Posts Tagged “William Banting”

Jul 20 2009

Exploring the Secret History of the Low Carb Diet Craze

In recent years, diets with low carbohydrate allowances have found popularity and legitimacy. Low carb diets have a long history that does not begin, as many might suspect, with Dr. Atkins in the 1990s. The low carb diet actually had its humble inception in the 1860s, with a single doctor and a single patient.

The true creator of the low carb diet phenomenon is actually a man named William Harvey, who recommended the diet to a patient suffering from numerous obesity-related ailments. This patient, William Banting, was the first adherent to what would much later become a low carb dieting craze.

Banting was stunned by not only his weight loss, but the increase in his quality of life as his medical conditions improved and disappeared. Banting’s 50 pound weight loss was touted in a series of pamphlets he produced, encouraging others to take advantage of this revolutionary way of eating.

The original low carb diet required an extreme reduction in foods such as bread, milk, sugar, butter, potatoes, as well as beer, as such food items were believed to create fat due to their starch and saccharine content.

Almost 60 years later, in the 1920s, the Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins University began using a similar diet to William Harvey’s low carb diet to treat seizure disorders in children. The diet the children adhered to induced a condition called ketosis, which is the altered metabolic state that gives a low carb diet its weight loss success.

Finally, in the late 1960s, the low carb diet found widespread acclaim when it was introduced to the public by Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman in his book, The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet. Stillman’s book was a huge success, which paved the way for later incarnations of protein-rich low carbohydrate diets.

Of course, most of us have never heard of Dr. Irwin Maxwell Stillman or William Harvey. To the modern world, Dr. Robert Adkins is the creator of the low carb diet. While he did not create the idea, he can certainly be credited with raising the diet’s profile and popularity.

Adkins released his first book, Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution in 1972, after reading articles on low carb dieting in the late 60s and experiencing the success of the low carb diet philosophy himself. It was met with dismal success and other doctors produced works encouraging similar diets in the 80s and 90s.

At the time of its release, Atkins’ diet program was shunned by medical professionals and nutritionists as being unhealthy. Fortunately, controversy dissipated as more and more people discovered the incredible health and weight loss benefits a low carb diet could yield.

As the low carb movement began gathering more adherents, Adkins released Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution in the early 1990s and again in 1999. The popularity of low carb dieting continued to increase and many variations of the diet were introduced, including well-known diets like The Zone and South Beach.

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