| KEY TERMS Flatulence—The medical term for intestinal gas expelled through the anus. Scurvy—A deficiency disease caused by a lack of dietary vitamin C, characterized by spongy gums, eventual loss of teeth, and bleeding into the skin and mucous membranes. Urban legend—A story, anecdote, or piece of advice based on hearsay and circulated by person-to-person transmission. |
Description
Function
Benefits
Precautions
Risks
Research and general acceptance
Questions to ask your doctor
Resources
What is the Cabbage Soup Diet?
The cabbage soup diet is a quick weight loss program intended to be followed for seven days. The centerpiece of the diet is a recipe for cabbage soup, which the dieter may consume in unlimited quantities. In addition to the cabbage soup, there are certain other foods the dieter must eat on specific days during the week. There are several versions of the diet, most of which promise a 10-17 lb weight loss during the week.
The cabbage soup diet has a number of other names:
- TWA Stewardess Diet
- Model”s Diet
- Dolly Parton Diet
- Military Cabbage Soup Diet
- Mayo Clinic Diet
- Sacred Heart Hospital Diet
- Miami Heart Institute Diet
- Spokane Diet
- Fat Burning Diet
- T. J.”s Miracle Soup Diet
- The Skinny
The cabbage soup diet may be the oldest fad diet still in use; it seems to resurface with a new name every 10 to 15 years. It has been described by some historians of popular culture as a good example of an urban legend—a type of modern folklore passed from person to person via word of mouth, photocopies, or e-mail. Urban legends are often stories or anecdotes, but some can be called “widely accepted misinformation.”
No one seems to know when the cabbage soup diet was first formulated or the identity of its originator. According to the American Dietetic Association”s timeline of fad diets, the cabbage soup diet originated around 1950, but it may date back even earlier. There is a recipe for “Doughboy Cabbage Soup” dating back to World War I (1914–1918), when American soldiers fighting in France had few other vegetables available and eating cabbage offered protection against scurvy, a deficiency disease caused by inadequate vitamin C in the diet. The name “Military Cabbage Soup Diet” is likely derived from the World War I soup recipe, although that early recipe lacked the tomatoes, bouillon cubes, and other seasonings included in recent versions of the diet.
After the 1950s, the cabbage soup diet was revived in the early 1980s not only as the Dolly Parton Diet but also as the Trans World Airlines (TWA) Stewardess Diet and the Model”s Diet. It acquired these names because of the belief that celebrities, models, and flight attendants had to meet rigorous periodic weight check-ins in order to keep their jobs. The cabbage soup diet was passed around from person to person in the form of photocopies during this period. It often claimed that the dieter would lose 10-17 lb during the first week either because cabbage supposedly has no calories at all or because it contains a “miracle fatburning” compound.
The cabbage soup diet reappeared in the mid-1990s, when fax machines and the Internet made it easy for people to transmit copies of the diet to friends and workplace colleagues. The diet was also published in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Gentlemen”s Quarterly (now GQ) in 1995. The diet was attributed to health associations as well as the cardiology departments of several hospitals and medical centers in this period. These institutions supposedly gave the diet to overweight patients preparing for heart surgery to help them to lose weight quickly before their operations. Thus, the diet acquired such names as the Sacred Heart diet or the Spokane diet (from the names of hospitals in Brussels, Belgium, Montreal, Quebec, and
Spokane, Washington), the American Heart Association Diet, the Mayo Clinic Diet, and the Miami Heart Institute Diet.
