1918
The publication of Diet and Health, with key to calories, by Lulu Hunt Peters. The book is cited by Austin as the first best-selling diet book in the U.S. and was to stay in print for twenty years.
Austin S.B. (1999) Fat, loathing and public health: the complicity of science in a culture of disordered eating. Culture, medicine and psychiatry, Jun 1999, Vol.23, No.2, pp.245-268
A passage cited in Brumberg illustrates the new obsession with calorie counting.
"You should know and also use the word calorie as frequently, or more frequently, than you use the wors foot, yard, quart, gallon and so forth.hereafter you are going to eat calories of food. Instead of saying one slice of bread, or a piece of pie, you will say 100 calories of bread, 350 calories of pie."
Brumberg, J. (1989) Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa New York: New American Library