In the excellent 1957 film The D.I., Jack Webb lists all the grub fatty can’t have. The cakes. pies, and other junk I get. But he also included bread, corn, milk, beans, and potatoes. I’ve been in a crew chow line (though not the USMC) and he pretty much rattled off the entire menu. What was left?
What was that grunt supposed to eat? Just meat? Unbuttered corn and green beans are actually pretty good for losing weight, both being low grade catabolic. What would have been left in the mess hall that was considered weight loss foods back in those days?
I always thought that the Atkins / keto / paleo / South Beach, etc. diets were all relatively recent inventions. I didn’t know they went back to 1957. The answer is meat and non-starch vegetables.
Edited to add. If we disregard the difficulty of sticking to the diet, this is the correct way to eat healthy and lose weight. I still wonder about the low fat / high carb diets that had people eating all kinds of pasta, bread, rice and such, but woe unto someone who had a steak. It’s amazing to me that people actually believed that.
Right. Definitely not proven, just my opinion. Either way, I have no idea if meats and non-starch vegetables were foods that were typically available in chow lines of military barracks from 1957.
Low-carb diets were quite popular from the 1860s into the 1950s. They were first popularized by William Banting. For much of that period they weren’t really considered to be fad diets, but were more or less the standard weight-loss diet that many doctors advised their overweight patients to follow. They weren’t typically quite as strict as the modern Atkins diet. They allowed lots of green vegetables and moderate amounts of most fruits.
I’d speculate that “beans” usually means pork and beans, or some other dried bean dish. Lima beans could be forbidden, too. Green beans would not be forbidden. They’re green vegetables.
As to what else might be in an old chow line, I’d guess maybe carrots and cabbage. Maybe tomatoes. Maybe spinach.
He’s on a weight loss diet? He’s a grunt? I thought that “ordered not to eat anything on the chow line” was just one of those things that happens to grunts.
I wouldn’t know. My chow line was at the Sheriffs Academy. Nobody over the maximum allowed weight would have been there in the first place.
We had one Dep who gained a bunch of weight while on the job. He was given an official order to lose at least 45 pounds within 1 calendar year. He failed to do it and was forced to resign under an unfit for duty ruling. He had 6 years on the job.
ETA: He didn’t even come close. Lost maybe 15 pounds if that. Had he at least lost 30 pounds they probably would have given him an extension but he didn’t even try. I was pissed at him big time. I really liked working with him.