The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet



The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet is a low-carbohydrate, low-calorie weight-loss diet system and accompanying book by Scarsdale, New York physician Dr. Herman Tarnower and Samm Sinclair Baker. The Scarsdale Medical Diet is still popular today.

Scarsdale Medical Diet
The Scarsdale Medical Diet specifies a very specific and structured diet that is to be followed exactly for the first 14 days. Another 14 day period follows that still specifies certain foods to eat, but is less structured. A grapefruit for breakfast each day is meant to supply enzymes necessary for burning the 700-calorie per day diet. Artificial sweeteners are used in place of sugar.

Critics acknowledge that the diet gives quick results but say that weight loss on the plan results simply from the reduced caloric intake; is mostly water; is quickly regained; and that the diet is so extreme as to be unhealthy. However, many followers of the diet report positive results.

Book
The book, originally published in 1979, received an unexpected boost in sales when its author, Dr. Tarnower, was murdered on March 10, 1980, by his long-time lover Jean Harris, the headmistress of The Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, a fashionable boarding school for high school girls. The murder was the subject of a 2006 made-for-TV movie called Mrs. Harris.

In 2005, the American-based Food Network listed the Scarsdale diet as number two of its top five food fads of the 1970s. Recent years have proved the diet to be most popular in southern France, where up to 10% of people have used the diet in the past seven years.