The Banting Diet is one of the first low carbohydrate diets in the history of diets. William Banting, whose name the diet comes from, was a rather wealthy but also fat undertaker who couldn’t lose weight.

He then turned to a surgeon, Dr. Harwey, a pupil of Claude Bernard, for help. And he proposed a reduced-carbohydrate diet which however included little bread and wine in addition to a small portion of daily fruit.

THE ORIGINS OF THE BANTING DIET, THE FIRST DIET WITH FEW CARBOHYDRATES

The diet was then made public in 1865, under the name of the Harwey-Banting diet, thanks to the gratitude of Banting who published a short testimony about it ( Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public ) , saying how he had defeated obesity forever. thanks to this power supply.

Later in recent times, the Banting diet is back in fashion thanks to Professor Tim Noakes (pictured), who in his book “The real meal revolution” changes the original diet a little, turning it into a diet completely without carbohydrates and with high-fat foods.
A variant of the ketogenic diet , but with more free proteins in theory, although in practice they should not exceed 20% of the daily requirement. In fact, on the one hand the quantities are free, on the other Noakes says that 75% of the diet must come from fat.

On the other hand, Noakes is a gymnastics teacher and former marathon runner, not a dietician, but he has proved quite clever despite the contradictions.

In his book he describes a diet with a breakfast of eggs and bacon or cheese and cold cuts; dried meat and cheese for lunch and meat and vegetables or salad for dinner. And he says Banting ate like that to lose weight. Well, as we shall see, this is not exactly the case.

On page two we see the original Banting diet, the one that was prescribed to Banting by Dr. Harwey. And on page three we see Tim Noakes’ Banting Diet. As you will notice the differences are there. ( CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO )