What to eat to lose weight - circa 1825

Can anyone guess where the below quote came from?

"...and since it has been proved that fatty congestion (being overweight) is simply due to flour and starch in animals as well as man, it may be inferred, as an exact consequence, that a more or less strict abstinence from all floury or starchy food leads to a diminution of flesh." 

It's from a famous book called, The Physiology of Taste, which was written in 1825!

My point - you can negotiate with me for your grains all you want. But it's been very clear for a very long time that grains are the key to gaining weight. 

In case you're not quite clear what is meant by grains : wheat, corn, oats, rice and all their by products, including bread, cold boxed cereal, hot cereal, donuts cookies, crackers, biscuits, pancakes, pasta, tortillas.  

Another quote from this almost-two-hundred-year-old book about what exactly to have for dinner if you want to lose weight: 

"Avoid all things floury, in whatever guise they come; for you are still left with the roast and the salad and the green vegetables. And if you must have something sweet afterwards, choose a chocolate custard....."

Clearly, the dietary prescriptions I've been giving you are hardly new and revolutionary. 

On being thin, this book has to say, "As for women, it is a frightful misfortune; for to them beauty is more than life itself, and beauty consists above all in roundness of form and gracefully curving lines."

Of course, the book then goes to to prescribe, to thin women, a diet high in sugar and all things floury. 

Finally, just for your sheer amusement, I'll give you one final quote which really made me guffaw. 

But we see no reason why women who are born thin, yet whose stomach is in order, should be any more difficult to fatten than chickens; and if it takes a little longer , that is because their stomachs are comparatively smaller and they cannot be subjected, like those devoted birds, to a strict and meticulously executed diet.