Coffee, soup and 80 cigarettes: the strangest diets followed by the stars of old Hollywood

Wondering where the eccentric dietary practices of old Hollywood stars come from? It was believed that lamb chops would provide enough protein to give strength, the sugar in pineapples would provide the right amount of energy, and the fruit acid would neutralize the fats in the meat.

As you can imagine, these unusual eating systems of movie stars worked extremely poorly: because of her diet, Nila constantly felt very weak, was sick for weeks and eventually abandoned the diet due to dizziness and dizziness. ‘constant hunger.

1930s movie star and sex symbol Jean Harlow ate exclusively cottage cheese and vegetables while filming, but it was a real treat compared to the diet the girl opted for when she thought she needed to lose weight. To lose weight, Jean followed a tomato diet for four days: for breakfast she ate a slice of black bread washed down with orange juice, for lunch and dinner – two whole tomatoes and coffee black.

One can only guess how much the unusual dietary practices of Hollywood celebrities affected their health and whether Harlow’s lean diet was one of the reasons for his untimely death from kidney failure at the age of 26.

The unusual diets of celebrities of the old Hollywood era were not always destructive: for example, the Hollywood actress, singer, model and sex symbol of the 40s and 50s, Jane Russell, can be an example for us all . The star followed a simple path: she excluded all alcoholic beverages from her life. Russell believed this was what allowed him to maintain his ideal figure while enjoying any food. (Ah, Jane, if only it were that simple!)

The morals of old Hollywood were harsh: if the studio wanted an actress to lose weight, then she simply did it. This is how actress and singer Judy Garland found herself on a diet consisting of black coffee, chicken soup and… 80 cigarettes a day: the young girl smoked to drown out the feeling of hunger. Of course, such eccentric eating methods of the stars of old Hollywood could not but affect Judy’s well-being: fainting during filming was common for her.

Do you remember the phrase: “Is that a weapon in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” » It belongs to Mae West – actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter and one of the most scandalous stars of her time. With these words, May turned to the police officer who had met her at the Los Angeles train station.

Celebrity diets with coffee, soup and 80 cigarettes don’t look so exotic compared to what West practiced: every morning the actress did… a coffee enema. Doctors of that time believed that it was thanks to this that May could boast of excellent health, but modern gastroenterologists would probably be horrified to learn what a woman did to the microflora of her gastro tract -intestinal.

This actress, who appeared several times in the pages of Playboy magazine, alongside Marilyn Monroe, was one of the sex symbols of the 1950s, and millions of women dreamed of having the same figure as Jane. Once during an interview, Mansfield admitted that a very unusual method helps her stay in shape: she only eats dinner and always eats steak in the evening.

The star could easily have won the prize in the category “The most illogical diets of Hollywood celebrities of the past” – the fact is that she… hated meat. To somehow brighten up the meal of his unloved food, Mansfield drank the Pink Lady cocktail in front of him, consisting of gin, apple brandy, lemon juice, grenadine and white wine. egg.

Also read: Unusual eating systems of ballet stars: 9 rules that help you monitor your figure

Some exotic diets of Hollywood celebrities have now become commonplace: for example, Greta Garbo loved raw foods. It all started when the producer told the actress that she was “too fat” for American audiences. It is not surprising that Greta very quickly made friends with the then popular nutritionist Gaylord Houser: it seemed to her that only his extreme methods would help her get in shape.

The recipes in Hauser’s books were generally vegetarian, but Garbo went further and abandoned heat treatment of products. For breakfast, for example, she scrambled two raw eggs with orange juice. Journalist Rebecca Harrington once tried following the Garbo diet for a week and later wrote that the drink tasted like “pneumonia if it were food.”

Sometimes, Garbo crossed a raw food diet with a mono diet: she once ate only spinach for 21 days. We can only rejoice that we now have other examples before our eyes and that women are less and less likely to choose such dangerous methods to lose weight.

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