Long story short (here's the long version), Siegal had invented the 800-calorie-a-day diet in which a person eats his specially made low-calorie cookies throughout the day, plus one sensible meal.
Moulavi recognized the power of the idea and joined forces with Siegal
to open franchises and turn the cookie diet into a national phenomenon.
But when the two men eventually butted heads -- Siegal thought Moulavi
was trying to steal his secret recipe and spin off his own company;
Moulavi found the white-haired doc paranoid and set in his ways -- they split.
But both kept using the money-making "Cookie Diet" term. After a legal
battle over use of the term, Siegal was eventually recognized as the creator, and Moulavi
went on to found a similar diet-by-cookie program called Smart for Life. Siegal won the web domain cookiediet.com, but both men now use the words cookie diet in their marketing.
Now, a few years and many dollars later (even Siegal's son became a millionaire, apparently), after having turned Snooki on to the cookie diet and sued Kim Kardashian, here comes Dr. Siegal with a cookbook called The Cookie Doctor Cookbook: Countless Combinations of Delicious Meals for Any Calorie-Controlled Lifestyle. Available at Amazon.com,
it "enables anyone who follows almost any calorie-controlled
weight-loss or weight-maintenance diet to combine 120 recipes into a
nearly unlimited number of calorie-specific meals."
Says Dr.
Siegal in a news release (a call to his publicist was not immediately
returned): "The Cookie Doctor Cookbook includes salads, appetizers, side
dishes, entrées, and even desserts and is divided into 100, 200, 300,
400, and 500 calorie recipes. This enables the reader to combine two or
more dishes to create meals with a specific number of calories."
Fittingly, Smart for Life chose the same day to announce news of its new product, a gluten-free cookie diet.
