Forbidden Foods from "Eat and Grow Thin (1914)"

I love old books and have many more than I am able to display. One of my favorite topics is Self Improvement. This covers everything from diet to behavior. The late 1800′s and early 1900′s had a lot of books about this, seemingly more than are even published today.

The book “Eat and Grow Thin — The Mahdah menus” was written in 1914 by Vance Thompson and, as you can see from my scan above, espoused a gluten free diet. I mean, a lot of other things are on the list as well, but given the time period, it was interesting to see someone say wheat was not healthy. Dr. Kellogg would not have approved! I also have an original copy of Kellogg’s “Colon Health” book and will be mining that for a future post.

I am talking about this book for a couple of reasons:

• It is an interesting historical document that shows people have been trying to figure out the optimal human diet for a lot longer than you might have thought.
• There are some things we can learn from reading these old books. Many modern researchers have cited findings from work done and forgotten decades ago. Sure, some of it is nuts, but so are a lot of the diet books out now!

Since this book is long out of copyright, you don’t have to scour estate sales to find it. Here is a link to the Open Library scan of “Eat and Grow Thin” for your enjoyment. You can even get a free copy for your Kindle.