The Theory of Weightlessness

The U.S.'s longtime preoccupation with the shape of the human figure has reached from Fletcher's mastication diet of the early 1900s to Elmer Wheeler's Fat Boy calorie counter of the '50s, but no diet fad has ever taken the U.S. so overwhelmingly as the craze for the food supplement Metrecal (TIME, Oct. 3) and its sister brands. Across the nation last week, drugstores and supermarkets were clamoring for fresh carload deliveries to accommodate the growing hordes of Schmoo-shaped addicts who were insisting on guzzling their way to the vanishing point. Cried a happy druggist: "It's the bestselling thing since the Hula Hoop!" Campaigner Jack Kennedy was right, sighed an overweight Republican, when he said that 17 million Americans go to bed hungry every night--"most of them are on Metrecal."

Lunch in a Cup. School teachers and office workers take their Metrecal to work in thermos bottles. Others line up at the office water-coolers with the chalky powder* and mix their lunch in a paper cup. Drugstores serve the stuff across the soda fountains, and manufacturers are even shipping it ready-mixed in handy cans. Metrecal distributors have filled orders from Saudi Arabian royalty and the King of Greece. The well-heeled businessmen who dine at Denver's Twenty-Six Club drink it; so do the spring-training players of the Birmingham Barons. Food Editor Marjorie Barrett of Denver's Rocky Mountain News wrote about her Metrecal diet, soon became the spiritual leader of a kind of Fatsos Anonymous, whose backsliding members gained great encouragement by calling her on the phone and discussing their terrifying moments of weakness.

Since most users agree that the stuff is vile-tasting ("It's glubby," said a Dallas dieter, "absolutely nauseating"), many mix it with gin, rum or bourbon. Some freeze it and eat it like sherbet. A Washington lovelorn columnist advised the wife of an alcoholic to spike her husband's gin with Metrecal. One happy user of a similar supplement is Dallas' Specialty Store (Nieman-Marcus) Tycoon Stanley Marcus. "I've lost 15 pounds," says he, "several times." Marcus' specialty is "a kind of Spanish gazpacho soup." He mixes the dieting powder with cucumbers, tomato paste, ground-up peppers, tomatoes and curry powder.

Gloomy Muttering. Despite suggestions from the manufacturers that dieters should consult with their doctors and should also maintain a carefully selected food intake, thousands are under the mistaken impression that they can go on eating as much as they like and still lose weight, so long as they drink their Metrecal. Even those who know better are sometimes weak in will power. Office workers in one San Francisco place recently heard the telltale sound of a crinkling candy-bar wrapper, found a devout but spineless dieter surreptitiously gobbling chocolate and cookies at her desk.

Where will it all end? Optimists claim that all the dieting is producing a new, slim American who will look as grand as the fashion ads. But there are mutterings that if it keeps up long enough, the Communists will overpower the U.S. without firing a shot. Americans will all get so skinny that the Reds will take over the country merely by sucking up the citizenry with vacuum cleaners.

* A mixture of skim-milk powder, soybean flour, corn oil minerals and vitamins, originally concocted by Mead Johnson & Co. for invalids who could not take solid food.

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