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Wall Street Journal:
Dieters Curbed Carbs,
Loaded Up on Protein
Way Back in the 1860s
May 5, 2004; Page B1
At 5 feet 5 inches and 202 pounds, William Banting was too fat to tie his own shoes. He walked down stairs backward to protect his knees and ankles. The slightest physical exertion left him puffing.
Yet even worse than the physical agony was his mental distress, the result of sneers and cruel remarks in public places.
The year was 1862, and obesity still was rare. In England, where
Mr. Banting lived, as well as in America, the cost of food deterred most people from eating too much. All but the wealthiest burned more calories in daily life than they were able to ingest. But Mr. Banting, a prosperous undertaker, watched in horror as he piled on weight.
Even London's most distinguished doctors were confounded by the unusual complaint of obesity. Little was known about how the body burned or stored energy. Furthermore, leanness was associated with immigrants and the lower classes. Successful merchants were expected to look robust. So Mr. Banting's doctors improvised, ordering Turkish baths, diuretics and sojourns at spas. Mr. Banting exercised vigorously, took the waters at Harrowgate and drank gallons of
"physic" -- all to no avail. By the age of 66, he seemed doomed to live out the remainder of his life as an obese man.
Then, however, in what turned out to be a stroke of luck, Mr. Banting started going deaf.
One doctor cleaned out his ears and sent him away. But the second,
William Harvey, an ear surgeon, wondered if Mr. Banting's hearing loss might be related to his weight. Dr. Harvey had recently returned from a symposium in Paris, where an eminent French doctor had lectured on the relationship between diabetes and the liver. Hypothesizing that obesity and diabetes might share a cause, Dr. Harvey suggested that the diet recommended for diabetics -- high in protein, low in carbohydrates -- also might treat obesity.
Dr. Harvey put Mr. Banting on a diet that banished potatoes, bread, butter, milk, sugar and beer -- the patient's favorite foods. As was the custom in late-19th-century England, Mr. Banting continued to eat four meals a day. But instead of buttered toast for breakfast, he ate four or five ounces of meat or fish. At lunch, rather than bread, beer and pastry, he ate fish, vegetables and fruit. Tea and supper were similar, although supper included two or three glasses of claret, sherry or Madeira. Champagne and port were mysteriously forbidden.
In less than a year, Mr. Banting lost 46 pounds and could comfortably wear his old suits on top of his new ones. He pronounced the diet miraculous and not only paid Dr. Harvey's bill but also gave him a hefty bonus.
He also decided the diet should be publicized to help other sufferers of "that dreadful tormenting parasite." But he knew that respected medical journals weren't likely to publish an article written by an undertaker based on personal experience. So in 1863, Mr. Banting printed and distributed 1,000 copies of his "Letter on Corpulence" at his own expense.
The response from the public was enormous. In the next eight months,
Mr. Banting printed 50,000 more copies of the pamphlet, some of which found their way to Germany, France and the U.S. He received nearly
2,000 grateful letters from satisfied dieters, and his name became synonymous with dieting, so that people could be heard saying, "He should bant," or "She's been banting."
But if the public was sold, the medical establishment was
magazines, which suggested Mr. Banting's diet was unscientific and couldn't be explained in biochemical terms. Only wealthy people could afford to eat so much meat and so little bread, yet some doctors complained that the diet was "too great a sacrifice of personal comfort" for their affluent clients.
And what was Mr. Banting complaining about anyway?
"We deny that a man weighing but a trifle above 14 stone [196 pounds] is entitled to call himself obese," argued Blackwood's magazine. "It may be that such a one is not qualified to exhibit himself as a dancer on the tightrope...or to enter himself as a competitor for the long race at a Highland meeting." But a retired businessman, the article concluded, didn't have to dress in a leotard or compete at the racetrack.
Mr. Banting was miffed but not deterred. In a preface to the fourth edition, published in 1868, he wrote, "I believe I have subdued my discourteous assailants by silence and patience; and I can now look with pity, not unmixed with sorrow, upon men of eminence who had the rashness and folly to designate the dietary system as 'humbug.' "
Mr. Banting's diet, like all miracle diets before and since, survived only a few years before other regimens -- Fletcherism (slow chewing),
Phytoline (a purgative) and the Schweninger cure (lots of exercise) -- were pronounced less monotonous and more effective. Mr. Banting stayed loyal to his diet -- cheating sporadically, of course -- until he died at the age of 81.
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