Vintage Fatties

I’ve been sick this week – just lying in bed listening to podcasts and keeping the cats entertained. Sadly this means not much knitting has happened at all.

I’m particularly sad about missing out on Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea which was on Thursday. It’s a cancer council fundraiser and at work we have a bake-off which I had every intention of winning. I had great plans for parmesan and pepper biscuits and some tiny little fairy cakes that can be eaten in a single bite.

I really enjoy baking, but I’m not particularly excited about eating cake. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I prefer savoury foods. I would happily eat a wheel of cheese as big as my head, and when Geoff and I were getting married, we considered combining our surnames – Edwards and Adams – to make Edam, because then we could be cheeses. Ok, so it was funny at the time.

The second reason for my general lack of enthusiasm about cake is that very few cakes are worth the time it takes to run off the calories. It’s just so much easier to not eat the cake in the first place. This might sound a bit grim, but I have a 6km run to train for and the less ballast I’m carrying the better. Don’t waste your time on ordinary cakes (but do eat as many parmesan and pepper biscuits as you can fit in your mouth).

Saying “no” to the cake can be a difficult task and that’s as true now as it was in the 1950s. The ads below are from a single 1958 issue of Australian Home Journal magazine – and these were the ones that had cute enough pictures to include in this post. I counted 17 ads for weight loss pills, creams and girdles in the one magazine.

So for those who couldn’t say no to the cake in 1958 (or were faced with very good cake that was well worth eating), here are some patent medicines to help you slim back down – apparently with zero effort!

I still think I’d rather go for a run.