh, Anthony Keta's wild meats was was the answer
that he needed. But it's also a lot of it's relative,
you know. I mean, I think the biggest takeaway is
just don't overdo it. Just try to be a little
(40:51):
bit sensible.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah. I would also say, folks, most importantly, at least
from my perspective, be kind to yourself. Don't let society
tell you that, don't let them foist expectations or requirements
on you. It's okay to be who you are, you know,
And that's something that I think we miss a lot
(41:13):
of times, not just in the entertainment world, but especially
in the age of ubiquitous social media. You can also
bet to your bottom dollar that there are going to
be more fad diets on the way because of what
they promise, right or what they imply. It's just it's
just too nice for it not to happen again, and
(41:34):
it's too profitable. And when you run into a fad
diet that seems too good to be true, history has
proven it probably is, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
And not to mention that we're in an era particularly
fraught with misinformation right now. You have a lot of
these folks that are pitching things like bone broths and
all of this kind of like doomsday.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Supplements and things like that, and they just.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
They don't have your best interest in heart, and it's
just important to do your own research and again figure
out what works best for you. But know that there
really isn't a magic bullet. And even if that those
z epic of it all, you know, seems like a
magic bullet, there are people that take that and they
don't do any exercise, and they don't change their diet,
and they kind of they are skinny, but they look
(42:21):
they don't. It's not I don't know, they just don't
look healthy. And I just think it's important to pair
any quote unquote magic bullet treatment with sensible behavior in
changing the way that you approach you know, eating and living.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
And then when you get off of the gop one,
unless there's serious behavior change, what we've seen so far,
even with the relatively new rollout of this, is that
the weight returns, you know.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So it is key to learn a little bit of
restraint and try to just you know, just get your
steps in. Just little things like that can make a
huge difference in your mental health and in your you know,
the way you look and the way you feel.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
So yeah, none, no preaching here, something at you on
or we could all just do meth Kitty kitty nobody.
That's not the great. That's not a great way to
start twenty twenty six. Fist full of Mommy's little helpers,
and thank you so much for starting your year with us, folks.
We're so happy that you're joining us. Big, big thanks
to our super producer mister Max Williams and Alex Williams
(43:25):
who composed this track.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Huge thanks again to our reach Asso Shit and pal
Ran for this excellent part two of fad diets to
kick off twenty twenty six with you ridiculous Historians. Also
a huge thanks to Chris Frasciotis and he's Jef Coates,
Kier and Spirit.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Big big thanks of course to Gary Dorsey also known
as Ingolbert Humperding. I don't know the name like that.
I guess see maybe why I had changed the name.
It was a little dull. Okay, yeah, Big things to
doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance A J. Bahamas Jacobs, the
Puzzler and a civil yet cold acknowledgment of Jonathan Strickland
(44:02):
aka the Quister to find how to Jonathan Man?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
How much spinach do you think doctor Lance has to
cook down to make a big spinach?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Oh? Man, it's so much. I think she owns its
land dedicated to growing spinach.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Crops, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance Landed.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Gentry the spinach Tycoon. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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