Breakfast Drinks

At the beginning of the twentieth century a growing number of patent-medicine peddlers exploited customers who wanted to lose weight regardless of their health. They began selling the forerunners to liquid diets and instant breakfast drinks. These patent medicines ranged from the harmless Jean Down’s Get Slim mixture of pink lemonade to less benign remedies, such as the 1930s Helen’s Liquid Reducer Compound, which encouraged dieters to gargle away their fat with a mixture of peppermint, bleach, and hydrogen peroxide. Dr. Stoll’s Diet Aid was the first of these new diet drinks that got their start in the 1930s and have been reincarnated in each subsequent decade.