Thomas hawkes tanner in his book the pracitce of medicine

published in 1869 said that food which are rich in starches

or flour are fattening especially the food high in sugar. He
went on to say that the people and the cattle employed on
the field grew remarkably fat during the time of gathering
the cane and sugar extraction. These were the findings
during the time of harvest, but when the season used to get
over the fat that got accumulated was lost.
William banting was an obese man who weighed around 100
kgs when he was 65 years in 1862. He started gaining
weight at his age of 30 and he did everything to arrest his fat
accumulation. He did not have a family history of obesity .
He was not inactive and he never over indulged in food. He
did everything he could to shed that excess fat , he did
rowing, walking , horse riding , physical labour but kept
gaining weight. He also cut down on the calories to lose
weight but to no avail on the contrary it left him exhausted
during his daily chores. He also tried diuretics and purgatives
but still kept gaining weight. Luckily he came across an ear
surgeon William Harvey who had heard a great physiologist
Claude Bernard talking on diabetes. He said that the liver
secrets glucose and this glucose is formed from starches and
sugar and it gets accumulated in the blood in people
suffering with diabetes.harvey formulated a diet on
bernards revelations and he explained that diet high in meat
and dairy would control the sugar in the blood. Thus it is self
explanatory that staying away from sugar and starches is
also going to have the same effect. Harvey prescribed this
regimen to banting in 1862 and was asked to refrain himself
from bread, potatoes, sugar, milk and sweets. Banting
dropped a whopping 16 kgs by 1863 and a total of 25 kgs by
1864.
Banting wrote a handout name the letter of corpulence for
the public in which he mentioned that he has never felt like
this before in his past 25 years and all the ailments that he
had are now history. This started a popular diet craze it was

so successful that his letter was translated in various

languages and sold in US, Austria, Germany and France.
Popularity grew so much that banting entered as a verb in
the English dictionary.
Banting got a lot of criticism for his writings esp from the
lancets the medical journal which said that this diet could be
particularly dangerous and that Mr Banting and the likes
should not meddle with the medical literature and should
mind their own business. When they saw that the banting
fever did not show any signs of abetment lancet in its journal
said a fair trial should be given to this diet and also to the
supposition that sugary and starchy foods are the prime
cause of corpulence.
Sir William osler a physician who was considered the father
of modern medicine discussed in his book about the
treatment of obesity where he mentioned about bantings
diet and versions of it by clinicians from Germany, max
joseph oertel and Wilhelm ebstein. Oertels diet was more
restrictive of fats and liberal on vegetables and bread.
Ebstein on the other hand said that fatty food were crucial
coz it increased satiety and thus decreased fat accumulation.
Ebsteinss diet allowed all sorts of meat and fish esp the
ones with high fat and he restricted foods with starches,
sugars and was lenient on vegetables.
So the constant in all of these diets were that starches and
sugar should be avoided to lose fat.
Hilde bruch who was considered as authority in child obesity
in 1957 considereds that meat was not fat producing and
that it was as innocent as starches and sweets , which infact
are obesogenic.
Dr spock who wrote the bible for child care said in his book
that amount of starches and sweets consumed determines
in people how much weight they are going to lose or gain.
For over a hundered years it was a wisdom that if we eat
bread, rice and wheat related foods we are going to get fat
and the same is true with sugar.

 Davidson and Passmore in their book human nutrition and

dietetics wrote that the foods rich in carbohydrates should
be drastically avoided coz over indulgence in these food is
the root cause of obesity.
There was a drastic change in 1977 in the US for the dietary
recommendations, now the butter that goes on the bread
and sour cream on potatoes put on the kilos not the bread
and the potatoes which was earlier said . On the contrary
bread and potatoes were considered to be the cure for
weight gain. Carbohydrates had become heart healthy diet
food. This was one of the most remarkable conceptual
changes in the history of public health.
The leading authorities started compiling their proposals
explaining how high fat that was considered to be healthy is
dangerous to human health and how limited intake of
carbohydrates for weight loss is contrary to current beliefs.
The researchers showed that avoiding carbohydrates alone
could result in significant weight loss and that too without
any hunger pangs. But the main stream medical
professionals criticized this diet and called it as Fad and
dangerous to human health in one of the articles in the
American medical association journal published in 1973.
In about 4 months of this article the researchers of obesity
got together in one of the conferences held by the national
institute of health and there were papers presented on the
work done by Margaret ohlson and charlotte young where it
was shown that how carbohydrate restricted diet gave them
freedom from hunger, substantial weight loss and also
experienced less fatigue.
The American medical association rendered all the research
and clinical evidence done over a period of a century
irrelevant. Low fat diet was recommended by dietetics
associations, diabetic associations & heart associations. The
high carbohydrate diet which was once called fattening was
now considered heart healthy.

 Remarkably The medical professionals were more concerned

about heart disease and not obesity. They only presented
ambiguous evidence which did nt have the efficacy of low fat
diet in weight loss.
They relied on cholesterol-heart hypothesis. Which said that
if on consumes high fat especially saturated fat it raises
cholesterol which is responsible for clogging of the arteries
and thus heart disease.
People who proposed this theory said people were getting
obese coz they were eating too much and eating too much of
fat and since fat has got twice the amount of calories
compared to carbohydrates and proteins restricting fat
would ultimately result in consuming less calories and thus
result in weight loss. So a low fat diet suddenly became a
healthy diet.
The united states dietetics association came up with the
guidelines ( food pyramid) where fat and oil was to be
consumed sparingly and rice, bread and potatoes were to be
consumed in 6-11 servings per day which was once
considered fattening.
There has always been abundant evidence that the
assumptions of fat being a nutritional bane to human life and
obesity is caused coz we eat less and exercise more are
incorrect.
There is a stark possibility that the low fat high carbohydrate
diet that has been proposed to us for the fast 35 years is not
only making us fat but might also be responsible for all the
chronic illnesses.
Due to the mainstream medical professionals propagation of
low fat consumption the Americans in the 1970s made a
conscious effort to reduce saturated fat consumption it
dropped from 45 % to 33 % . less eggs and red meat was
consumed. This resulted in a decline in cholesterol levels
resulting in drop in high blood pressure and high cholesterol
cases in America. Fatality due to heart attacks did drop
during that period but there is very little evidence to suggest

that the decline in heart disease is due to reduction in fat

consumption.
A 10 year study of heart disease mortality which was
published in a new England journal of medicine in 1998
suggested that the doctors and the paramedics are treating
the disease more successfully.
The statics laid by the American heart association also
support the study which say between 1979 and 2003 the
medical procedures carried out for heart disease has
increase 430%, more than 2,00,000 people under went a
bypass.
If the last few decades were to be considered a test for the
cholesterol- heart hypothesis, the observation that the
incidences of heart diseases has not decreased is a
compelling evidence in itself to prove that the hypothesis is
not true.
Obesity is increasing at an alarming rate across the globe.
From 1960 1980 rate of obesity was fairly constant in
between 13-15 % . after official recommendation of eating
low fat and high carbohydrate has increased it to 30% 1 in
every 3 American is obese. Diabetes has also surged in
around the same time. Both obesity and diabetes are
associated with the increased risk of heart disease. Which
could explain why the rate of heart disease has not gone
down.
The message of eating high carbohydates and reduce fat
has consequentially increased obesity and diabetes.
In one of the interviews of William Harlan the associate
director of the office of disease prevention said that we
assumed that if we adviced people to reduce fat which has
got high calorie content the weight is supposed to go down ,
but instead we saw the weight has increased, portion size of
food has increased, amount of food that we eat has alos
gone up. And in the process of consuming less fat people
started consuming more carbohydrates.

 It would be unjust to reject the anecdotal evidence and

observation that carbohydrates make us fat especially
without any compelling evidence which says that fat is bad
for the heart ( such evidence does not exist.
Before the acceptance of low fat message a few clinical
investigators from Britain proposed a hypothesis which said
that the diseases of civilization (heart disease, diabetes,
Alzheimers , cancer, hypertension etc.) were rare in a
certain tribes which lived in isolation and lived a traditional
lifestyle. And only when they were exposed to refined
carbohydrate foods which are a part of the western diet like
wheat, sugar, flour, rice etc. they started suffering with
those disease.
In 1970 though the carbohydrate hypothesis which said
that refined carbohydrates causes chronic diseases were
contradicting the fat hypothesis. And the debate went on
that carbohydrates cannot cause heart disease coz fat
causes heart disease.
Fat hypothesis was only a hypothesis coz there was no
concrete evidence to support it.
Over the past few decades we have accepted a few theories
of calories from fat, over all calories & physical activity as
the most important variables in health and fitness.
And just ignoring the effects of carbohydrates on insulin and
blood glucose and their effects on cells, arteries and other
hormones which support the alternative theory of chronic
diseases.
As early as 1934 This fixated theory by the medical
researchers of accumulation of cholesterol in the arteries
causes heart disease was established and by the time the
testing protocols for blood lipids ( triglycerides), measuring
levels of insulin in the blood and condition called as insulin
resistance was developed the mass of clinicians, medical
researchers and even the politicians had reached a
conclusion that dietary fat and high cholesterol were the
cause of heart disease and low fat diet was a solution to it.

 The researchers in science have often evoked searching

the keys where the light is metaphor. There was this lady
who was searching for her lost keys and the passersby asked
her if he could help and what was she searching for? She
told the gentleman that she was searching for her keys after
searching for the keys for a while the gentleman said we
have searched this entire area are you sure you lost the
keys here? She said I dont know where I have lost the keys
but there is light here so I am searching in the light. And the
researchers for the past 50 years or so have been looking
for the cause of the heart disease where the light is and not
necessarily where the cause lies.
There have been considerable skeptism in the case of
cholesterol- heart hypothesis and all the skeptics have been
ignored by the mainstream medical professionals and the
likes who highly regard the hypothesis. But they need to
understand that scientific research cannot remove skeptism
coz science cannot function without it.
in the study of nutrition, obesity and chronic diseases the
observation has emerged from various discipline .