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The Morning Banana Diet

It’s huge in Tokyo.

Time alerts us to a new weight-loss craze sweeping Japan and keeping Filipino fruit traders in business: the Morning Banana Diet. The regimen, which is simple enough—a banana and lukewarm water in the morning, standard meals for lunch and dinner, and a bedtime before midnight—is spreading like wildfire among many (already svelte, according to the article) Japanese men and women. Morning Banana books have sold over 730,000 copies; a TV program featured a singer who had lost 15 pounds on the diet in six weeks. Now, the country cannot keep bananas in stock. By noon, all of Japan is bare of bunches, despite an 80% increase in imports.