Dr. James Salisbury called it a “muscle pulp of beef” but we know it today as Salisbury steak. The good doctor believed that chopped beef (and coffee) could cure the intestinal ailments of Union soldiers during the Civil War. Convinced of the virtues of this diet—and that fruits and vegetables were the, uh, root of all evil—Dr. Salisbury published The Relation of Alimentation and Disease, which became America’s first fad diet.*
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