October 12: Jean Nidetch and Weight Watchers

Jean Nidetch (Slutzky), a New York housewife who in 1961 organized several overweight friends to diet and meet together as a support group, lost 72 pounds of her 214 pounds, and ultimately created Weight Watchers International, was born in Brooklyn to a cab driver and manicurist on this date in 1923. The first meetings were held over a pizza shop, and when the owner inquired why hundreds of people were lining up outside his building without ever buying pizza or sodas, Nidetch recruited him to create a Weight Watchers milkshake, which became her first best-selling food product. The company was incorporated in 1963, and within five years had franchises nationwide and sold out an initial public offering. While Weight Watchers offers a broad menu of food products, the program’s success — which seems unique among diet programs for its popularity and actual effectiveness — is more dependent upon human solidarity, as it turns the private torture of food disorders into a public discussion. Nidetch died at 91 in 2015.
“Drop the damn fork!”—Jean Nidetch