A Short Glimpse on the History of Diet Pills

A Short Glimpse on the History of Diet Pills

Have you ever wondered how or when diet pills started? For this, we have to start looking at how weight and body image were perceived throughout the years. In the past, a voluptuous body was considered attractive and beautiful because this represents abundance and prosperity. This is also known as the Rubenesque figures found in some ancient European and Asian sculptures, oil paintings, stone carvings, and more art forms.

As you can see, a full-bodied woman is considered beautiful in the past eras however the ever-changing times have shifted this image and turned to the slimmer and shapelier body as the new image for beauty. The change was influenced by technological advances throughout history which gave birth to television. Ever since the television was invented, more and more people became conscious about physical attributes as opposed to intellectual qualities of human beings. This is one of the reasons why Nixon lost the election when he went against Kennedy.

The first ever known diet pills can be traced as far as the late 19th century and in the early 20th century. During this era, the pills were claimed to contain tapeworms and tapeworm eggs. Some of the products made even claim that they only use sanitized tapeworms and that they don't have any harmful effects on human health. The tapeworm weight loss predicament continued to rise even as far as 1950's when a famous opera singer was found to have contracted tapeworms from her dieting lifestyle.

In the 1930's era, diet pills were sold with the chemical dinitrophenol and as expected, thousands of people self-prescribed the said weight loss drug. After some time, it has been discovered that dinitrophenol was poisonous to the human body and some consumers later developed blindness while others died from taking the diet pill.

The 1950's era was the beginning of a controlled diet pills prescription. During this time, amphetamines were developed to help soldiers in war to stay alert, avoid fatigue, and suppress their appetites. Diet pills also contained amphetamines and doctors began prescribing them to their patients. However, because of the ill-effects of the said drug, some patients developed dependency and addiction. The amphetamine diet pills were no longer being prescribed in the 1960's.

1970's became the era for appetite suppressing candies called Ayds which was developed by the Carlay Company of Chicago thirty years earlier. The diet pill candies were a blast in the 70's era and the early 80's. However, when the AIDS disease became public in the late 80's Ayds chewable candies' image plummeted and the sales were abruptly stopped.