Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I'm reading a neat book about diets and nutrition.

Its called "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. Its a whopper.....about an inch thick and no pictures! Came out about 10 years ago.

Its certainly pro "low carb" eating or seemingly so. I haven't read but a small amount and have skipped around a bit. I plan to study it well.

But the thing that gets me about it is everything you know and have heard of about this stuff has been around forever. Apparently these diets come and go and get recycled as the "next big thing". People were recommending the equivalent of the Atkins diet in the 19th century. Ditto the "carnivore diet". Ditto the "ketogenic diet". Ditto the vegetarian diet. King Solomon was right.....nothing new under the sun.

Get this quote from page 1......

"Farinaceous and vegetable foods are fattening, and saccharine matters are especially so.....In sugar growing countries the Negroes and cattle employed on the plantations grow remarkably stout while the cane is being gathered and the sugar extracted. During the harvest the saccharine juices are freely consumed: but when the season is over, the superabundant adipose tissue is gradually lost." Thomas Hawkes Tanner, "The Practice of Medicine", 1869.

Yep. I remember an episode of the black and white Andy Griffith Show where Barney was talking about a weight loss diet that he believed in where you avoid carbohydrates and sugar. I could hardly believe it. That was way before the Atkins diet.

Holy crap! I actually found it.

Well Barney was an authority on many things!

Nip it! Nip it in the bud!!!

LOL. Yep. He even tried his hand at psychotherapy with Otis once because he read an article on it.

But my point was that the writers of the show had him say essentially what Atkins was famous for. The writers didn't just make that up out of thin air. It must have been something that was advocated at the time.

What better patient than the town drunk? Genius!!!

Hawk you have a mind like a steel trap! I remember seeing that probably more than once.....after watching the video clip....."the old carbohydrates and glucose"......hahaha!

Oh yeah. Now that I think about it, I remember my Mom going on some kind of all meat diet a loooong time ago.....probably close to 50 years. I'm 54 and I was a little kid. I remember she about keeled over and sent Dad on an emergency run to the store for a sack of Oreos!

She probably was on it long enough to deplete her glycogen stores and get the so called "keto flu"........and panicked because she didn't know what was happening.

Aunt Bea was right, she shouldn't have the apple pie.

Before Atkins copier it , it was known as the Air Force diet. Per Atkins himself. Atkins was a great marketer.

According to the book I am reading, a man named William Banting published a pamphlet in Britain in 1863 called "Letter on Corpulance Addressed to the Public". It was the Atkins/low carb diet. By 1865 the diet had gotten so popular that to "Bant" or "do some Banting" meant going on a diet. You know how the English are with their slang!