Hoodia. Jenny Craig. Abs of Steel. From weight loss supplements and diet fads to "miracle" workouts and appetite-suppressing lip gloss, we've spent the better part of a century trying to unlock the secret to effective weight loss. Now comes news that it may have been right under our noses - since medieval times.

According to The Daily Mail, experts on medieval remedies in Britain are fighting to re-establish the ancient heath pea herb, which they predict will help curb obesity. And it wouldn't be the first time heath pea, which typically grows on heath land, has been used as a weight loss trick; it's said that King Charles used heath pea to his portly love interests in an effort to help them slim down. (How thoughtful!) Monks living in a monastery near Edinburgh, which is now being excavated, also used heath pea to suppress the appetite.

Explains medieval researcher Dr. Brian Moffat, "If you ate one of these pea-sized tubers you are meant to 'not eat, not want to eat and not miss eating for weeks and even in to months'. They were actually used as a measure to ward off hunger once crops had failed in the fields.

"We thought if this can ward off hunger for weeks in to months, and by all accounts they are otherwise innocuous, there are possibilities in this."

Moffat anticipates that the modern-day form of heath pea would be a slimming pill sold commercially.