William Banting
rlengland2014
Posts: 98 Member
With my late night insomnia inspired web surfing, I stumbled upon a pamphlet self published in 1863 byWilliam Banting. It is his personal story of how he lost 45 pounds in the course of eight months by following a low carb high fat diet. He tells how he tried many different diets, consulting with many London physicians and could not lose weight. He was a prominent undertaker so had plenty of money to talk to anyone he wanted, but only Dr. Harvey had a suggestion. The diet was originally suggested as a treatment for diabetes, which at that time had no treatment.
The post below goes into many historical accounts of low carb diets and scientific testing. The one that was very interesting to me was that of the year long experiment where the human participants ate nothing but meat and had no negative side effects.
Another story from that post below was of Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, an anthropologist from Harvard who lived for four years in the Artic with the Eskimos, eating their diet which consisted of no plants. At the end of that time, he described himself as being healthier than ever and started his own research into nutrition.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1052611/posts
I just thought you guys might be interested in some historical references to this weight loss "fad" which we are all following.
The post below goes into many historical accounts of low carb diets and scientific testing. The one that was very interesting to me was that of the year long experiment where the human participants ate nothing but meat and had no negative side effects.
Another story from that post below was of Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, an anthropologist from Harvard who lived for four years in the Artic with the Eskimos, eating their diet which consisted of no plants. At the end of that time, he described himself as being healthier than ever and started his own research into nutrition.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1052611/posts
I just thought you guys might be interested in some historical references to this weight loss "fad" which we are all following.
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As far as I know, "research" (I use quotes, because early research wasn't nearly as scientific as it could be) on a ketogenic diet has been showing it effective for certain conditions for over 200 years. As early as 1797, a Scottish doctor, John Rollo, reported on the results of treating two diabetic Army officers with a low-carbohydrate diet and medications. We also know that a very low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet was the standard treatment for diabetes throughout the 19th century.
Sources:
Morgan, William (1877). Diabetes mellitus: its history, chemistry, anatomy, pathology, physiology, and treatment.
Jump up ^ Einhorn, Max (1905). Lectures on dietetics.
It's also been used to treat epilepsy since 1921. Roughly 20-30% of epileptics fail to achieve seizure control with medication alone. For those individuals, and for children, the VLCKD is the non-pharmacological treatment of choice, and works very well.
Just a few more things to add to the general pool of knowledge.0
