Jean Nidetch, Founder of Weight Watchers, Dies at 91
By Maia Efrem April 29, 2015
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.
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.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
