Wash away the pounds and other crazy notions

I’d guess most people have a friend who’s always on a diet. When it comes to weight loss, dieters are willing to do crazy things and quack inventors are happy to oblige.

Neatorama has tabulated the 10 craziest diets in history and yes, at one point in time, some people did believe they could wash away the pounds. The pseudo science (emphasis on pseudo) is that certain seaweed soaps they can penetrate the skin and break down fat. Real scientists have found no evidence of the sort, just really clean test subjects.

Another genius claimed that the key to losing weight was to cut back on food (smart) and the way to cut back was to keep people sedated for days at a time (not so smart). This “Sleeping Beauty” diet would be more accurately named the coma diet. The dangers of this one are obvious. As are the dangers of the tapeworm diet.