I have a weakness for any argument that begins with a respectable authority saying “everyone knows” and ends with someone else replying “everyone knows because everyone keeps repeating it.” It is not because I enjoy contrarianism for its own sake. It is because I have the misfortune of living in a country where official guidance is usually a mixture of panic, lobbying, and the educational needs of people who cannot be trusted to use a toaster without supervision.

Diet advice is a good example. It sits on the border between science and propaganda. It is presented as settled. It is treated as moral instruction. It becomes a class marker. It also changes every decade, while the people who were wrong last time remain employed. So it is oddly comforting to discover that the low-carbohydrate debate did not begin with, “biohackers,” or even Dr Atkins. It began, in recognisable form, in Victorian England. The Victorians, being Victorians, argued about it in public, wrote pamphlets, mocked one another in newspapers, and managed to make the whole business both earnest and funny.

The key figure is William Banting, an undertaker who did not pretend to be a scientist and did not need to be. He did what most “experts” refuse to do now: he described what happened to his own body, stated what he ate, and invited others to test it.

Banting framed obesity as something more than a private annoyance. He treated it as a kind of social and physical captivity. He insisted that corpulence brought inconvenience and a constant drain on dignity, not merely a change in appearance. Michelle Mouton notes how he presented himself as a convert and a proselytiser, spreading “the word of a miracle cure” against corpulence, which he called a “parasite.”

His descriptions are vivid. He reports struggling with stairs, shoes, seats in public places, and the basic mechanics of daily life. He writes of being “compelled to go down stairs slowly backwards” to reduce the strain on joints, and of puffing and blowing at light exertion. These are not the complaints of a modern wellness influencer. They are the humiliations of an older man who has noticed that his body is becoming an awkward machine.

There is also a quietly modern detail: Banting insists the problem is not gluttony in the vulgar sense. He denies that he is simply a pig at table. Instead, he blames the common English diet. His line is worth quoting because it is the seed of nearly every later low-carb argument:

“I partook of the simple aliments of bread, milk, butter, beer, sugar, and potatoes more freely than my aged nature required, and hence, as I believe, the generation of the parasite…”

That is not “I ate twelve doughnuts.” It is “I ate what everyone eats.” The danger is normality. The culprit is the respectable staple diet, which is exactly what makes his pamphlet socially disruptive.

Banting’s “system” was not vague. It was practical. It was restrictive in a way that would offend the modern British dietitian, who tends to believe that the human body runs best on colourful cardboard and a sense of fairness.

Banting reports that his ear surgeon advised him to avoid what he called “human beans”—“bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer, and potatoes”—a label justified by an analogy: beans fatten horses, and these foods fatten older humans.

He also gives a menu. He is not shy about quantities or alcohol. Breakfast is meat or fish, tea without milk or sugar, and a little biscuit or dry toast. Dinner is meat or fish, vegetables except potatoes, dry toast, and then wine; “champagne, port and beer forbidden.” Tea includes fruit and rusks; supper resembles dinner; and a “nightcap” can be spirits without sugar or more wine.

Modern low-carb advocates often pretend they are inventing something radical. Banting had already found the basic pattern: reduce starchy staples, prioritise animal foods, permit some fruit, and avoid beer. The Victorians did not have “carbohydrates” in the modern nutritional sense. They did not speak our biochemical language. They had a different scientific vocabulary, and sometimes a different kind of confidence.

Mouton explains that Victorian explanations often relied on a simple material logic: “saccharine and farinaceous” foods fatten because they contain carbon and hydrogen, the same elements found in human fat; replace them with protein and weight drops.

This is not how we would argue now, but it is not wholly stupid. It is an attempt—clumsy, but sincere—to connect food composition with body composition. It is also a reminder that diet debates always rely on whatever scientific language is fashionable at the time. Sometimes the language clarifies. Sometimes it merely decorates.

Banting’s pamphlet was a minor cultural event. “Banting” became a verb, and England was briefly “bantingised.” The newspapers filled with discussion. Satirists pounced. Mouton notes that Punch published a parody, “The Banting Code,” and that elite commentators framed Banting as a naïve dupe: the sort of man who discovers something useful by accident and then cannot stop evangelising.

This reaction matters. Diet advice is never only about physiology. It is about status. Banting was an undertaker, not a physician. He published outside normal channels. He implied that doctors had failed. That alone guaranteed hostility. In Britain, if you question a professional class, you are supposed to do it with the right accent and a correct reference list.

Banting tried to blunt this. He urged people to consult doctors. He also added medical endorsement. In later editions, his surgeon William Harvey offered an explanation linking corpulence with “hypertrophy of the adipose tissue,” and connecting corpulence and diabetes, suggesting that a treatment effective for diabetes might help corpulence too. Banting wanted legitimacy, but he also wanted results. The pamphlet is full of that uneasy mix: deference to the “Faculty” and a quiet insistence that the Faculty had not done its job.

His plea is theatrical, but it is also very human:

“Oh!, that the Faculty would look deeper into and make themselves better acquainted with the crying evil of obesity—that dreadful tormenting parasite on health and comfort”

If you strip out the melodrama, you are left with a demand that still applies: stop treating obesity as a moral lecture, and start treating it as a problem with causes that can be investigated.

Here is where the story becomes less satisfying for people who enjoy simple victories. Modern research does not confirm every strong claim made by modern low-carb propaganda. It also does not support the old low-fat orthodoxy as cleanly as it pretended.

A substantial meta-analysis of randomised trials up to 2011 found that both low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets reduce weight and improve risk factors, with low-carbohydrate diets producing larger increases in HDL and larger reductions in triglycerides, but not necessarily superior weight loss in every analysis. (PubMed) That is not a moral triumph for either side. It is evidence that multiple dietary routes can improve outcomes, with trade-offs.

At the same time, some trials show an advantage for low-carbohydrate diets in weight loss and certain cardiovascular risk markers over 12 months, even when both groups receive counselling. (PubMed) In plain terms: carbohydrate restriction can work well in real humans living real lives, and not only in metabolic ward studies.

When you look at people with metabolic syndrome or impaired glucose regulation, the picture is similarly mixed. A six-month trial reported improvements in metabolic syndrome prevalence in both low-carb and low-fat groups, with a stronger reduction in the low-carb group, though both improved over time. (SpringerLink) Another short-term trial in overweight adults with impaired glucose regulation found similar weight loss and improvements across low-carb and low-fat patterns. (PubMed)

This is not the glorious certainty that diet tribes want. It is, however, consistent with a sensible view: some people respond especially well to carbohydrate restriction, particularly those with insulin resistance, high triglycerides, low HDL, or appetite dysregulation; others do well with fat restriction if it reduces total energy intake and improves food quality.

So where does that leave Banting? It leaves him looking less like a crank and more like an early populariser of a dietary pattern that remains viable, though not magical. His list of foods to avoid—bread, sugar, potatoes, beer—is exactly what modern clinicians often suggest to insulin-resistant patients, even if they use gentler language and provide an NHS leaflet designed for someone who reads at the level of a shoe.

Modern low-carb arguments often lean on insulin. Mouton notes that contemporary explanations tend to focus on insulin and glucagon: carbohydrates raise insulin; insulin promotes energy storage; frequent insulin spikes can contribute to insulin resistance; and replacing carbohydrates with protein can shift the hormonal balance in a direction that supports fat loss.

You do not need to believe in a single “carbohydrate-insulin model” as the whole story to accept that insulin is relevant. Insulin is not a conspiracy. It is basic physiology. For many people, especially those already prone to fat gain, a high-carb diet can produce a cycle of hunger, snacking, and enerat reduces refined carbohydrates can interrupt that cycle.

The strongest modern evidence is not that carbohydrates are “evil” in some metaphysical sense. It is that certain forms of carbohydrates—refined starches and added sugars, especially in liquid form—are too easy to consume and too effective at producing metabolic chaos in vulnerable bodies. Beer fits this pattern neatly, which is why Banting’s ban on beer looks less Victorian prudery and more practical intelligence.

Banting’s programme has odd features. He permits a fair amount of alcohol, forbids beer and port, and warns against pork. Some of this reflects Victorian food classification. Some reflects personal preference. Some reflects the medical ideas of his adviser.

Modern research complicates alcohol further. Even when alcohol is “sugar-free” in the obvious sense, it can affect appetite, sleep, decision-making, and energy balance. He was right to forbid beer, but not because beer is uniquely wicked. He was right because it is caloric, easy to overconsume, socially habitual, and likely to accompany bread-based meals and late-night eating. He was accidentally describing what we would now call an obesogenic environment.

There is also a social dimension. Banting’s diet—meat, fish, wine—signals a certain middle-class respectability. It is not a diet of the labouring poor. It requires choice and money. That matters because diet debates always carry class tension. Even today, the official “healthy diet” is often a coded demand that the poor eat differently while the rich outsource discipline to personal trainers and private clinics.

The real lesson is not that Banting solved nutrition forever, or that the Victorians were secretly keto influencers in top hats. It is that diet wars are not new, and that the loudest certainty is usually politics.

Banting’s pamphlet became popular because it offered an escape from a frustrating condition using a clear rule: stop eating the staple foods that dominate your diet. When people are desperate, clarity sells. It sold in 1863. It sells now. But Banting also did something else. He implicitly challenged the medical establishment. He suggested that ordinary people could observe, test, and act. That is the part modern bureaucracies hate. They do not mind you being healthy. They mind you being autonomous. In Victorian England, the argument played out in newspapers, pamphlets, and public mockery. In modern Britain, the same argument is filtered through committees, corporate partnerships, and public health messaging that never admits uncertainty. The stage set is different. The plot is the same.

Banting would recognise the modern debate instantly. He would recognise the attempts to turn food advice into moral policing. He would recognise the professional gatekeeping. He would also recognise the basic complaint of the overweight man who has tried everything and is told, yet again, that the solution is to eat less and move more, as if he had not thought of that.

On the core point—that the ordinary English diet of bread, sugar, potatoes, and beer can produce fat gain and misery, and that removing these foods can improve health and weight—Banting looks remarkably plausible. On the broader claim that the “Faculty” should take obesity seriously as a real condition, he was obviously right.

On the mechanistic explanation, he did not really have one. He admitted as much. Modern science offers partial explanations—insulin, appetite rity, food reward—but it still does not fully solve why some people become obese in one environment while others rema, is the annoyance. The world refuses to be a pamphlet.

Still, if you want a sensiormed conclusion, it is this: Banting’s “system” was not a Victorian oddity. It was an early popular form of carbohydrate restriction, and modern evidence suggests that such diets can be effective for weight loss and metabolic improvement for many people, though they are not uniquely effective for all, and their success often depends on adherence and food quality. (PubMed)

In other words, Banting deserves to be treated as a serious historical figure in diet culture, not as a joke. The jokes were always easier than the facts.

Primary Source
Banting, William. A Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public. London, 1863. (Quotations and menu details as reproduced in Mouton.)

Secondary Sources
Mouton, Michelle. “Doing Banting: High-Protein Diets in the Victorian Period and Now.” Studies in Popular Culture 24, no. 1 (October 2001): 17–32.

Hu, Tian, et al. “Effects of Low-Carbohydrate Diets versus Low-Fat Diets on Metabolic Risk Factors: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial of Epidemiology* (2012). (PubMed)

Bazzano, Lydia A., et al. “Effects of Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets: A Randomized Trial.” Annals of Internal Medicine (20(PubMed)

Zhang, et al. “Effects of Low-Carbohydrate vs Low-Fat Diets on Weight Loss and Metabolic Risk Factors in Overweight/Obese Individuals with Impaired Glucose Regulation: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Nutrients (or indexed via PubMed) (2022). (PubMed)

Haghighatdoost, et al. “Effects of Low Carbohydrate Diet Compared to Low Fat Diet on Reversing the Metabolic Syndrome: A Randomized Clinical Trial.” BMC Nutrition (2021). (SpringerLink)

Frontiers meta-analysis (2024). “The effects of low-carbohydrate diet on glucose and lipid metabolism in overweight or obese patients with T2DM: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.” (Frontiers)