Vance Thompson

Vance Thompson (April 17, 1863 - June 5, 1925) was an American literary critic, novelist, poet and low-carbohydrate diet writer.

Vance Thompson
BornApril 17, 1863
DiedJune 5, 1925
OccupationLiterary critic, writer

Biography


The son of a Pittsburgh pastor, he was educated at Princeton University and graduated in 1883. He later studied in Germany, and worked as a dramatic critic in New York City from 1890 to 1897. Like fellow-aesthete and good friend James Huneker, he helped bring fin-de-siècle French authors to the attention of the American public. He also wrote a study on the ego entitled the Ego Book: a Book of Selfish Ideals (1914). A study of French authors with ties to the Symbolist movement was published in 1913, entitled French Portraits: Being Appreciations of the Writers of Young France. From 1895 to 1899, he co-edited the periodical M'lle New York with Huneker. Described as "a highly idiosyncratic blend of serious analyses and presentations of European Symbolist literature and thought with buffoonery and incessant anti-philistinism", it quickly became a manifesto for their cultural ideals.[1]

Dieting

Thompson authored several books on healthy living, such as 1914's Eat and Grow Thin and 1916's Drink and Be Sober.

His diet book Eat and Grow Thin was popular, by 1931 it was in its 112th printing. It advocates a low-carbohydrate diet and contains a list of "forbidden foods".[2][3][4] Thompson believed that dairy, pork, ham, bacon, beans, bread, grains, cereals, flour, rice, potatoes, sugar, and all alcoholic drinks should be avoided.[5] He recommended eating all kinds of meat (except pig), game, sea-food, eggs, fruit and green vegetables.[6] The book was criticized for misrepresenting nutritional science.[3]

Physician B. B. Vincent Lyon criticized Eat and Grow Thin for promoting a fad diet. Lyon noted that the high-protein content of the diet is dangerous for obese patients or those with cardiovascular or renal insufficiencies.[7] Physiologist Graham Lusk commented that the advice from the book "made so many of my friends so utterly miserable that I am sure that in the end it will counteract its own message."[8]

Publications
Eat and Grow Thin, 1914

References
  1. The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch: the Vivian and David Campbell Collection. Page 26. Yale University Press, 1996.
  2. Eat and Grow Thin. (1916). The American Journal of Clinical Medicine 23 (6): 547.
  3. Elias, Megan J. (2009). Food in the United States, 1890-1945. ABC-CLIO. pp. 129-130. ISBN 978-0-313-35410-6
  4. Kraig, Bruce. (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Volume 1. Oxford University Press. p. 510. ISBN 978-0199734962
  5. Elias, Megan J. (2017). Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 67-68. ISBN 978-0812249170
  6. Thompson, Vance. (1914). Eat and Grow Thin. New York: E. P. Dutton. pp. 42-43
  7. Lyon, B. B. Vincent (1916). "The Treatment of Obesity". International Clinics. 26 (3): 42.
  8. Lusk, Graham. (1917). Food In War Time. The Scientific Monthly 5: 307.
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