The Banting Cure: How To Lose Three Pounds A Week By Eating Less Sugar
Everyone agrees that something must be done to combat the plague of obesity. High on the list of planned government interventions is the imposition of a heavy tax on sweetened foods and beverages. In the United States, a powerful medical lobby is pushing for a 40 percent tax on all colas sold in stores. This act alone is believed to reduce average per capita energy intake by 1,200 calories per day, which is equivalent to a loss of just over three pounds of excess body fat per week. This is a tempting move for politicians, as the tax would increase tax revenue by an estimated $2.5bn (£1.6bn) a year. The development of refined sugar has been one of the most destructive revolutions in human culinary history. Today, a sixth of our caloric intake comes from sugar, which when first imported from the West Indies was as expensive as caviar, so it was kept like tea in locked boxes. Now we eat as much sugar in a fortnight as our ancestors ate in a year two hundred years ago. Today it is one of the cheapest and most attractive forms of fast-absorbing energy. Most animals are tempted to overindulge if they are given sugary foods. If rats are given bland but highly nutritious food, they will eat enough to balance their energy needs; but they will overeat and get fat if they are given chocolates and biscuits. Horses, bears and ants show the same predilection, and so do human babies, who from the moment they enter the world can be made to smile by giving them something sweet to eat.
Food manufacturers take advantage of this inherent passion and ensure that their junk foods are loaded with sugars and fats. A frequently recommended way to lose weight is to stop eating all foods advertised on TV, as these are invariably loaded with sugar. The researchers claim that anyone who limited themselves to eating only the foods advertised in the media would consume more than 25 times the recommended daily amount of sugar. In doing so, today’s jam donut becomes tomorrow’s middle-aged spread. Instead of eating hyper-tasty cookies, candies, and cakes, we should stick to eating natural foods. These provide a wide range of essential nutrients and are slower to digest, making it much easier for the body to decide when it has had enough.
This was the discovery of William Banting, the 19th century undertaker who made a fortune selling elaborate coffins to the Duke of Wellington and other members of London gentry. In 1862, at the age of 65, Banting weighed 202 pounds, which was clearly excessive for a man who was only 5 feet tall. 5 inches tall. Over the years, he had tried a wide variety of slimming regimens, from fasting to spa treatments to diets to strict exercise regimens. Everything failed. When his health finally collapsed, probably because he had developed type 2 diabetes, he consulted Dr. William Harvey, who was then one of the most eminent doctors in Europe. Harvey put him on a low-sugar diet, and a year later he weighed 46 pounds less and was losing at a rate of about a pound a month. He had lost a foot off his waist, was sleeping better, and could go up and down stairs with ease. Such was his miraculous transformation that he wrote Letter on Corpulence (1863), which was the world’s first diet book. In it he said: ‘I can confidently state that the quantity of the diet can safely be left to the natural appetite, it is only the quality that is essential to diminish corpulence.’ Reduce your sugar intake as much as possible, and you too can get the same results.
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