The term “food fad” often refers to socially deviant, cultlike eating behavior. Examples include diets that contain massive amounts of supposedly healthy foods, such as garlic; those that prohibit the consumption of allegedly hazardous products, such as sugar or white bread; and those that emphasize natural foods and question the purity of goods available in supermarkets (Fieldhouse 1986). Charlatans claiming to have discovered nutritional fountains of youth and cures for cancer become best-selling authors overnight, only to disappear shortly afterward. But they are not the only promoters of culinary fads.The Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines fad as “a pursuit or interest followed usu. widely but briefly with exaggerated zeal.…” Sophisticated diners who flock to Ethiopian restaurants one month and to Thai restaurants the next thus qualify as faddists but not necessarily as deviants.

That a food or group of foods is especially health promoting serves as the most characteristic claim of food faddists, both wild-eyed cult leaders and bottom-line business executives. Nevertheless, profit and power often provide unspoken motivations behind the crusades of both groups. Moreover, the nutritional science used to back assertions of healthfulness has developed in a halting, incomplete, and often contradictory manner. This chapter evaluates the validity of many of these nutritional claims while it examines a wide range of food fads that have appeared throughout the world, particularly in the last two centuries, in the contexts of the spread of industrial capitalism, the concern for moral standards, and the creation of social identity.