Oh-- the Greeks invented the diet, which really meant "a sensible way of life." But---"It was the early Christians who brought temptation and sin into the mix. The enormously fat St Thomas Aquinas wrote: "Let us not give our minds to delights but to what is the end of delights. Here on earth it is excrement and obesity, hereafter it is fire and the worm."
More dieting history from a new book, Louise Foxcroft's Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting Over 2,000 Years (Profile Books)
Via The Guardian
Dieting is Food Historic, Too
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