We Asked 3 Registered Dietitians About the Worst '80s Diet and They All Said the Same Thing ...Saudi Arabia

The '80s had its own unique culture and trends, including a culture around food. But while a lot of good came out of the '80s, this decade wasn’t exactly known for being great for nutrition. 

“There was a strong focus on thinness, and many diets promised rapid weight loss with little scientific evidence to support them,” says Sandra Zhang, RDN, LDN, dietitian at the Frances Stern Nutrition Center at Tufts Medical Center. Nutrition science wasn’t as developed in the 1980s as it is now, Zhang points out. As a result, fad diets thrived. 

Many diets in this decade focused on quick weight loss over sustainable changes to encourage people to eat a balanced, healthy diet, agrees Sonya Angelone, RD, PhD,a former spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and a San Francisco-based dietitian. 

“This is when the Dietary Guidelines for Americans were introduced,” Angelone says. But she says that even those were misinterpreted. “The guideline to limit fat was taken to the extreme of ‘eat as little fat as possible,’ which is when the fat-free craze really began."

While a lot of questionable diets thrived in the 1980s, there’s one in particular that dietitians say they’re glad is no longer around. This is the worst '80s diet, according to dietitians. 

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It’s the Beverly Hills Diet. “This diet was highly restrictive and lacked important nutrients, especially protein,” Zhang says.

The diet also lacked healthy fats, calcium, iron and vitamin B12, saysJessica Cording, RD, author of The Little Book of Game-Changers. “These are really important nutrients,” she explains. “People who followed this diet put themselves at risk for nutritional deficiencies and also felt really hungry.”

The diet was built around the concept that foods must be eaten in specific combinations for the body to digest food properly, Angelone explains.

“However, the body doesn’t need specific combinations to properly digest and metabolize nutrients,” she says. 

Zhang agrees. “The food-combining rules weren't supported by science,” she says. 

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What Was the Beverly Hills Diet?

The Beverly Hills Diet was the brainchild of Judy Mazel, who had no formal credentials in medicine or nutrition. She wrote several books on the diet, including The Beverly Hills Diet: How to Be as Thin as You Like for the Rest of Your Life and The New Beverly Hills Diet: Recipes to Forever.

The diet was done in phases and relied on a concept that certain nutrients, like carbohydrates and proteins, shouldn’t be combined in the same meal or even eaten in the same day. 

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The first phase of the diet lasted for 10 days. During that time, followers were encouraged to only eat fruits like pineapple and papaya, before adding in other fruits. Pineapple and papaya contain enzymes to promote digestion and weight loss, according to the diet.

“We call it pineapple magic and papaya power,” Mazel said in a 1982 interview.

Mazel blamed undigested food that’s “stuck” in the body for weight gain.

After 10 days, followers of the Beverly Hills Diet could slowly add protein, vegetables and fats back, but these needed to be on separate days. They were encouraged to focus on how foods are paired together vs how much they eat. However, estimates suggest that most people ate about 1,000 calories a day on the Beverly Hills Diet. 

“There are ways of, say, confronting your ‘fat person,’ acknowledging and letting go of them, and learning how to embrace your new skinny talk from a skinny voice,” Mazel said in the 1982 interview. Thinness was a big element of the diet. A description from one of Mazel’s books noted how she dropped from 180 to 108 pounds by following her diet. 

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While the Beverly Hills Diet was embraced by plenty of people, it was widely debunked by the medical community. JAMA called this diet “scientifically unsound and potentially dangerous,” stressing that it was not a “miraculous cure” for obesity. 

But people did lose weight on the diet. “The reason is that they ate so few calories,” Cording says.

However, some people ended up in the hospital after following the diet.

“A diet low in sodium or protein can lead to dehydration, low blood pressure and electrolytes changes,” Angelone tells Parade. “Plus, the lack of calories made people feel weak.” 

It’s not clear exactly when the Beverly Hills Diet fell out of favor, but it eventually petered out. “This was not a good diet,” Cording says. 

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