The drive to carve out a special selection of foods to promote weight loss or health has been around as long as recorded history. In ancient Greece (home of the Mediterranean diet), the great physician Hippocrates advised overweight citizens to follow a strict regimen of “exercise and vomiting.” William the Conqueror, beginning around 1080, followed an all-alcohol diet. (He later died in a horseback riding accident.) In the early 1800s Lord Byron followed a vinegar diet. The early 1900s saw the tapeworm diet. (Yes, it is what it sounds like. The idea is that tapeworms would consume some of the
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