When many people think of diets, the first thing they think of is losing weight. While that is often true, not all diets are solely about taking off pounds. A diet is really just the way that someone tends to eat on a regular basis, when and what foods they eat and how much. Some diets are undertaken for moral reasons, such as is the case with people who sustain from eating delicious, succulent cuts of meat that make your mouth water. Others believe that their strange diet will make them healthier, even if they aren’t concerned about losing weight at all. Of course some diets are mostly about losing weight, and those are usually the strangest.

10. The cookie diet.

The cookie diet sounds really stupid when you first hear about it, because it doesn’t seem like you are going to have much of a chance to lose weight eating confections. However, the diet plan is actually supposed to be quite good at causing you to lose weight. The idea is that you eat several specially formulated cookies throughout the day to control hunger and keep your caloric intake small and then have one mid size meal. While it does help people lose weight, the problem is that it does so by keeping people on a caloric restriction of around 1,000 to 1,200 which isn’t exactly enough for a human to get by on in a healthy manner. Many people supplement the lack of proper nutrition with multivitamins, due to not getting the right nutrition on the lower caloric plans.

9. The ramen diet.

This one is popular among college students mainly because it is easy and cheap and many young people eat far too much of it. Unfortunately ramen has pretty much no nutritional value, unless you count an incredible amount of sodium, reaching as much as 3,000mg in some flavor packets of ramen. To make matters even worse, ramen noodles are really high in fat, especially saturated fat. While some people suggest leaving out the seasoning packet and mixing ramen noodles with something healthier, the noodles themselves still contain an incredible amount of sodium. Really people would find more bang for their buck just buying a dollar box of actual pasta instead.

8. Raw food.

One of the crazier diet fads that seems to enjoy a resurgence on a semi-regular basis and has a strong steady following is the raw food diet. This diet isn’t really focused on losing weight at all, and isn’t particularly a moral choice either. The raw food diet is usually undertaken by people who have become convinced that eating food in its raw, natural, unprocessed state is the best for you. However, this makes their diets extremely limited, focused mostly on fruits and vegetables with certain select kinds of raw fish, meat and dairy products as well. The main problem with this diet isn’t necessarily nutrition but that you will be spending an incredible amount of time in the kitchen preparing everything, as the diet is highly specialized.

7. The Atkins diet.

The Atkins diet is too famous to leave off this list, and is probably the most controversial item here. While some people still defend it, it is not nearly as popular as it was during the height of its fad popularity. In fact, while the Atkins diet may not be as popular as it once was, many people still embrace a low carb diet. The problem the Atkins diet was looking to solve was the fact that most carbohydrates people were eating were mostly white flour and white sugar, not very good for you. However, the Atkins diet eliminates enough carbohydrates in your diet that it can actually be bad for you. A better approach that some people go for is to use some of the ideas in the Atkins diet, but still eat carbohydrates, just stick to good ones made entirely from whole grains.

6. TV dinner diet.

Another popular diet plan is the TV dinner diet; many people buy them by the cartful because they are quick and relatively cheap. More importantly to those watching their weight however, is that the TV dinners make portion control a lot easier and make calorie counting simple. The problem with these dinners is mainly that the sodium content is usually astronomical. Much of the time you’ll be lucky to find one that has a sodium count per serving that is less than a 1,000mg and oftentimes it will be much higher than that. Unfortunately, it looks like these frozen meals aren’t a very healthy choice.

5. Nothing but liquids.

All liquid diets are occasionally prescribed for medical reasons; however, it is usually for a very short period of time. Of course some people saw the potential for weight loss and a new diet plan was born. While some companies will peddle various products for a liquid diet that helps you lose weight, the main problem is that it is a yo-yo diet. Specifically this means you may lose a lot of weight while you are on it, but will find it hard to not put the weight right back on after you stop.  Worse yet many people who try to follow such a diet plan over an extended period of time develop health problems; it is not good for you long term.

4. Fruitarianism.

Fruitarianism is perhaps the strangest and most restrictive diet plan in the world. Vegans themselves are considered to be pretty extreme, taking their diet beyond just the table and into other aspects of their lives as well. However, fruitarianism is so extreme that even vegetables are not allowed. The idea being that unless something can be removed from a plant without doing harm to the plant, they will not eat it. Some are so extreme that they won’t even eat seeds or anything that might be able to create another plant. But if you thought that was extreme, some will ensure they only eat fruit that fell from a tree and will refuse it if it was picked by hand. The diet makes it very difficult to get proper nutrition and would be very difficult for most people to maintain.

3. Dairy diet.

Some recent studies have supposedly pointed toward large amounts of dairy in a diet being great for weight loss; however, the studies are quite misleading. Essentially the studies found that those in their dairy group lost more weight, but those in the dairy group were getting the nutrients from taking calcium supplements, not from actually eating dairy products. To make matters even more absurd, the study was supported by the National Dairy Council, which is like Coke supporting a study saying that soda is good for you. The truth is dairy products have some useful nutrients but should be consumed in moderation like all foods, as certain forms of dairy products in large amounts can have negative effects. For instance, large amounts of cheese are not particularly great for your cholesterol.

2. Chocolate cake diet.

This one isn’t exactly a fad diet; however, with this recent research it’s probably not long until a company markets their own special cake diet plan to fit this new idea. Essentially new research found that those who eat a confection such as chocolate cake with well balanced breakfast actually lose a pretty good amount of weight. The idea behind it is that eating the sugary confection in the morning helps speed up the metabolism, and makes you less likely to crave the sweets later in the day. And because you ate the confectionary early in the day, you don’t really have to worry about gaining weight from it, your body should have it all digested well before the day is over. Perhaps this one is a decent idea, and it would be as simple as pairing a small confection with a balanced breakfast in the morning.

1. Baby food diet.

One of the most bizarre fad diets is the baby food diet, many point to a fitness trainer named Tracy Anderson as the originator, although she has denied it recently, the diet also does not have an official set of rules. However, supposedly some in Hollywood have cottoned on to the idea and made it into a fad. Usually the diet involves replacing a couple of your meals with baby food and keeping your third meal low in calories. The other variation involves eating normal meals but eating baby food instead of snacks that might otherwise be high in calories through the day. Nutrition experts have pointed out that baby food is actually meant for babies, and won’t necessarily have the right nutrients for a grown adult. They also feel that with the wildly varying calorie content in baby food, and the fact that the taste and texture will likely never satisfy an adult, that they can’t see anyone keeping up with the diet for more than a few days.

Let’s face it: to the world, looks matter. Everyone wants to be attractive, and the people who society considers attractive generally have it easier. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is—because society is problematic. And for better or worse, the concept of looking good is tightly interwoven with skinniness. 

The quest to be skinny is a permanent struggle for many, often with constantly shifting goalposts. Many resort to drastic measures to shed some pounds, and there is always another predatory pseudo-scientist entrepreneur there to capitalize on them with another fad diet. 

Diet fads come and go, but the common links between (almost) all of them are their specious science, dubious results, and selfish profiteers. Here are ten of those diet fads that have come and mostly gone, who more often than not shed those pounds at the cost of your health and safety—or at least dignity.

10 Tapeworms

There is a long, long history of people using tapeworms to lose weight. Tapeworms are worms that survive via parasitism. In this case, they latch onto a section of the inside of someone’s intestine via hooks or suckers and steal a portion of nutrients from their host’s meals. The thought is that, by intentionally swallowing a tapeworm, someone can allow it to feed off their food, causing them to digest fewer calories and lose weight. As it turns out, it just doesn’t work that way.

There are thousands of different tapeworm species, and many won’t even accept humans as hosts. Among those that do, many feed so much they cause malnutrition, diarrhea, and anemia. And even if you happen to find just the right parasite at the sweet spot of calorie consumption, there is a chance the tapeworm, or the offspring it produces inside of you, will exit the gut and infect other parts of your body, causing any number of health issues. This fad diet is a long-lasting one, but is gradually falling out of favor due to, presumably, natural selection.

9 The Clay Diet

The clay diet grew to popularity thanks mainly to endorsements by actresses Shailene Woodley and Zoe Kravitz, which is not a great start. The idea is to consume with your food bentonite clay, a type of volcanic ash that is notoriously absorbent. The clay, allegedly, will bind to unwanted chemicals in your body and help you pass them when you poop a bunch of clay.

Except that is not how any of that works. Bentonite clay is indeed very absorbent, so much so that it binds to and absorbs everything it can, including the nutrients you need to survive (because duh; clay doesn’t magically know what you want to keep and what you don’t). It also tends to swell up in your gut (all that binding), causing distention and even perforating your bowels. In short: no, it is not a good idea to eat dirt, even if someone from Big Little Lies thinks you should.

8 Fletcher Chewing

Horace Fletcher was a non-doctor from the 1800s who struggled with obesity. He devised a “system” to combat it through… chewing food more. That’s really it. “Fletcherism” as some human doorknobs call it, is the strict adherence to chewing every bite at least 100 times. Fletcher himself was sure to add that the diet worked regardless of what someone eats, so a gallon of ice cream chewed 100 times is fine by Ol’ Fletch. Somehow, his ideas have survived to the modern-day, mainly because neither common sense nor scientific literacy is ubiquitous quite yet.

7 The Baby Food Diet

The baby food diet is a pretty good name in that it tells you the whole story on its own. The diet works by replacing meals with baby food. Not every meal, thankfully, just one or two per day. The reasoning behind the diet is simple enough. Baby food contains fairly complete nutrition and few calories. So it should work, right? I mean, yes, in the sense that never breathing again would work in preventing hyperventilation.

Baby food containers typically have 75-100 calories, so of course, replacing a full 2/3 of your meals with only 150-200 calories will result in weight loss. It does this through a mechanism doctors refer to as “starvation,” which removes fat but also removes muscle, bone, and also kills you. The fad was started by celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson and was adopted by celebrities like—shocker—Gwyneth Paltrow.

6 Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet

You must understand, I desperately want this diet to work. It pains me to write that it doesn’t. Or rather, it doesn’t work for free. There are a ton of stories of this diet working, but with about a dozen major caveats apiece. Here are some of my favorites:

A. They aren’t cookies. Not like you think. Not Oreos, Chips Ahoy, or Keebler’s. They’re more like fiber-bar/muffin hybrids that lack the taste and texture of cookies. Basically: there’s no cookie in the cookie diet. B. They also require a daily multivitamin, because they’re nutritionally a one-trick-pony—all fiber and protein, nothing else. C. They also require a full other meal of assorted meats, fruits, and veggies every day, which defeats the whole purpose of ‘losing weight by just eating cookies.’ D. My favorite. It costs $69.99 every week. That’s $3,640 per year. For fiber bars. Plus you need normal groceries, too. Luckily, it seems their sales are in decline and one of Dr. Siegal’s other health fads has already gone under.

5 The Cabbage Soup Diet

It’s easy: you can only eat cabbage soup, but you can eat as much cabbage soup as you want. We can stop right there: any diet that says that you can only eat X but eat as much X as you want is bad for you. Plain and simple. There is no one food, even a combination food, that is enough to provide a healthy existence and maintain energy and general wellbeing. Well, aside from specifically formulated mixtures with a large number of ingredients and complete nutrient profiles, but cabbage soup ain’t that. The American Heart Association listed a number of health issues the cabbage soup diet can cause, and it’s not pretty. It’s not a popular fad anymore, and with good reason.

4 Alkaline Diets

It can be hard to scroll through comment sections in general, but underneath videos about the wonders of “alkaline foods” (many of which aren’t alkaline), you’ll find a nightmare land of pseudoscience, willful ignorance, and anecdotal evidence of how ‘my brother’s friend’s sister’s husband’s butcher’s baker’s candlestick-maker said it totally worked for her.’ It didn’t, and it doesn’t. There is zero science to support the claims that alkaline foods promote weight loss and the claims that they even prevent cancer and other diseases.

There is a nugget of truth to this diet, though it’s accidental. Many foods that are highly acidic happen to be processed, fatty, and/or alcoholic. But those foods are bad because they’re processed, fatty, and/or alcoholic, not because they’re acidic. Yes, cutting those foods will improve your health and likely lead to weight loss. But not because of a made-up mish-mash of sciencey-sounding words. It’s because eating less unhealthy foods and eating more healthy foods is a good thing, which shouldn’t bear mentioning.

3 The Cotton Ball Diet

Eating cotton balls can kill you. Eating enough cotton balls will certainly kill you. This trend emerged in the modeling industry, where extreme societal expectations of women’s bodies forced them to resort to equally extreme measures. They began eating cotton balls because they allegedly create a feeling of fullness without adding any of those pesky (life-sustaining) calories. But objects with no caloric value are by definition non-food items, meaning no human should ever eat them. Reporting on the matter has died down, so you can only hope that the fad has died down, as well.

2 The Breatharian Diet

No one should have to say (type) this out loud (quietly): you cannot sustain yourself just by breathing. Air is not a substitute for food. The people that say air is a viable option for nourishment are liars. I know, there are many videos online wherein these people claim to have gone years without food, just by breathing correctly. They are liars. “But what about the breatharian couple?” you say. “They’ve gone decades without air, and they look great!” No, they haven’t, and… well, yes, they look great. But that came from eating healthy food. Then they realized they could get rich from making sensational claims which people would eat up—or not, because it’s air—and shell out money for. So they made those videos. It’s beneath me, all of humanity, and most invertebrate life (except for yellow-jackets. They’re awful, and nothing is beneath them), to dignify the breatharian’ movement’ with any more words.

1 The Master Cleanse (and any cleanse)

The sad thing is that this diet hasn’t failed in terms of popularity—it’s still popular among those with ‘coincidentally’ nutrient-deficient brains- but it consistently fails to produce lasting results. The master cleanse— essentially drinking only lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water—became popular because Beyonce allegedly used it to great effect. That is certainly possible, but like all half-thought-out fad diets, the results are either temporary or come at a great cost to personal health.

The master cleanse, as most cleanses, is an attempt to ‘detox’ the body, i.e., remove ‘toxins.’ As a former biologist and researcher, trust me when I say that 99% of people who use the word toxin do not know what it means. Seriously, Merriam Webster/Apple Dictionary App/Oxford English Dictionary that word right now. Toxins, in the way that health-hipsters talk about them, don’t exist. Many molecules are bad for our bodies, of course, but within normal levels, they are naturally filtered out by our livers and kidneys. The best way to help those organs do that is to eat a healthy, balanced diet, get enough sleep, manage your stress, and exercise regularly, not listen to singers with undisclosed endorsements and no scientific background.

In the world of popular culture, diets have been consistently talked about since far before the Golden Age of Hollywood. There are trendy diets that caught on and stuck around for years, like the Atkins diet or the Master Cleanse. And then there are the ones that are just myths, like Jackie Kennedy eating one baked potato filled with caviar every day. But some diets got everyone talking and, at times, defined eras. Let’s explore ten of the worst fad diets celebrities swore worked.

Trigger warning: This article contains a discussion of restrictive eating without the consent and supervision of a medical professional. Always speak with your doctor before starting a weight loss program.

10 The Juice Cleanse – Salma Hayek

The juice cleanse is an ever-popular fad diet that celebrities constantly reference as their go-to diet before big events or when they need to drop weight quickly. While it’s true that some individuals might lose weight while doing a multiple-day juice cleanse (only drinking juice is essentially just starving yourself, duh), some outlandish medical claims have been made about juice cleanses.

Although there is no science backing up these claims, many avid juicers will tell you that juice cleanses “detox” your body, prevent cancer, boost your immune system, and help with digestion.

One celebrity that loves juice cleanses so much that she started her own juicing company, Salma Hayek, is cited as saying, “After doing a juice cleanse, I’m motivated to eat healthier and not emotionally. Cleansing is like my meditation.”

9 The Coachella Diet – Beyoncé

In the Netflix documentary, Homecoming (2019), which details Beyoncé and her team’s preparations for her iconic Coachella performance, she talks about the diet she went on leading up to the performance. In less than half a year, Beyoncé dropped the weight she had gained during her pregnancy with twins.

Although preparations for the performance meant daily dance practice and physical training, Beyoncé went on a 44-day diet that cut out carbs, meat, fish, alcohol, and dairy. Beyoncé herself said that her diet and exercise routine during this time was too extreme and that she would never do it again; despite her own warning, the Coachella diet gained popularity across social media platforms.

8 The “Fruitarian” Diet – DaVinci, Gandhi, Jobs, & Kutcher

While this diet has a pretty long history, including the likes of Leonardo DaVinci and Mahatma Gandhi, it was introduced to pop culture after the passing of Steve Jobs, a known fruitarian. When Ashton Kutcher was preparing for his role in Jobs (2013), as the late great founder of Apple, he decided to try the fruitarian diet for 30 days to help him get into character.

According to Mila Kunis, spouse of Kutcher, in her episode of Hot Ones, Kutcher found himself in the hospital with pancreatitis twice during the film’s production due to his eating habits. The Cleveland Clinic details the risks of “fruitarianism,” including tooth decay, diabetes, and malnourishment.

7 The “Friends Diet” – Aniston, Cox, & Kudrow

The “Friends Diet” is a collection of fad diets that actresses Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, and Lisa Kudrow were on for the ten years they filmed the show Friends (1994-2004). While all three women were on pretty restrictive diets respectively, reportedly consuming no more than 1,200 calories a day for the entire length of the show, the most consistent part of their diet was what is infamously known as “The Jen Salad.”

“The Jen Salad” includes:

• 1 cup of bulgar
• 2 diced cucumbers
• 1 can of chickpeas
• 1/4 cup of minced red onion
• 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon of mint
• 1/2 a cup of pistachios
• 1/2 a cup of feta

While this salad doesn’t sound terrible, the famous trio ate this salad every day for ten years despite there being no dressing, which I couldn’t live without. And Aniston, she had the Jen Salad for dinner too…

6 The Carnivore Diet – Jordan B. Peterson

In 2018, during an episode for the Joe Rogan podcast, internet personality and psychologist Jordan B. Peterson describes his new favorite diet as consuming strictly beef, salt, and water. Due to the popularity of both the Joe Rogan podcast and Jordan B. Peterson himself, this diet grew in popularity despite the lack of science backing its claims of improved mental health and overall physical health.

An article published by The Cleveland Clinic notes that the Carnivore diet can lead to extreme constipation and an increased risk of heart disease.

Other celebrities that have tried the carnivore diet include Joe Rogan, who cited 2-weeks of “explosive diarrhea” when starting the diet, Mikhaila Peterson, Jordan B. Peterson’s daughter, and social media influencers, “The Buff Dudes.”

5 The Daniel Diet – Christ Pratt

The Daniel Diet, also known as the “Daniel Fast,” is a diet that follows a meal plan extrapolated from The Book of Daniel. It consists of a very strict plant-based diet, cutting out animal byproducts, processed food, alcohol, added and artificial sugars, caffeinated beverages, dairy, yeast, solid fats, and just about everything other than beans, lentils, fruit, vegetables, and whole grains.

Although the Daniel Fast is only 21-days long, in an interview with Stephan Colbert, Chris Pratt talks about going on the Daniel Diet for 30 days as a fast similar to the Catholic lent. Registered dietitian Katey Davidson stresses that this diet is not necessary for healthy living, nor is it a recommended method for weight loss, but freedom of religious choice is important.

4 The Paper Cup Diet – Nine Muses

The paper cup diet was introduced to pop culture by the K-pop girl group, Nine Muses. The gist of this diet is that every meal (of the three meals allowed by the diet) must fit into three paper cups. Dieters could fill one of the cups with brown or mixed grain rice, another with fruit, and the third with side dishes. Dieters should avoid greasy and high-fat food as well. The theory is that this would take the focus away from counting calories and instead cause dieters to be more conscious of portion control.

This diet allegedly gained traction among “pro-anorexia” internet forums and has become quite infamous within the K-pop community. When you look up “the paper cup diet” on YouTube, there are multiple videos made by teenage girls and women in their early 20s trying the diet, with many of those videos receiving hundreds of thousands of views.

3 The 8-Day Goat Milk Cleanse – Gwyneth Paltrow

This “cleanse” was endorsed by none other than the queen of cleanses, Gwyneth Paltrow. Apparently, consuming exclusively goat milk is supposed to cleanse your stomach and intestines from the parasite that you may or may not have. Not only is there no real science behind this cleanse, but there is also no recommendation for you to get diagnosed with a parasite by a doctor before doing it. You’re supposed to assume that you have a parasite or be diagnosed by a naturopath.

GOOP even has an article called “You Probably Have a Parasite—Here’s What to Do About It,” wherein the naturopath supporting this cleanse, Linda Lancaster, responds to medical questions without a medical degree or any medically backed answers. The kicker is that this cleanse recommends drinking raw, unpasteurized goat milk if you have access to it.

According to the CDC, “Raw milk can carry harmful bacteria and other germs that can make you very sick or kill you. While it is possible to get foodborne illnesses from many different foods, raw milk is one of the riskiest of all.” I think we will run far away from this fad diet; sorry, Gwyneth.

2 The Alkaline Diet – Beckham, Paltrow, Ripa, & Aniston

Praised for years by celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kelly Ripa, and Jennifer Aniston, the Alkaline diet consists of eating alkaline foods and reducing high-acid foods like meat. Although the diet itself isn’t unhealthy when an adequate amount of calories is consumed, the point of the Alkaline diet is disease prevention and, more specifically, cancer prevention.

The diet creator, Robert O. Young, is currently facing jail time for practicing medicine without a medical license. Not only does his alkaline diet claim to prevent cancer, but he actually attempted to treat a woman’s cancer with baking soda infusions.

1 The Sleeping Beauty Diet – Elvis Presley?

Despite sounding very pretty, the sleeping beauty diet is arguably the least pretty of all the diets mentioned on this list. The diet concept is that if you are sleeping, you’re not eating. Individuals will extend their usual amount of sleep in order to avoid eating. Some will even take sleeping pills to induce sleep at times that they wouldn’t usually feel tired, upping the length of their sleep from 8-10 hours to 18-24 hours.

In the case of Elvis Presley, who was known for having a big appetite and a noticeably fluctuating weight, a doctor allegedly put Elvis in a medically induced coma in order for him to lose weight.