Is This the Death of Dieting?
The long and painful era of dieting for weight loss is dying. It may even soon be dead. And no one wants to attend the funeral.
The practice of dieting dates back thousands of years. Ancient Greek culture, for example, encouraged certain diets for treating disease and enhancing physical performance. However, the application of dieting specifically for weight loss took longer. It wasn’t until perhaps 16th-century Europe that the first books appeared endorsing diets as a method for losing weight.
But the mass appeal of dieting really took off in the U.S. as recently as the 1980s and 1990s—think Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, the Atkins Diet, etc.—as rates of overweight and obesity conditions began to climb. In the span of these few decades, dieting became a multibillion-dollar industry. Survey research indicated that up to half the adult population endorsed following a diet in the past year for the primary reason of losing excess weight.
Excerpted from Psychology Today
