#weird fads

[maximum-fartage]

Fire in the hole!

I had this super-weird dream where shoving glitter in your anus was the newest crazy ass fad. The expectation of course, was glittery rainbow farts, but why? The end result was sparkling turds.

[corner4health-blog]

Weird Diets and Other Bizarre Eating Habits

Some people have seriously strange eating habits. In some cases its just because they are seriously weird people, in others its because they are desperate to lose weight. I’ve included some of the most bizarre examples of both types of ‘food fads’ here for you – the weird diets followed by groups of people are arranged by category in three lists, and interspersed in between these are some strange stories of individual people with highly peculiar eating habits.

The Most Dangerous Weight Loss Diets Ever…

The Tapworm Diet:

This first became popular sometime around the start of the 20th century. Proponents of this early fad diet believed that the tapeworms, which live and breed within a person’s digestive system, would consume the calories from their food and therefore allow them to eat what they wanted and still lose weight. Tapeworms cause serious (and seriously painful) digestive problems, making this a very dangerous practice indeed.

Andrew Forster from Co. Durham, England, has eaten nothing but biscuits since the age of 18 months. After being weened off milk Andrew refused to eat anything else, but despite this he decided to pursue a career as a chef and currently runs the kitchen for an Italian restaurant. With the help of psychologists he has recently been able to taste several new foods, including toast and cereal, but still lives almost exclusively on biscuits and has other people taste the dishes he creates for diners at his restaurant.

The Last Chance Diet:

In the 1970′s Roger Linn, MD, promoted a diet in which people would consume nothing but his ‘miracle’ protein drink called Prolinn. I guess in a way this was an early predecessor of the Atkin’s diet, in which people eat lots of protein and fat but are allowed no carbohydrates. The drinks were truly horrific, being made up of the waste products from abertoire floors – hoofs, tendons, hides and so on. The miracle diet drin was eventually banned after several deaths were attributed to it.

The Cotton Ball Diet:

This one was popular amongst models and dancers for a while. The idea is that eating cotton balls would make you feel full without you consuming any calories. Unfortunately the cotton balls can cause serious damage to your gut as they pass through without being digested.

Cigarettes and Amphetamines:

Unbelievably cigarattes used to be marketed as health products in a wide variety of ways. They were sold as cures for asthma, and they were marketed on the basis of their appetite suppressing properties. In a similar vein, amphetamines such as ‘speed’, which are now thought of purely as dangerous recreational drugs, were originally created and marketed as weight loss products.

Stephen Guiness from Merseyside has eaten nothing but Marmite since he was two year’s old. He claims that even the thought of eating anything else makes him feel sick. He also drinks nothing but Ribena brand blackcurrent juice drink. Remarkably he is in good health, as Marmite, a yeast extract usually spread on toast, is high in vitamins and low in both fat and sugar.

More Weird Weight Loss Diets…

Soap Related Weight Loss:

The idea that you can ‘wash away the pounds’ in a literal sense using soap has popped up more than once over the years. It first became popular in the 18th century when a doctor called Malcolm Flemyng started telling people to actually eat the stuff in order to wash away the extra weight. Then later, in the 1930′s, various companies began marketing ‘slimming soap’, which would literal wash the weight away when used like normal soap. This idea is still alive and well in some countries today.

The Fork Diet:

Dieters following this weird method are only allowed to eat food which can be both prepared and eaten with a fork. The idea is that calorie laden foods such as big chunks of red meat, carbohydrate rich bread, cheese and so on all require chopping and therefore cannot be both prepared and eaten with just a fork.

The Beer and Ice Cream Diet:

I might actually try this one. It won’t work, but then I’m not really trying to lose weight anyway, I just like the sound of it. Apparently the idea behind it is that cold foods and drinks require more calories to digest than hot food. I have no idea whether than principle is true or not, but I do know that you will not lose weight by living off beer and ice cream.

Keith Sorrell from Liverpool has eaten nothing but Mars bars for 17 years. In addition to this he also drinks Mars milkshake drinks mixed with rum when he goes out with friends. He claims that a regime of fruit juice and vitamin tablets keeps him healthy despite his horrific diet.

The ‘Don’t Swallow’ Diet:

In 1903 Horace Fletcher won the nickname of “The Great Masticator” after claiming to havelost 40lbs using his new miracle diet – chewing but not swallowing. His theory was that if you chewed your food for long enough then your body would be able to extract the nutrients, allowing you to then spit out the bulk of the food so as to avoid adding bulk to your body.

The Air Diet:

Fancy a plate of nothing? Apparently some people belive that pretending to eat a plate full of food will make you feel full and satisfied, meaning that when you do actually start to eat for real, you will end up wanting less.

Non-Diet Diets

 Breatharians And Other Weird Religions:

Is the air diet not extreme enough for you? There are a number of spiritual groups, usually based on some kind of Eastern mysticism / yoga, who believe that with the correct spiritual discpline and understanding they can gain all of the sustenance they need from the universe without actually eating anything at all. The biggest group are breatharians, who think that they can get their nourishment from the air, but there are also others who believe that they can absorb energy directly from the sun’s rays.

Diet Glasses:

The ‘Vision Diet’ allows you to eat as muh as you feel like of whatever you feel like, just as long as you are wearing blue lensed glasses while you eat. Apparently it makes the food look less appetizing, which in turn makes you eat less naturally.

Don’t Live Near A Swamp:

In 1727 Thomas Short published a book in which he noted that in his experience fat people tended to live near swamps, and that people wanting to lose weight should therefore move to dry, arid areas as far away from swamp land as possible, in order to shed the extra pounds.

Jayanta Lahan is a 17 month old toddler from India who is addicted to super-hot ‘Bhut Jolakia’ chillies. They are the hottest variety of chillie in the world, and the young boy eats as many as 50 of the things in a single sitting, without showing any signs of discomfort.