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 bernard’s 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. Oertel’s 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. Ebsteins’s 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, Alzheimer’s , 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 don’t 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 .