Food For Thought

This was just too good not to share…

I just adore this 1891 advertisement. It amazes me how much the ideal body has changed  in  the last hundred years.  These days the girl on the left would be considered healthy and the one on the right would be woefully obese and thought to suffer all sorts of weight related maladies from diabetes to high blood pressure and chronic pain.
It also speaks to our idea of what’s considered healthy.  One of the three sisters in the inset is quoted as saying:

“In four weeks professor William’s famed FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor & developed me finely. My two sisters also use FAT-TEN-U  and have gained much needed fleshiness. because of our newly found vigor we have taken up Grecian dancing and have leading roles in all local  productions.”

Similar wording could be used in one of those modern day diet advertisements in which the happy customer exclaims how much more energy she has now that she’s thin and how now she’s happy to jog and wear a bikini to the beach… you know, which would have been impossible when she was fat!

100 years ago were the fat girls the belles of the ball? Were the skinny girls the ones making excuses to stay home? Would I have spent my adolescence being proud of my curves instead of fighting a constant battle with them? Would the skinny girls have been jealous of ME?

More importantly, why has what we consider the portrait of health been completely inverted in the last hundred years? Clearly plump women in Victorian times were thought to live fuller, happier, healthier lives. Back then being fat was a sign of vitality, clearly it wasn’t thought to cause illness or slow people down, after all, the FAT-TEN-U Sisters are prancing about doing Grecian dancing and starring in local theater productions!

Judging from the enthused women in the advertisement, being fat wasn’t just thought to make you more attractive, it was thought to be healthier too. Clearly women back then weren’t worried about diabetes and other weight related problems. Did anybody even get diabetes back then?

This just goes to show that all the heath related anti-obesity saber rattling is just that — a lot of unnecessary noise. Some fat people get sick, so do lots of thin people. What we see as healthy and attractive has a lot more to do with  our culture than anything else.

Here’s a some free advice for the public: Eat good food, preferably eat things that grew out of the ground or grazed on it. Get fresh air and exercise. Whatever size you are, you’ll be healthy, no tonics, elixirs or potions required.