Tag: Victorian era

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American food faddist Horace Fletcher gained fame and fortune by advocating that every bite of food be chewed approximately 100 times before swallowing. His zealous promotion of the practice earned him the nickname 'The Great Masticator' and created a health movement called Fletcherism.

While modern diets seem like a new invention, historical records show that ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about weight loss with diet and exercise as early as 400 BC. The question of when did dieting become a thing is more complex, evolving from a holistic health practice into a weight-focused obsession shaped by cultural shifts over centuries.