Definition

The Scarsdale diet is a rapid weight loss regimen classified as a very low-calorie diet, or VLCD. It is also one of the oldest low-carbohydrate diets still followed by some dieters. Although the first edition of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet was published in 1978, over a quarter-century ago, the book is still in print as of early 2007. It is reported to be particularly popular in France in the early 2000s.

Origins

The Scarsdale diet began as a two-page typewritten office handout drawn up in the 1950s by Dr. Herman Tarnower, a cardiologist who had built a medical center in Scarsdale, a middle- to upper middle-class community in Westchester County, New York. Tarnower had written the short reducing guide for patients who needed to lose weight for the sake of their hearts; he was not a professional nutritionist or dietitian. The two articles that he published in medical journals have to do with fever as a symptom of a heart attack and with management of congestive heart failure. His primary motive in writing down his diet plan was impatience; he disliked having to spend time explaining nutrition or other health issues to his patients and so chose to make up a weight-reduction handout. Tarnower gave an interview shortly before his death to the journal Behavioral Medicine, in which he stated, ‘‘If you don’t have a routine written out that you can give to patients with common disorders, it will destroy you. You try to go over all the instructions with each patient, but no physician has that much patience.’’

Tarnower’s patients often copied the diet for their friends, who in turn sent photocopies to other friends. At some point in the mid-1970s, following the early success of the Atkins diet, one of Tarnower’s friends, Oscar Dystel, suggested that he expand his office handout into a full-length book. Tarnower hired a writer, Samm Sinclair Baker, who had published other books in the field of nutrition, and the first edition of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet was printed in 1978. It became an immediate bestseller, going through 21 printings in its first ten months in hardcover format. Tarnower’s book became the choice of four book clubs; it sold the second-highest number of copies (over 642,000) of hardcover books published in 1979, outdone only by a humorous book by Erma Bombeck. According to Time magazine, Tarnower’s diet book grossed more than $11 million by the spring of 1980. Sinclair Baker’s most important contribution to the book was to suggest four new programs that represented variations on the basic diet: the Scarsdale Diet for Epicurean Tastes, the Scarsdale International Diet, the Scarsdale Vegetarian Diet, and the Scarsdale Money-Saver Diet. These will be described more fully below.

Tarnower’s book received an initial surge in sales when it was featured in such prestigious fashion magazines as Vogue, which ran an article on ‘‘the Scarsdale-diet rage’’ in 1979. It received an even bigger boost when Dr. Tarnower was shot and killed in March 1980 by Jean Harris, a long-term lover who was then the headmistress of a prestigious private school for girls in Virginia. The made-for-media aspects of the murder and the trial that followed guaranteed that the diet book would receive its share of attention from the press and the public.

Description

The Scarsdale diet can be summarized as a very low-calorie low-carbohydrate diet with a slightly different ratio of carbohydrates,proteins, and fats. An adult woman who follows the diet exactly will consume between 650 and 1000 calories per day. The nutrient ratio, which is unusual for a low-carbohydrate diet, is 43% protein, 22.5% fat, and 34.5% carbohydrate.