Vance Thompson (April 17, 1863 - June 5, 1925) was an American literary critic, novelist, poet and low-carbohydrate diet writer.

Like fellow-aesthete and good friend James Huneker, he helped bring fin-de-siècle French authors to the attention of the American public.

Described as "a highly idiosyncratic blend of serious analyses and presentations of European Symbolist literature and thought with buffoonery and incessant anti-philistinism", it quickly became a manifesto for their cultural ideals.

[3][4][5] Thompson believed that dairy, pork, ham, bacon, beans, bread, grains, cereals, flour, rice, potatoes, sugar, and all alcoholic drinks should be avoided.

[8] Physiologist Graham Lusk commented that the advice from the book "made so many of my friends so utterly miserable that I am sure that in the end it will counteract its own message.