Digesting The Often Unpalatable History Of Dieting
| Digesting The Often Unpalatable History Of Dieting |
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When it comes to selling diets, it's always "new", always
"revolutionary" and it is always "the diet to end all diets."
But let's take a close look at the history of dieting because, as that
great American man of letters George Santayana said, "Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - and those words are as
true of eating behavior and obesity as they are of any other area of
human history.
There is pretty much general agreement on the physiological creation of
obesity. How many millions of people have starved to death down human
history, no-one knows. But evolution grew to favor those who were adept
at converting easy food pickings into fat stores for survival during the
lean times.
And throughout much of history until only quite recent times, for the
vast majority of people the major issue with food has always been
getting enough of it, not unwanted fatness. Until about 200 years ago,
most guidelines on diet were mainly to do with custom and culture,
particularly issues of religious observance.
Prior to this time, various early Greek and later European sages, when
commenting on the moral benefits of relative moderation and temperance,
also noticed some of the apparent health benefits but health was rarely
the major focus of their discourses.
It is said that William, the Norman Conqueror of Britain, was spurred by
his failing riding abilities to attempt to lose weight. He tried
drinking extra wine as a substitute for food, foreshadowing some modern
dieters' habits of attempting to suppress appetite with alcohol or
cigarettes.
It was in the late 1700's that social commentators first started
noticing a rising level of obesity in Europe and the US, this being the
time of new wealth creation and the fast rise of new middle classes keen
to acquire and flaunt their money. Until then obesity was a rarity, a
curiosity, or generally a sign of affluence, reserved for the mighty of
status and mighty in bulk of the state, church, or commerce.
Some historians pinpoint the emergence of modern-style dieting to the
1829 vegetarian and wholegrain advice of New Jersey preacher Rev.
Sylvester Graham. However, Graham's advice was heavily framed in
Presbyterian moralism about lustings of the flesh and it is perhaps to a
slightly later figure that we better look as the Father of Modern
Dieting.
William Banting was a London undertaker in late middle-age who despaired
of being able ever again to bend to tie his shoe laces or even walk
forwards down a flight of stairs. He then adopted a high-protein and
high-fat diet, supplemented with some vegetables, as recommended to him
by his doctor - and lost several stones over a period of a year or so.
So enthused was Banting that he published the world's first dieting
blockbuster, his Letter on Corpulence. Banting was not so much concerned
about any perceived major health risks of his obesity, more the sheer
discomfort of immobility and the many minor associated ailments.
Like so many dieting books that have followed, the Letter of 1862 was
flabby, overwritten, repetitive, smug and desperately deficient in any
detailed scientific explanation......Banting is indeed the Founding
Father of a dubious publishing tradition!
However, to be fair, Banting lost a considerable amount of weight -- and
kept it off (and he didn't publicize for monetary gain). Yet his
achievement is the starting point of a heated debate that has been
central to the Dieting Industry's evolution ever since.
Banting put his success down to abstaining from "starch and saccharine
matter". This has been seized upon by legions of low-carb diet advocates
every since as seminal proof that high-protein, high fat-and
low-carbohydrate dieting is the Holy Grail of weight-loss.
There is, though, a glaring problem in this contention. Whilst Banting
quantifies in some detail his diet consumption, he simply generalizes
about what went on beforehand. We hear of beer and pies and pastries and
bread -- and we can only speculate as to the quantities.
Was his weight-loss simply due to eating less overall food, or was there
a magic in his particular food method? From his evidence we cannot know.
And ever since this argument has raged between advocates of one diet or
another diet "“ is there a particular effect of limited carbohydrates in
raising metabolism, accelerating weight-loss and facilitating
weight-control?
But does it even matter? What if all this debate about whether certain
foods have certain effects is simply a sideshow which maintains an
unhealthy focus on food and eating? Could it be that there are higher
food and dieting truths which should take precedence? - Namely that the
vast majority of people know only too well the fundamentals of healthy
eating, recognizing instinctively what they need and what is merely
consumerism, or just plain gross.
Also, perhaps it is far more the emotional and cultural factors which
keep excess weight in place than the precise mechanics of exact foods,
with the simple truth being that an excess of intake will result in an
ongoing excess of stored fat. And, to take it forward one more step,
there are apparently more and more people realizing that a
dieting-lifestyle obsession can in fact be a contributor to obesity.
Whatever, the diet bandwagon was rolling and German doctor Felix
Niemeyer very soon subtly altered Banting's advice by adding in a
low-fat prescription, thus sending the two strands of
protein-and-fat-in-the-diet and restricted-fat-in-the-diet on their
divergent paths.
By the late 19th Century, dawning health concerns over excessive
overweight were being matched by high-Victorian moral prudishness. It
was no longer cool to be rich and flaunt it with a paunch. It is no
coincidence that the first recorded characterizations of Anorexia were
drawn at this time amongst the daughters of the rich.
Around 1900, when insurance companies proclaimed a relationship between
obesity and morbidity, fat and health became generally linked in the
popular consciousness.
In the early part of the 20th Century, the growth of bigger government -
a more all-pervasive state - led to great advances in public health in
both the US and the UK. Along with many epochal advances in social
welfare there came a series of general and aspirational announcements on
what the "ideal diet" should be. As ever down to the present day, the
public generally paid not a blind bit of notice to such exhortations,
unsupported as they were by the excitement of any hard sell from the
Diet Industry.
And hard sell there certainly was. The first quarter of the new century
saw everything from thyroid extracts from dead animals, to relatively
harmless (and useless) herbal extracts, through to the newly developed
amphetamine drugs being promoted as obesity wonder cures.
Two key factors fueled the fast growing Diet Industry. The first was a
relative abundance of food in the West; today we live in an era of
global nutritional imbalance "“ there are roughly the same number of
people who are overfed as are underfed.
The second was the glamor of Hollywood, with its perfect stars of
perfect physique. To an increasing number of observers, dieting has
always remained more of a slave to fashion, despite its lip-service to
health issues.
Flying the flag for moderation in the 1920's, bringing the old-style
abstinence-is-close-to-godliness messages forward into a new era, was US
doctor Lulu Hunt Peters. She added the new science of calorie counting
to traditional self-denial, advocated lifelong restricted calories via
an obsessively closely-controlled regime. For Peters it was not just
overindulgence which was the sin; physical evidence of overweight was
abhorrent.
In these ways best-seller Peters could be seen as being the Founding
Mother of what modern weight control charity The Weight Foundation calls
Lifer Dieting, referring to those who are permanently dieting and cannot
envisage without catastrophizing a single day off their strict routine.
Taking stock, we are now have background on the formation of four of the
major strands of the modern Dieting Industry: high-fiber/whole-food,
high-protein with high fat, low-fat and, fourthly, rigid overall calorie
control.
Another major tradition had already become a widespread dieting
phenomenon by the time of Peters' pious exaltations to abstinence.
William Hay came up with the idea that certain food groups of his
designation should only be eaten in strictly defined pairings. Food
combination diets also still recur frequently in fresh guises because it
is exceptionally easy to come up with new combinations to recommend.
The second half of the 20th Century saw it all trotted again in endless
variations "“ the high fiber F-Plan, the carnivore's delight of first
Stillman and then Atkins, low fat in numerous guises, new combinations
with the Beverley Hills and simple deprivation endlessly repacked,
usually with "celebrity" endorsement (and often with an increased
emphasis on low carbs, or somehow differentiated carbs).
So, are we scraping the barrel by now for new diets? Well, the big
bandwagon rolling on in to the 21st Century has been carbs with a new
twist. Picking up on the Glycemic Index, developed to assist diabetics
with the timed glucose-level effects of various foods, this concept has
been dragged into the realm of dieting advice. But is it just a case of
new words, old ideas "“ aren't we back with Banting's "starch and
saccharine matter"?
In fact, we could go back a good deal further. The world's oldest
surviving medical document, the Ebers Papyrus from 1550 B.C. Egypt,
contains a recipe for an anti-diabetic diet of wheatgerm and okra.
It's got a long history, this dieting business. There are grains of
truth here and there but it's not a particularly proud history when it
comes to lasting weight control.
Certain diets will make people lose weight. Consistently consuming less
energy than you expend will definitely result in weight loss. Diets just
happen to be notoriously hopeless at achieving the one thing that really
matters "“ moving away from a poor or obsessive relationship with food,
to a good and relaxed relationship. Mind-shifts do not happen in the
stomach.
The Weight Foundation
secretary Malcolm Evans is the author of this article.
The Hardcore
Dieting Index self-test on dieting behavior is featured on The
Weight Foundation website.
The author of this article, Yana Mikheeva is the creator of Baby Health Directory - Pregnancy, Birth, Parenting and Baby Care resources. Are you going to get pregnant? Visit our friendly resource and read information on pregnancy and parenting, painless childbirth, growth and development of a baby, baby health, safety, signs of pregnancy.
She also has All about women site where you can find articles on various subjects, such as: diets, receipts, health, cellulite, figure, aromatherapy, wholesome food, psychology of relationships, pregnancy, parenting, fashion and many others.
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| | Digesting The Often Unpalatable History Of Dieting |
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