The tired trail driver alighted from his saddle, tied his horse and waddled toward the chuck wagon. Breathing dust behind cantankerous longhorns all morning had the Texas drover mighty hungry for lunch.
“What’s for dinner, Cookie?”
“This ain’t Delmonico’s,” the master of the chuck wagon replied. “Same thing’s yestiddy…fried steak, taters, biscuits, molasses and Arbuckle’s.” (The West’s favorite coffee before Starbucks.)
Ravenous as he was, the cowpoke gazed down at his ample belly, a spread that looked about as big as King’s Rancho down in South Texas. He really needed to lose some weight.
“I was thinking baked chicken breast with herbal seasoning, lightly sauteed mushrooms, steamed asparagus…maybe some canned tomatoes,” he said. “I need to do something about this danged corpulence. I’ve awled two extra notches in my belt and my horse’s been breathin’ hard when I’m in the saddle. Shoot, I start blowin,’ too, ever time I climb on him.”
The cook spat in the fire, barely missing the beans slow cooking for the cowboys’ evening meal.
“If you don’t like my grub, maybe YOU should start cooking for the boys.”
Normally, the threat of having to rustle up his own victuals shut up even the most vociferous of complaining trail hands. But this young man really wanted to shed the love handles before he and the boys hit the Dodge City dance halls. It was time to start banting.
Then the cowboy remembered an ad he’d seen in the Austin Statesman. He’d bought a copy as their herd went up Congress Avenue right after crossing the Colorado.
“Reckon you don’t happen to have a bottle of Allan’s Anti-Fat?” the weight-conscious drover asked the cook in near desperation.
While the foregoing is fanciful, a little research shows that some early Texans were as worried about their waistline as they were about the spread of newly invented barbed wire.
“Corpulence is not only a disease itself, but the harbinger of others,” the Greek Hippocrates wrote back when he and his fellow Mediterranean thinkers were busy coming up with all the many truths that still hold up.
But a 19th century man is credited with inventing the notion of losing weight in deference to one’s health or appearance. His name was William Banting, and depending on the source, he was either a London upholsterer or undertaker. Not disputed is that he suffered from corpulence.
“In a year and 17 days,” the El Paso Times of Nov. 8, 1890 informed its readers, Banting “reduced his weight from 202 pounds to 156. He elaborated a dietetic method of curing corpulence, which method is now known by his name.”
Yes, for generations, going on a diet was called “banting.” And being overweight was known as corpulence.
Mr. Banting had deduced during the Civil War that eating fewer carbohydrates and consuming less sugar led to weight loss. By the 1870s, the quack medicine industry was making money off narcotic or alcohol-laden preparations that did at least make you feel like you were better. Perhaps they could offer their customers something to help them with banting.
The June 22, 1878 Austin Daily Statesman carried an ad from J.C. Allan’s Botanic Medicine Co. of Buffalo, NY touting a concoction called Allan’s Anti-Fat. The ad featured an engraving showing a woman before taking Allan’s Anti-Fat and after. The drawing on the left depicted a large and sad looking lady. On the right was the same woman, now of normal size and a happier countenance.
“Purely vegetable and perfectly harmless,” the ad declared, the preparation “…acts upon the food in the stomach, preventing its being converted into fat.”
Of course, the ad continued, one must follow the directions when using Allan’s Anti-Fat. But for those who did, the ad went on, “it will reduce a fat person from two to five pounds per week.” Left unsaid, though implied, was that users of Allan’s Anti-Fat could eat anything they wanted. This miraculous remedy cost only $1.50 a bottle at drug stores or “by express.” Three bottles (the ad cleverly said a “quarter-dozen”) only cost $4.
The following month, the Capital City daily carried a short item that today we’d call an advertorial. “Fat People Easily Sunstruck,” the headline warned. Then: “Fat people are not only liable to sudden death from heart disease, apoplexy, etc., but statistics show…they are more liable than others to sunstroke and affections arising from extreme heat.”
What was a cowboy on the Chisholm Trail to do?
Thankfully some reassuring news: “An extensive experience in the treatment of corpulence has resulted in the introduction of Allan’s Anti-Fat, a safe, certain, and speedy remedy for the cure of this terrible condition. If corpulent people who are exposed to the rays of the sun value life, and a comfortable existence, let them use Allan’s Anti-Fat.”
By late September, the Statesman ran a Botanic Medicine Co. ad containing letters from happy customers. While all the correspondence reported excellent results, none came from west of the Mississippi. (Which may explain the company’s Texas advertising campaign.)
This ad offered yet more good news. Not only did Allan’s Anti-Fat cure corpulence, it purified the blood, promoted digestion, cured dyspepsia and “is…a potent remedy for rheumatism.”
The trail driving days are long gone, but pharmacies continue to enjoy 3X-size sales of over the counter products marketed as weight-loss nostrums.