Reducing the reducers to tears

201 Tasty Dishes for Reducers (The Journal of Living Publishing Corporation, 1948) might be trying to sound friendly with its tasty title, but it can be a harsh little book.

The "Questions and Answers about the Diet" section near the end of the book begins by chastising its prospective readers: "To be very much overweight is strong evidence that the individual either lacks will power or is totally ignorant of the effect of foods on body weight." I'd like to think that our society has moved past that idea, but it's unfortunately still in circulation.

Unsurprisingly, some of its ideas are totally unhinged. Some just seem kind of wacky, but not necessarily harmful, like this recommendation. 

Sure! You'll get skinny by wandering around your bedroom nude for 20 minutes every morning! That seems plausible. But at least it's unlikely to hurt anybody, and it might be some fun.

The recommended menu (from "The Famous Victor H. Lindlahr 7-Day Reducing Diet") is MUCH less fun and more dangerous. The representative menu for Monday should give you an idea of what the problem is.

Dieters get 950 calories for an entire day! (To be fair, on Friday dieters get to cut loose and go all the way up to 1015.) Of course, the minimum recommended calorie intake for women is 1200 per day and for men, 1500 per day. By day 2, dieters will be too hangry to have the patience to spread "1 teaspoon cottage cheese" on a piece of toast first thing in the morning.

Luckily, the book doesn't expect readers to spend all their time on the 7-day diet, so it offers some recipes for foods when dieters aren't subsisting on syrup-free canned peach halves and half-cups of string beans. Instead, they can ruin their appetite by starting a meal with a Sauerkraut-Potato Cocktail. 

Or maybe start with a Vitamin Consommé if you like the air of science...

...and don't mind that it's onion, celery, and cabbage boiled in diluted tomato and grapefruit juices.

You might then go on to have a salad. If you find vitamins especially compelling, you can follow up Vitamin Consommé with Vitamin Fish Salad.

I'm starting to think that "vitamin" was code for "with celery and onion."

Or if you don't think vintage diets can be complete without a wobbly salad, there's Chicken Salad Squares. 

Mercifully, they're made with plain gelatin (rather than, say lemon or lime gelatin) dissolved in chicken stock. I'm not sure how well the crushed pineapple will complement the chicken, carrots, celery, and green peppers, but crushed pineapple was very nearly required by law for any vintage gelatin salad.

And if you just prefer random fruits and vegetables thrown together without a protein, there's Asparagus and Grapefruit Salad.

I'll admit that I chose it because I find both grapefruit and canned (but not fresh!) asparagus repulsive, so combining the two sounds even worse. And if you're wondering what the salad dressing that is supposed to be served with this might entail, then you're in for a treat.

I kept checking the Reducing Dressing for All Salads for some kind of a thickener. I realize that as a salad dressing hater, I'm not exactly the authority on this, but I am pretty sure most dressings have at least a little more viscosity than skim milk. Not this one, though! It's basically just lightly seasoned skim milk, so it gives you the joy of turning any salad into a watery mess!

If you insist on something more substantial, like a sandwich, there's a Fish-Vegetable Spread for Sandwiches.

I can't really imagine enjoying a mixture of cooked fish, shredded carrot, minced green pepper, and grated apple slathered onto rye bread, but at least this is more substantial than anything else so far! Maybe it will look good by comparison...

And if you're really good, you can have dessert. Expecting something very sad? Well, get ready for a surprise.

I have no idea why this recipe for Sugar Cookies is here. Granted, it's not the most exciting dessert in the world, but still, there's nothing appreciably "diet" about the cookies. They've got as much butter, sugar, and flour as one would expect, and there's not even a headnote trying to justify what makes these "diet." Maybe the Journal of Living Publishing Corporation just got tired of miserable recipes and wanted to give their readers a little break. Or maybe they wanted to include a recipe that they could berate the reducers for making? What better way to prove their readership is "totally ignorant of the effect of foods on body weight" than to slip in a test recipe and dare them to make it? Given how mean-spirited this book is, I'm more inclined to the latter explanation...