Losing Weight - Health Detriment?

History is full of accounts of men and women changing their appearances and trying to lose weight to the detriment of their health in order to impress the people around them. Around the 10th century, in China, wealthy women customarily bound their feet to break the arch and create a smaller foot. In the Victorian era, women (and sometimes men too) were forced to mold and shape their torso using metal or whalebone structures called corsets. This was one of the ways in which they tried to change the shape of their silhouette to please others.

As people stopped worrying about their sustenance and started worrying about their size, opportunist businesses started to find ways to make money out of these cultural developments. Scientific studies were rarely performed on these “solutions” which were touted widely to improve the appearance, form or function of various body parts or had a specific benefit for the body as a whole. Read on to see a list of the various fads and gimmicks that people were offered over the years in order to “improve” their appearance.

Many of the new inventions were introduced to the gullible public who spent their hard-earned money to try out these new gadgets and gizmos. History shows that although many of the “inventors” became millionaires, the public lost a lot except their weight.

Read on to see the ways in which people tried to make money out of this obsession with weight. This proves the adage “There is nothing new under the sun”.