Michael Veal

The low-carb term was not really coined until around 1992 when the USDA announced America's food pyramid model included six to eleven servings daily of grains and starches. However, low-carbohydrate diets was more than 100 years before the Atkins diet trend in 1864 with a pamphlet titled "Letter to Build" written by William Banting, as close as the first commercial low-carb diet that you might get.

Banting had suffered a series of debilitating health problems mainly due to being overweight or "corpulent. He searched in vain for remedies to his weight problem, many doctors at the time regarded as a necessary side effect of old age. He also tried to eat less, but he continued to gain weight and have various health problems. He could not understand how small amounts of food he was eating led to his weight problem:

"Few men have led a more active life - bodily or mentally - from a constitutional anxiety for regularity, precision, and order during business career of fifty years from which I had retired, so my weight and obesity in later life have not been negligent of physical activity required, nor excessive eating, drinking or self indulgence of any kind, except that I shared the simple foods of bread, milk, butter, beer, sugar, potatoes and more freely than my age required? "

Many contemporary Americans on the road can recognize Banting? S previous poor daily diet:

"My former dietary table was bread and milk for breakfast, or a pint of tea with lots of milk, sugar and buttered toast, meat, beer, bread well (which I have always been very fond) and pastry for dinner, the meal of tea similar to breakfast, and generally a fruit tart or bread and milk for supper. I had little comfort and sleep a lot worse. "

Just substitute a Pop tart, donut or muffin with coffee and lots of cream and sugar for breakfast, a hamburger with fries and a supersized soft drink for lunch and a block of ice or pizza for dinner followed by a dessert and you can see how power Banting was so typical as the fast pace of modern Americans.

When his doctor placed these items on a "list of forbidden foods, Banting lost 50 pounds and 13 inches in one year! Let me repeat that fifty pounds and thirteen inches! He was off to live a long life much healthier.

His plan was new regime a number of meat dishes and listed as follows:

"For breakfast at 9:00, I take five to six ounces of mutton or the other, kidneys, broiled fish, bacon, luncheon meat or any kind except pork or veal, a large cup coffee or tea (without milk or sugar), a little biscuit or one ounce of toast; doing all six ounces solid, nine liquid.

For dinner, at 2.00 pm, five or six ounces of fish except salmon, herring and eel, with the exception of pork or veal, any vegetable except potato, parsnip , beets, turnips, carrots, one ounce of toast, fruit on a pudding not sweetened, any kind of poultry or game, and two or three glasses of good claret, sherry or Madeira-Champagne port and beer prohibited, making together ten to twelve ounces solid, liquid and ten.

For tea, at 6.00 pm, two or three ounces of cooked fruit, a rusk or two, and a cup of tea without milk or sugar to make two to four ounces solid, nine liquid.

For supper, at 9:00 pm Three or four ounces of meat or fish, even at dinner with a glass or two of claret or sherry and water; to four ounces solid and seven liquid.

For a nightcap, if required, a glass of grog (gin, whiskey, brandy or sugar-free) or a glass or two of claret or sherry.

So great was the change in his appearance and health that his friends and acquaintances began to notice and wanted to know as today as it was in power. The most important of all Banting could see and feel a difference.