S. Daniel Abraham, the New Yorker who became a billionaire by tempting dieters with Slim-Fast meal-replacement shakes and selling his company in 2000 to Unilever NV, has died. He was 100.

He died on June 29, according to American Friends of Bar-Ilan University, on whose board he had served.

Abraham, who lived in Israel with his family from 1972 to 1978, co-founded the Washington-based S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in 1989. He was a major donor to the US Democratic Party.

His net worth was about $2.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Introduced in 1977, Slim-Fast powder, mixed with low-fat milk, became a breakfast and lunch substitute for millions of weight-conscious Americans. It was endorsed by celebrity dieters such as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and Major League Baseball manager Tommy Lasorda.

“It’s your life. Feed it right,” New York-based Slim-Fast Foods Co. encouraged consumers. Another slogan promised, “Give us a week, we’ll take off the weight.”

Slim-Fast still exists — today it’s rendered as SlimFast — but, like other non-pharmaceutical diet aids, it has struggled in recent years as weight-loss drugs have transformed how people lose weight.

For Abraham, the release of Slim-Fast capped a career in over-the-counter pharmaceutical consumerism that began in the 1940s, when he joined his father in selling itch relievers, natural laxatives and sore-throat soothers.

Before Slim-Fast, Abraham’s most successful diet product was the appetite suppressant Dexatrim, which hit $50 million in sales in 1979. By 2000, when the FDA raised health concerns about phenylpropanolamine — the key ingredient in Dexatrim and other appetite suppressants — Dexatrim was owned by Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Chattem Inc., which changed the formula. NVE Pharmaceuticals bought Dexatrim in 2014.

Solid food

The Slim-Fast concept sprang from a 1970s diet craze that spurned solid food in favor of high-protein shakes. To Abraham, that seemed to be a promising idea — a diet uncomplicated by decisions about what to eat — taken to the extreme. He pitched Slim-Fast as a replacement for breakfast, lunch and a snack, to be supplemented by a “sensible” solid-food dinner, for a total daily intake of 1,500 calories.

Under his stewardship in the 1990s, Slim-Fast introduced frozen entrees, snacks and other diet products to fend off competitors. Sales grew about 20% a year, hitting $611 million in 1999, with profits of $125 million.

Unilever acquired Slim-Fast Foods in 2000 for $2.3 billion.

Sim Daniel Abraham was born on Aug. 15, 1924, and raised in Long Beach, New York, one of four children of Samuel Abraham, a dentist and pharmacist, and his wife, Stella.

He served in the US Army during World War II. In his 2010 memoir, he said he believed he was — as an infantryman attached to the First Armored Division — the first American soldier to cross the Arno River near Florence in 1944 as Allied forces made their way north through Italy.

‘Most common maladies’

With his father and brother-in-law, Abraham bought Thompson Medical Co., the maker of anti-itch ointment San Cura. He became a traveling salesman of that product and others including Gas Tabs and Throat-Aid, visiting pharmacies to make distribution deals and set up product displays.

“My intention was to address the most common maladies afflicting people,” Abraham wrote in his memoir. “I knew these products worked, and, just as important, I knew that these maladies were so common that they would generate repeat sales.”

Abraham took Thompson Medical public in 1979, then private again in the late 1980s. He spun off Slim-Fast in 1990.

In 1989, Los Angeles Dodgers players Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson pledged $10,000 each for charity if their famously plump manager, Lasorda, lost 20 pounds by mid-season. Abraham offered Lasorda an additional $20,000 for his chosen charity — the Sisters of Mercy in Nashville — just to meet with him about using Slim-Fast.

Lasorda said yes, went on Ultra Slim-Fast — a high-fiber version of the product — and lost more than 30 pounds in three months. He became Slim-Fast’s TV pitchman, promising, “If I can do it, you can do it.” Almost overnight, Abraham said, annual sales tripled to $300 million.

Under Unilever, Slim-Fast’s sales in the US declined 40% from 2009 to 2013, to $196 million, according to data tracker SymphonyIRI Group. In ratings published in 2013, Consumer Reports ranked Slim-Fast last in overall satisfaction among do-it-yourself diet plans.

‘A Damn Shame’

Abraham, in comments to Bloomberg News in 2013, said he had offered to help “revitalize” the Slim-Fast brand.

“Unilever is sleeping on it,” he said. “If I still owned it, it would not be that way. I would be fighting harder. It’s a damn shame.” (The company said in an emailed statement at the time that promised investments and “exciting changes” would be coming to the product.)

Kainos Capital, a private equity firm based in Dallas, acquired the Slim-Fast brand from Unilever in 2014 for an undisclosed amount while Unilever retained a minority stake. Kainos, in turn, sold the product to Ireland-based food producer Glanbia Plc in 2018 for $350 million. Glanbia put the product line up for sale in February.

Abraham was ranked as the 15th most active political donor among American billionaires in a 2020 tally by research organizations Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies. Their report said Abraham and his wife, Ewa, had given almost $22 million to federal candidates and political organizations from 1990 to 2020, almost all of it in support of Democrats.

In 2007, the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center building opened at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Abraham had four daughters with his first wife, Estanne. That marriage ended in divorce. With Ewa, he had a son and a daughter.