Читать книгу Low-Carb Diet For Dummies - Katherine B. Chauncey - Страница 32

The low-carb diet isn’t new. In fact, a London coffin maker and undertaker named William Banting devised it to treat his own obesity. He had become so obese that he had to walk downstairs backwards to keep from falling. He lost 50 pounds on the diet and published a pamphlet, Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, in 1864. Banting declared the diet a “cure for extreme corpulence.”

His cure became so popular that the word banting became a synonym for dieting in the English language. The diet also caught the interest of Americans in the late 1800s and became popular. However, in the next century, it was labeled the “Banting Scheme” because it was full of unproven medical lingo and followers of the plan often developed gout. Since those early days, the low-carb diet approach has resurfaced about every 25 years and is always controversial.