Back in the 60s and early 70s, my mother used a diet product called Ayds. They came in a box, and were, to my youthful tastes, a pretty good year-round substitute for a Valentine’s Day box of chocolates. Now that I am middle aged and a bit over the posted weight limits, I was wondering if the product still existed. I tend to assume that if the product made it to the 1980s, that the establishment of the acronym AIDS would have killed off, if not the product itself, at least the original appellation. Do Ayds candies still exist, even if under another name?
I remember these things. I don’t think they were particularly low-calorie (although they may have been low-fat) and you were supposed to eat one with a hot drink before meals in order to kill your appetite. I think a fun-size Snickers bar with a hot drink would probably work just as well. But I believe the Ayds candies are gone.
If you can’t find Ayds,Slimfast products are the same principle.They use a fiber that expands with the water you drink with it,quelling hunger pangs and giving a general feeling of a somewhat full/less empty stomach.
I’ve had a few of their candy/cake bars and they did the trick for me with coffee.The effect lasts longer than coffee and danish.Plus they seem to have some sort of nutritional content,if we’re to believe the label.
IIRC Ayds had an appetite-suppressant drug in 'em. I read somewhere that the product changed name because of AIDS but still failed, and hence is no longer made.
Maybe it was http://www.retrocrush.com/ where I read about it.
Hi Alaskan Gandhi welcome to the boards. I asked the same question back in December. Here is a link to the responses.
I remember these, too. My WAG would be that if you ate two Kraft caramels with a cup of hot coffee or tea before you ate a meal, it would help you lose weight. For one thing, having to do something before you eat helps to keep you from mindlessly eating stuff. That’s the first way it would help. Also, the caffeine in the tea or coffee does help a little in suppressing appetite. That’s the second way it helps. The hot liquid and candy in your stomach would make you feel fuller, thus reducing the amount you eat at your meal; this is the third way it helps. Fiber would be even more helpful, so if you wanted to try something like this, get some high-fiber cookies (look for them where the Metamucil and stuff is; in fact, I believe Metamucil makes them, at least here in America). In the UK, I believe they’re called “digestive biscuits” or some such. Then, eat one of the cookies with a hot beverage. Then, not only are all the above benefits obtained, but the fiber helps you feel fuller, as well.
Thank you Khadaji, I checked out those earlier comments. I guess no one really knows for sure, but it does look like they’re gone. I sure wish I knew when they actually went out. Hard to believe they were still around in '99.
When reports of AIDS first started appearing on the TV news (after they had decided on a name a little less condescending than “GRID”), I’d hear about it, and think that people were getting sick and dying from eating Ayds diet candy. No, really. I was only nine years old in 1981 when the first cases of PCP and KS among young, previously healthy gay men were reported to the CDC, and I believe it was being called “AIDS” as early as 1982.
My mother had a couple of boxes in them tucked way back in the cupboard. Maybe they were stale, but they tasted like crap.
Oh - by PCP, I mean pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, not angel dust. (KS is Kaposi’s Sarcoma.)
They desperately changed their name to DIET-AYDS in the mid-'80s, but to no avail. I think the company finally went under.
My Mom took Ayds too, in the '60s. I remember commercials as late as c1983, with perky women saying, “I lost 30 pounds with Ayds, and am I happy!” Very eyebrow-raising.