There's a very simple explanation for the cabbage soup diet – FRAUD.

There's no need to know anything more about this ridiculous diet. But for those who insist here is more.

The inventor of the cabbage soup diet isn't known. It first appeared in the early 1980s, faxed from person to person like a chain letter. There were many names for the diet, sometimes a well-known institution such as St. Jude's diet. Needless to say, the diet has no relation to any of the institutions, nations, or people used in these names.

Water is important in the cabbage soup diet, often the only drink allowed in the course of the day. Here's how the diet works.

Day one -- cabbage soup and fruit, but not bananas.

Day two -- cabbage soup as usual, and vegetables including a half baked potato without butter.

Day three -- add vegetables and fruit to the daily cabbage soup, but no bananas or potato.

Day four -- cabbage soup, eight bananas, skimmed milk.

Day five -- as much as 20 ounces of beef +6 tomatoes along with cabbage soup.

Day six -- cabbage soup plus as much beef and vegetables as can be eaten, but no potatoes.

Day seven -- cabbage soup, brown rice, vegetables, unsweetened fruit juice, but no potatoes.

It was often claimed the cabbage soup diet could result in as much as 10 pounds of weight loss in only week. Unfortunately that would be 10 pounds in water weight. A week is simply too short a time in which to lose 10 pounds of fat. But given a week the cabbage soup diet could make someone seriously ill from malnutrition.

In addition the cabbage soup diet isn't easy. Not because it's too complicated, but rather because seven days of cabbage soup becomes monotonous.

Many people who have started the cabbage soup diet quit after only one or two days. There was even an attempt to spice up the cabbage soup diet with new recipes, but that failed.

In general nothing quite as extreme as the cabbage soup diet is needed to lose weight. A program of exercise plus cutting down calories than what you normally eat on a day-to-day basis can be very effective.