Karen, good for you for defending Dr. Atkins. But, Stephan, the first low-carb guy wasn’t Banting but a French lawyer, who wrote his diet book in 1825. “The Physiology of Taste,” by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, “was a sensation,” reports the New York Times. “He knew some would object to his prescription but, he warned, they would suffer the consequences:

” ‘Oh Heavens!’ all you readers of both sexes will cry out, ‘Oh Heavens above! But what a wretch the Professor is! Here in a single word he forbids us everything we must love, those little white rolls from Limet, and Achard’s cakes, and those cookies. He doesn’t even leave us potatoes or macaroni! Who would have thought this of a lover of good food who seemed so pleasant?’

” ‘What’s this I hear?’ I exclaim, putting on my severest face, which I do perhaps once a year. ‘Very well then; eat! Get fat! Become ugly and thick, and asthmatic, finally die in your own melted grease. ‘ ”

BTW, the full title of Brillat-Savarin’s work, in eight volumes, was “The Physiology of Taste, or Meditation on Transcendent Gastronomy, a Work Theoretical, Historical, and Programmed.”

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Re Karen’s post, “Every lifestyle guru that comes along steals from Atkins – every single one of them. Carb talk is all the rage, everywhere you go, because Atkins put it on the map.”

Carb talk is all the rage; so much so that there is now even talk of a “low-carb backlash“!

I admit I can’t tell which of the varying theories–sugarbusters, Atkins, South Beach–is the soundest, but as I noted in a previous post, one recent article points out that Atkins theory is just a revival of William Banting’s “Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public,” published in London in 1863. I wonder if I should get on the Banting diet!

The Best of Stephan Kinsella