Who Invented Low-Carb Diets?
The term “low-carb” was coined around 1992 when the USDA recommended that Americans include six to eleven servings daily of grains and starches in their diet. In fact, low-carb dieting dates back more than 100 years to 1864, before the trendy Atkins diet, when a pamphlet titled “Letter on Corpulence” was written by William Banting. This was as close to the first commercial low-carb diet as you could get. Banting’s diet eventually fell out of favor, but low-carb diets began appearing again in the 20th century. The most famous of these are the Atkins and Scarsdale diets that came to popularity in the 1970s. While Scarsdale has a set 14-day meal plan that must be followed and greatly restricts calories, the Atkins diet allows for unlimited calorie consumption as long as those calories are from protein, fat and vegetables and carbohydrate intake is kept low. Atkins and Scarsdale fell out of favor in the 1980’s when the USDA encouraged the consumption of grains and grain products. It was on
