Do I remember Metracal! I lost 30 lbs. the summer before I entered junior high drinking the stuff. And I thought it tasted great! The cans were only like 50 calories and they took it off the market because people were losing too much weight and not getting enough vitamins.

Haha, my mom liked this stuff too. She had just quit smoking. This was before people realized that it's a bad idea to try to live on 300 calories a day... After a few days of that your body would force you to go on a binge, negating the value of being on the Metracal diet.

A memory of my mother, circa 1965: At the dining room table, after a particularly wonderful, pleasurable meal, her Puritan side would rise up … she would put down her fork and shout “Tomorrow, Metracal!,” referring to some god-awful diet food we had seen advertised on our grainy black and white TV. But luckily, the cans of diet food never appeared… And so, I've googled Metracal in 2008 and find it really did exist!

Actually Metracal came out in the late 50's. I was in High School at the time. Many of the guys on the football and wrestling teams would drink it with lunch to 'bulk up'. I was on the Track and Cross Country teams - and had no desire to bulk up.

can't recall the name of the TV show back in the late 50's but it was a documentary about WW11. Seemed they had Churchill narrations in most of it too. Metracal was the sole sponsor of the show. This takes you back to about '59 and people used to think Winnie was a big hero too.

There also were Metracal cookies. I earned money in the mid 60's as a college student working at Richmond Bakery (Indiana) weighing out the ingredients, checking the quality, and running the approximate 100 foot oven line producing the cookies. We were one of two bakeries in the country working double shifts trying to keep up with the high demand for the sorta good tasting diet aides.

Wow, my Mom used the stuff, too but it didn't work well for her. My memory of the taste is very different, too! I came home from school one time--I was about 9 (about 1965 I guess)--and saw some "chocolate milk" in the fridge. I grabbed, gulped and about spit it out on the floor! It was the nastiest tasting stuff I'd ever had! It was chalky, thick and really horrid! And yes, it was Metracal! It DID teach me to never grab and gulp indescriminately again, thought! :o)

My neighbor had cases of this stuff. It was like surplus or something that he got for free. This would have been 68' to 72' somewhere in there. My mom and sisters all drank it. I remember that he would offer it if I pulled weeds of something, but I hated the taste. I do not recall the flavors, but I do remember that he had chocolate and strawberry. As I write this I now remember that it he told me that it was taken off of the market because it contained saccharin, an artificial sweetener that it was believed causes cancer. Joe, my neighbor also told me that saccharin got a bad rap and that you would have to drink like a hundred Metracals a day to get cancer. It was great luck for him because he got like a garage full for free.

Used Metracal but liked Sego better. It tasted better frozen. Metracal seemed to be more water.

I suspicion that my high school usage of Metrecal in the mid 1960s may have caused racing heart beat. I would sit in Spanish class about an hour after my morning "dosage" counting my pulse. It was fast for me:110. Later on in my adult life I've developed atrial fibrillation. Anyone out there with similar experiences?

I wish I could still buy Sego, Metracal, Slender! I froze Sego and there were sooo many great choc. flavors, sure saved me after wisdom tooth surgery! They all seemed to disappear with the appearance of Slim Fast? Would love to have them again! I also did the Stillman diet.