The cookie diet may take the cake as the world's worst ever fad diet.

The diet relies on eating cookies to control hunger and thus help people lose weight.

Fad diets are short term diets in which people are to lose a lot of weight, and are popular because of their claims of great weight loss. Fad diets generally include some super food, like the cookie in the cookie diet, with miraculous weight loss properties. They are usually sold by a series of wild claims, much like the old pitch men pitched in the traveling medicine shows.

Sanford Siegel created the cookie diet in 1975 while he was doing research for a nutrition book. To maintain the cookie diet people would eat six cookies a day, plus a regular dinner. There were about 500 calories combined in the cookies, and the dinner could be 300 calories in the evening. People went wild over the cookie diet to the extent that 14 clinics opened in Florida. It wasn't long before over 200 doctors were regularly recommending the cookie diet. It was at this time that shakes and soups were added to the mix, these also containing the amino acids that control hunger.

There is another version of the cookie diet referred to as the Hollywood cookie diet because it became popular with many Hollywood stars. Stars and starlets made their use of the diet well known, which helped vault it to public attention. This newer version of the diet included four cookies and a dinner. The four cookies allowed on this diet consisted of a combined 600 calories and various vitamins.

Do yourself a favor – avoid the cookie diet.

If you want to lose weight, or maintain a healthy eating lifestyle, simply lower the amount of calories you eat from everyday foods and add some exercise.

In general this is a much healthier way to lose or maintain weight than relying on some fly by night miracle food, even if it is endorsed by someone you recognize from a movie.