Covert Bailey (b. 1931) is a retired author, television personality, and lecturer on fitness and diet during the 1990s. [1] His best selling book, Fit or Fat, first published in 1978, emphasized the role of aerobic exercise and weightlifting in promoting weight-loss. From 1978 to 1999, he authored or co-authored 8 different books on health, diet, and nutrition. In 1990 Bailey appeared in a PBS series Fit or Fat for the 90s, produced by KVIE of Sacramento, California. [2]
Bailey was born in Boston, and briefly attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, before dropping out to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1952. [3] After graduating from the Army Language School in Monterey, California, he served in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Cold War. [3] After his service, he re-entered college and earned a bachelor's and a master's degree from Boston University in geology. In 1967 he enrolled in the master's program in nutritional biochemistry. He began his career as a nutritionist working for the California Dairy Council, giving lectures on diet, and gradually built up his skills as a lecturer. [3]
Robert Coleman Atkins was an American physician and cardiologist, best known for the Atkins Diet, which requires close control of carbohydrate consumption and emphasizes protein and fat as the primary sources of dietary calories in addition to a controlled number of carbohydrates from vegetables.
Arnold Ehret was a German naturopath, alternative health educator and germ theory denialist, best known for developing the Mucusless Diet Healing System. Ehret authored books and articles on dieting, detoxification, fruitarianism, fasting, food combining, health, longevity, naturopathy, physical culture and vitalism.
Barry Sears is an American biochemist and author best known for creating and promoting the Zone diet, a low-carbohydrate fad diet that is not supported by good medical evidence.
Thomas Colin Campbell is an American biochemist who specializes in the effect of nutrition on long-term health. He is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University.
Dean Michael Ornish is an American physician and researcher. He is the president and founder of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The author of Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease,Eat More, Weigh Less and The Spectrum, he is an advocate for using diet and lifestyle changes to treat and prevent heart disease.
Jake Steinfeld is an American actor, fitness personality, entrepreneur, and producer. He develops businesses through the "Body by Jake" brand.
Ian K. Smith is an American physician, author and television host best known for hosting The Doctors. In 2007, he launched the 50 Million Pound Challenge, a national weight loss initiative sponsored by CVS Pharmacy and State Farm.
Bob Greene is an American exercise physiologist and certified personal trainer specializing in fitness, metabolism, and weight loss. Greene is the creator of Best Life, a diet and fitness plan, and Best Life Foods, which sells a line of butter substitutes.
Gary Taubes is an American journalist, writer, and low-carbohydrate / high-fat (LCHF) diet advocate. His central claim is that carbohydrates, especially sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, overstimulate the secretion of insulin, causing the body to store fat in fat cells and the liver, and that it is primarily a high level of dietary carbohydrate consumption that accounts for obesity and other metabolic syndrome conditions. He is the author of Nobel Dreams (1987); Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion (1993); Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007), titled The Diet Delusion (2008) in the UK and Australia; Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (2010); The Case Against Sugar (2016); and The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating (2020). Taubes's work often goes against accepted scientific, governmental, and popular tenets such as that obesity is caused by eating too much and exercising too little and that excessive consumption of fat, especially saturated fat in animal products, leads to cardiovascular disease.
Nathan Pritikin was an American inventor, engineer, nutritionist and longevity researcher. He promoted the Pritikin diet, a high-carbohydrate low-fat plant-based diet combined with regular aerobic exercise to prevent cardiovascular disease. The Pritikin diet emphasizes the consumption of legumes, whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables and non-fat dairy products with small amounts of lean meat, fowl and fish.
Harley Samuel Pasternak is a Canadian personal trainer, motivational speaker, author and television host. Pasternak is known for working with many celebrity clients as a personal trainer. He is also known as one of the co-hosts of ABC's 2012 daytime talk show, The Revolution.
John A. McDougall is an American physician and author. He has written a number of diet books advocating the consumption of a low-fat vegan diet based on starchy foods and vegetables.
Fit for Life is a diet and lifestyle book series stemming from the principles of orthopathy. It is promoted mainly by the American writers Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. The Fit for Life book series describes a fad diet which specifies eating only fruit in the morning, eating predominantly "live" and "high-water-content" food, and, if animal protein is eaten, avoiding combining it with complex carbohydrates.
Orthopathy or natural hygiene (NH) is a set of alternative medical beliefs and practices originating from the Nature Cure movement. Proponents claim that fasting, dieting, and other lifestyle measures are all that is necessary to prevent and treat disease.
Robert Kennedy was the founder of Robert Kennedy Publishing, based in Mississauga, Ontario.
The South Beach Diet is a popular fad diet developed by Arthur Agatston and promoted in his bestselling 2003 book. It emphasizes eating food with a low glycemic index, and categorizes carbohydrates and fats as "good" or "bad". Like other fad diets, it may have elements which are generally recognized as sensible, but it promises benefits not backed by supporting evidence or sound science.
Mark Michael Macdonald is an American diet, nutrition, fitness & health expert, television star, global instructor and speaker and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Body Confidence. He is also the founder of Venice Nutrition.
Dave Asprey is an American entrepreneur, author and advocate of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet known as the Bulletproof diet, about which he has made claims criticized by dietitians as pseudoscientific. He founded Bulletproof 360, Inc. in 2013, and in 2017, founded Bulletproof Nutrition Inc. Men's Health described Asprey as a "lifestyle guru".
Nina Teicholz is a journalist who advocates for reducing restrictions on naturally-occurring fats, including saturated fats, in the American diet.
Esther Kathleen Keen Zolber was an American registered dietitian, Seventh-day Adventist and vegetarianism activist. She was president of the American Dietetic Association 1982–1983.