Eating for Life

You may never have been on a diet, but you probably know people who have. Maybe your mother or father or bubby or zeidy. As people get older, they tend to put on weight — which can harm their health — and then go on a diet to lose weight. Or sometimes it’s just to look nicer. But there’s more to dieting than losing weight.

Eating    for    Life
Until modern times dieting to lose weight was almost unheard of. Food wasn’t as easily available as it is today (at least in the US and Europe) and most people were much more concerned about getting enough food so as not to go hungry. 
What we call overweight these days used to be thought of as a good thing something only the rich could be. Everyone else was skinny because they couldn’t afford to eat more. We don’t know exactly when weight-loss programs began to be popular. We don’t know who was the first person to say “Oy vey I have to go on a diet!” but it was probably sometime after the invention of matzah balls.

To read the rest of this story please buy this issue of Mishpacha or sign up for a weekly subscription

Continue reading with Mishpacha.

Create a free account to keep reading.

Everything you need to stay close to Mishpacha.