Esta página também existe em português: Português (Brasil)
World diets through history
Who invented the Mediterranean diet? And keto, DASH, paleo? This page tells the story of 16 famous diets: the year, the creator or study, the country and the principle of each one, without prescribing any.
Who created each diet, year by year
| Diet | Year | Creator or study | Country | Principle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vegetarian (modern) | 1847 | Vegetarian Society (Ramsgate) | England | Abstaining from meat, with religious and moral roots the society organized into a movement |
| Ketogenic | 1921 | Russell Wilder, Mayo Clinic | United States | Very high fat and almost no carbohydrate to mimic fasting, created as an epilepsy therapy |
| Vegan | 1944 | Donald Watson, The Vegan Society (Leicester) | England | No animal products at all; Watson coined the word vegan from vegetarian |
| Mediterranean | 1958 | Ancel Keys, Seven Countries Study | United States / Italy / Greece | Pattern observed in the field in the 1950s and 60s: olive oil, cereals, vegetables and little meat |
| Macrobiotic | 1961 | George Ohsawa (ideas of Sagen Ishizuka) | Japan | Yin and yang balance on the plate, centered on whole grains; the term goes back to Hufeland, 1796 |
| Weight Watchers | 1963 | Jean Nidetch | United States | Weight loss through group support and portion control, born in the living room of a Queens housewife |
| Atkins | 1972 | Robert Atkins | United States | Drastic carbohydrate cutting, launched by the bestseller Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution |
| Okinawa | 1975 | Makoto Suzuki, Okinawa Centenarian Study | Japan | Study of Okinawa's centenarians funded by Japan's health ministry: vegetables, sweet potato and frugality |
| Paleo | 1975 / 2002 | Walter Voegtlin; Loren Cordain | United States | Eating like pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers; Voegtlin wrote the thesis in 1975 and Cordain popularized it in 2002 |
| Ornish | 1990 | Dean Ornish, Lifestyle Heart Trial | United States | Very low fat vegetarian eating plus exercise and stress management, tested in a randomized clinical trial |
| DASH | 1997 | NIH (trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine) | United States | Eating pattern designed by public research to lower blood pressure |
| Dukan | 2000 | Pierre Dukan | France | Protein in successive phases, published in the bestseller Je ne sais pas maigrir |
| South Beach | 2003 | Arthur Agatston | United States | Carbs and fats sorted into good and bad by glycemic index, created by a Miami cardiologist in the 1990s |
| Nordic | 2004 | Claus Meyer and 12 chefs (New Nordic Food Manifesto) | Denmark | Local, seasonal northern European ingredients, in a manifesto signed in Copenhagen |
| Intermittent fasting 5:2 | 2012 | Michael Mosley (BBC Horizon) | United Kingdom | Five normal days and two restricted ones; fasting itself has millennia-old religious roots |
| MIND | 2015 | Martha Clare Morris, Rush University | United States | Hybrid of Mediterranean and DASH aimed at the brain, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia |
Where diets come from: science, demography, religion and marketing
Every famous diet was born in one of these four places. From science: the ketogenic diet was created in 1921 by physician Russell Wilder at the Mayo Clinic as an epilepsy therapy, half a century before it became a weight loss trend; DASH was designed by NIH-funded research and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997; MIND came from data on nearly a thousand older adults followed by Martha Clare Morris and her team at Rush University, published in 2015. From demography: Ancel Keys did not invent the Mediterranean diet, he found it, observing in the 1950s and 60s what farmers in Italy and Greece ate, within the Seven Countries Study launched in 1958; the same happened in Okinawa, where physician Makoto Suzuki began studying in 1975 why the island had so many centenarians. From religion and philosophy: organized vegetarianism was born in 1847 in Victorian England with strong moral and Christian roots, fasting is a millennia-old practice of Ramadan, Lent and Yom Kippur long before the 5:2, and George Ohsawa's macrobiotics applies Chinese yin and yang to the plate. And from marketing: Atkins (1972), Dukan (2000) and South Beach (2003) are bestseller diets, created by doctors and launched by books that sold millions.
What the table tells
The word vegan has a birth certificate: November 1944, when Donald Watson and a small group founded the Vegan Society in Leicester and he joined the beginning and the end of vegetarian. The 5:2 diet became a phenomenon after a single BBC documentary, aired in 2012, in which journalist Michael Mosley tested fasting on himself. The Nordic diet may be the only one in the world created by chefs: a 2004 manifesto, signed in Copenhagen at the initiative of Claus Meyer, co-founder of the restaurant Noma, inspired by the Dogme 95 film manifesto. And Weight Watchers started in 1963 as meetings in the living room of Jean Nidetch, a Queens housewife, before becoming a global company.
Important notice
This is a food history page, not a nutritional recommendation. Nothing above is health advice, and mentioning a diet does not mean it works or is safe. Before changing the way you eat, talk to a registered dietitian or a doctor.
Sources: PubMed and NIH (PMC12027923, PMC5509411), sevencountriesstudy.com, New England Journal of Medicine (1997), orcls.org (Okinawa Centenarian Study), vegsoc.org, vegansociety.com, Johns Hopkins Medicine (ketogenic diet timeline), Rush University and Alzheimer's & Dementia (2015), ornish.com and CNN, norden.org (Nordic manifesto), Mayo Clinic and Wikipedia (Atkins, Dukan, South Beach, paleo, macrobiotics, Michael Mosley). Snapshot of July 2026.
Last updated: · Methodology and sources