At the height of her career, Marilyn Monroe was undoubtedly considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. The curvaceous, full figured actress certainly represented the antithesis of the scary thin, androgynous models of today.
The drastic change in society’s view of female beauty over the past 50 years has coincided with an equally drastic change in diet.
Artificially made “health” foods, protein powders, bars, drinks, mixes and supplements take center stage instead of the basic, traditional and highly nourishing fare such as what Ms. Monroe preferred.
The September 1952 edition of Pageant magazine highlighted the Marilyn Monroe diet, which was comprised of extremely simple fare, written in her own words.
For breakfast, Ms. Monroe whipped two raw eggs into a glass of warm whole milk to drink. Interesting that she didn’t opt for skim. Eggs and milk were her favored morning fare even while traveling and staying in hotels.
Dinners were equally nutrient dense. Instead of opting for the best restaurant food which she undoubtedly could easily afford, Marilyn would stop at a market near her hotel and select steak, liver, or lamb chops for dinner. She would even broil them herself right in her hotel room with an electric oven!
Ms. Monroe also especially enjoyed raw carrots and usually ate several along with the meat she had chosen for the evening meal.
For treats, ice cream sundaes were the favorite on the way home from her evening drama classes. No mention of any bread, cakes, cookies or pies.
A diet focused on nutrient rich animal foods with a notable absence of grain based and starchy foods was likely a key reason she only required light exercise to maintain her enviable figure. While this doesn’t work for every woman, it does for many, even a curvy one like Ms. Monroe. Â She spent only 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights. Light jogging, yoga and horseback riding were other active pursuits she enjoyed. Â No special trainers, heavy lifting or sweaty workouts of the day were a part of her life.
Does the Marilyn Monroe Diet Offer Any Wisdom for Today’s Generation?
There has been renewed interest in the Marilyn Monroe diet since the marking of the 50th anniversary of her death in August 2012.
Many would find the very simple Marilyn Monroe diet unbearably boring and uninspired. However, the basic premise she followed was sound albeit controversial and perhaps even quirky for her day.
Low carb and high fat aptly describes the food choices for Ms. Monroe:
- No processed foods with the exception of an occasional ice cream treat. Antifreeze in commercial ice cream likely didn’t exist then either, and it certainly wasn’t lowfat!
- Minimal inclusion of starchy, grain based or sugary foods. This included favorites such as bread, pasta, bagels, cereal, crackers, cookies and other refined carbs.
- Frequent consumption of liver, the number one nutrient dense food on the planet and nature’s multivitamin. Clearly, the benefits of high cholesterol foods like liver helped Ms. Monroe’s health tremendously.
- Raw eggs and whole milk. No egg white omelets or skimmed milk on the menu!
- Balanced exercise without undue focus on constant or excessive working out to maintain one’s figure and muscle tone or to overcome poor dietary choices. As Paula Jager CSCS, owner of Crossfit Jaguar in Tampa is fond of saying, “You can’t outwork a bad diet!” Â Clearly, Marilyn Monroe’s focus on simple, self prepared, whole, nutrient dense foods afforded her the luxury of not having to find this out the hard way.
Could women both young and old derive some helpful pointers in their own diet and lifestyle regimens through knowledge of the Marilyn Monroe diet? Â I, for one, believe they could! Â What about you?
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
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Basically, Marilyn was living on the Atkins diet. She was carb-starved, which no doubt contributed to ultra-low levels of seratonin and her depression bouts. Healthy forms of carbs include fruit, sweet veggies, and a limited amount of whole grains…unhealthy forms include white flour, white sugar, and processed foods made with these (breads, pastas, cereals, cookies, crackers, etc.). Please don’t peddle the Atkins diet, since it not only helped kill Marilyn, but also Dr. Atkins himself. Even the Atkins foundation today recommends fruit and veggies to balance out the animal food, and is more of a Paleo approach (which I still disagree with as optimal for humans). Americans eat a diet of about 25% animal food while all other primates each 4% or less animal food. We have chronic disease; they don’t. The ideal diet for humans is primarily plant-based, as whole plant foods reverse disease rather than cause it, regulate body weight, and stabilize brain chemistry. If you want to learn more, check out my website or Facebook page ) or watch the movie, Forks Over Knives (there is a link to a free version of it on my FB page). Good eating! 🙂
Hell Ken, you may get a better audience for your views with less zeal, more actual facts rather than beliefs, and a little less self promotion. You are just another “the Atkins diet killed someone” zealot who bases their argument on their belief. It’s quite easy to spot the veggie zealots commenting here and using your type of analysis I can make the following statement of fact; “Veggie and healthy(sic) whole grain eaters are deficient in nutrients which allow for fair assessment of others views and the males commonly show the effects of their estrogenic diet by being particularly bitchy to those who have different views to their own”. If you are so correct then clearly evolution will destroy the meat and Atkins adherents and your type will inherit the earth, but I would not bank my life on that happening anytime soon. Keep believing though …..
Thanks for posting this so I don’t have to! 🙂
How about the Audrey Hepburn diet?
Unfortunately, Audrey herself admitted that in times of stress, she stopped eating. She was a beautiful and incredibly amazing woman, but that behavior was not healthy and she knew it. She talked about it so other woman would realize that she was not perfect and perhaps not always the best role model. As a side note, with her body type, she could have eaten McDonald’s day and night and stayed thin.
when I was a kid in the early seventies, the ” diet plate” at every restaurant was a hamburger pattie , cottage cheese with a pineapple ring and a salad. No bread. When the low fat craze began that changed of course.
The human body doesn’t have a requirement for carbohydrates. It’ll burn them if it gets them, but we are fat burners, naturally. That’s what our bodies prefer. Fat produces all the energy our bodies need and give us satiety when we eat. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/a-metabolic-paradigm-shift-fat-carbs-human-body-metabolism/
We were meant to eat veggies.
We are meant to eat a variety of foods.
I second this statement! We are omnivores.
And it was all organic, grass-fed, free range everything in those days. Lucky her!
You would have to go back in time even more to be *sure* it was clean meat. There were feedlots in the 50s, cattle was given drugs and pesticides (DDT) and chemical fertilizers were used. Even then, you had to know your farmer.
I have to wonder if she was carb deficient. Consider the research uncovered by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet. Seems that “safe starches” could have been the missing piece for MM. See perfecthealthdiet.com for reader results of eating an appropriate amount of “safe starches.”
She did not have drug or alcohol problems until later in her career. HBO has a very interesting documentary on her right now.
She was so beautiful but was never able to carry a baby to term.
Something was missing in her (or her mother’s) diet.
Diet is not the only reason for miscarriages! And while Marilyn was seen as ‘curvaceous’ in the lean 1950s, I think she would look slim to most of us today. I wonder if we can believe what stars tell journalists they eat, but it’s interesting that she preferred to cook for herself even in hotels.
Endometriosis can be corrected by diet.
Not in all cases. It can certainly help, and can relieve symptoms somewhat, but a good diet isn’t a miracle cure for all Endometriosis sufferers, especially if the condition is already severe before dietary changes are made. Emotional stress and environmental toxins are also factors, and they are distinct from diet.
It cannot always be helped by a diet. Stop spreading lies and making people feel bad about having a medical condition
Thank you! I keep reading stuff about how a proper diet will cure this that and the other. Yet, even when one has a very healthful diet it is still possible to deal with a variety of medical, and psychological, conditions. I have celiac disease, which is treatable with a gluten free diet. I also eat a healthful diet, but I still have anxiety and depression I am dealing with. So, clearly a healthful diet is not a panacea or cure all.
I suspect her inability to carry a baby to term most likely was due to a history of botched, back-alley abortions, not her diet. Her biographer Normal Mailer claimed she had 12 abortions by the time she was 29.
Norman mailer only saw her from a distance. He never knew her. She never had 29 abortions.
She could have also had other anatomical anomolies that could have caused the miscarages. My mother had a lot of trouble carying a baby to term due to a bicornis uterus and only was able to keep a baby to term with almost exclusive bed rest. Also, medicine in the 1950s and 1960s was not what it is today (good and bad).
If it’s true we are what we eat, I’m fast, cheap, and easy!
Just kiddin’, all!! ; )
I don’t believe she was a drug addict. That’s what they always say about those they want to silence for one reason or another. she looked pretty healthy to me to be a drug addict. IJS.
Yes. Finally, a sensible comment about that.
there were people that were very close to her that said she would poke hole in her barbiturates so they would work faster