The other day, I heard a very gross rumor by way of a girlfriend’s friend who supposedly heard about this being talked about by rich women at a New York party: the tapeworm diet. I don’t doubt my sources, nor do I doubt the extremes to which pumped up New York socialites will go to, but various websites are telling me that this fad is actually an urban legend. The idea is basically that you would take a pill to infect yourself with a tapeworm, and then you can eat whatever you want without gaining any weight, cause the tapeworm digests it for you.
It’s a simply horrific concept which the debunker of urban legends, Snopes, classifies as of “undetermined” veracity. Interestingly, there may be some historical evidence to back this up:
As unlikely as this must sound, there might be some reason to believe tapeworm diet pills were once marketed in the Tapeworm diet pill cartoon United States between 1900 and 1920. A number of sources have indicated encountering advertisements for such products, but whether the products advertised actually matched their descriptions would be difficult to verify. (Just because an ad for a diet pill proclaimed the product contained tapeworms doesn’t mean it really did — duping people into buying medicinal nostrums by way of making false and exaggerated claims was standard procedure in the days before government regulation of food and drug products.)
Haha! Of course, medical products nowadays don’t fool or take advantage of anybody, right! That site doesn’t actually give any solid explanation of why such a diet wouldn’t work though. But I did find something on an editorial page of an Arizona paper explaining the drawbacks:
Do you know what ascites are? A big pool of fluid in your tummy caused by an immune response to something in your guts. Something like a tapeworm. It gives you a big potbelly, which runs kind of counter to the look you might be wishing for.
And a tapeworm might not necessarily just set up camp in your innards. It can also cause cysts in your muscles, liver and eyes.
Whether or not this story is actually true that people can and are using tapeworms for dieting purposes, it’s too good of a story to not pass off as though it were true. It has such a perfect image to convey about how vanity literally “eats you up inside” and drains your soul away in inhuman practices.
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7 Comments
I think on TV I heard that tape worms can lay a shit ton of eggs inside of you in a couple of days as well.
Oh man, this is an old, old, story - supposedly tapeworm eggs were sold as diet pills in the mid 1800s but who knows?
OK, snopes says:
Uh, Rev Max… did you not notice that I posted that same info in the body of my original post?
I can’t remember where it was but I did see an old ad for tapeworm diet pills.
I can’t say whether it’s legit or not but check out this website:
http://www.tapewormdiet.net/
*ahem* … there is also the nasty side effect of “bed-time itchy sphincter,” as tape worms emerge at night and lay eggs outside the nearest opening … don’t ask me how I know, just there are certain ponds one shouldn’t swim in in high summer.
On a postive note: Leeches are still used medically with great effect in surgery, and for burn victims!
This reminds me of an episode of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” South Bronx Paradise, baby!
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[...] The other day, I heard a very gross rumor by way of a girlfriend’s friend who supposedly heard about this being talked about by rich women at a New York party: the tapeworm diet. I don’t doubt my sources, nor do I doubt the extremes to which pumped up New York socialites will go to, but various websites are telling me that this fad is actually an urban legend. The idea is basically that you would take a pill to infect yourself with a tapeworm, and then you can eat whatever you want without gaining any weight, cause the tapeworm digests it for you. [...]