Diets and Vitamins
“Reducing aids” “meal replacements” “non-fattening sweeteners” – all were methods freely advertised in these magazines to help a woman lose weight, supposedly in a way that was medically proven to be safe. While Sears was advertising multivitamins and supplements in the 1940s, they were also clearly telling women that they needed to “keep youthful and slender” and “lose ugly fat” and “excess pounds” with reducing diet plans and “aids.” Full pages of these weight-loss schemes are in the Sears catalogs from the ‘30s up through the ‘60s. They set the basis for the huge industry that is the weight-loss world today.
