Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Jean Nidetch, Founder of Weight Watchers, Dies at 91

Jean Nidetch, the 91-year-old co-founder of Weight Watchers died early Wednesday morning in her Fort Lauderdale, Florida home.

Born Jean Evelyn Slutsky in Brooklyn in 1923, Nidetch, was the daughter of a cabdriver and a manicurist. After she married, the unhappy and overweight Nidetch tried fad diet after fad diet to no avail, but when she ran into a neighbor in a supermarket that asked her when she was due that Nidetch tried something different. She started a support group with her friends that turned into weekly classes and later incorporated Weight Watchers in 1963 — it was a runaway success.

An astounding 16,000 Weight Watchers members attended the company’s star-studded 10th at Madison Square Garden in 1973.

After the company went public, it was sold to H.J. Heinz for $71.2 million. Nidetch stayed on as head of public relations until 1984.

Just recently, Weight Watchers was ranked as the number one diet in the country with the best long-term weight loss rate for its users.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.