A depressing diet plan stowed away among some recipes

I was so excited to finally find a recipe box with actual recipes in it, but that old Shredded-Wheat-themed recipe box also held another surprise: an extremely depressing diet plan. Let's check it out!

The bottom of the page gives these ominous instructions:

I have no idea what "This diet works on a Chemical breakdown" is supposed to mean. Digestion is a chemical process, so what makes this diet's chemical breakdown special is an open question. More pertinently, if the note explaining the diet ends with an emphatic "REMEMBER: It is only for Three DAYS= Four DAYS off," you know it's got to be bad.

For each day, there's a very sad menu. Here's day 1:

I'm assuming that the "1/2 glass grapefruit" means a half glass of grapefruit juice for breakfast, rather than an instruction to eat half of a fake grapefruit constructed of glass. The breakfast is surprisingly sensible, allowing for a serving of fruit, bread, and even a full serving of peanut butter.

Lunch is decidedly less generous, allowing only a quarter cup of tuna (presumably canned) and another slice of toast (along with the black coffee or tea for a beverage). My cat might have considered this to be a reasonable lunch, but an adult human being should definitely NOT.

Dinner allows for 2 slices of any meat (at least I assume it's meat-- This appears to be a copy of someone else's handwritten sheet, so the end got cut off). I like the vagueness of this, as I imagine some dieters took it as license to cut the biggest slices of their favorite meat that they could manage while still leaving something for the rest of the family. There are also string beans, beets, a small apple, and the treat of 1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream at the end of the day. Note the dutiful checks by the food items, suggesting that the owner of the recipe box actually pulled off this diet for a full day. Poor thing. 😧

What did day 2 entail?

Breakfast gets a bit less generous than on day 1, with only an egg, a (presumably plain) slice of toast, and half a banana. Note that only the egg and toast get checkmarks. Maybe the dieter didn't like bananas?

Lunch is a truly pathetic half-cup of cottage cheese with five saltines. I sincerely hope that the lack of checkmarks meant the dieter ignored this menu and had a real lunch!

Dinner consists of 2 "weiners," a cup of broccoli, a half-cup of carrots, the other half of the banana from breakfast, and the exact same treat as day 1: a half-cup of vanilla ice cream. Notably, only the carrots and the ice cream(!) have a checkmark, so maybe the dieter replaced the rest of the items with something they liked better? We can only hope...

On to day 3, the last day of this godforsaken plan!

Note that this day has exactly zero checkmarks, perhaps indicating that our dieter concluded that the plan is bullshit and gave up when they were facing five saltine crackers, a slice of Cheddar cheese, and a small apple for breakfast. Lunch is the same as the breakfast from day 2, minus the half banana. Dinner features more of day 2's tuna and day 1's beets, plus the new additions of cauliflower and cantaloupe. Of course, the day ends with the only treat that exists in this diet's universe: a half-cup of vanilla ice cream.

I can definitely see why this diet was dispiriting enough that dieters had to take four days to recover for every three they were on it. And I'm super-glad that whoever may have started out on this regimen appears to have quit early. Life is too short for subsisting on saltines, beets, and eggs, anticipating the one tiny luxury the diet allows: a taste of vanilla ice cream.