Eat Fat and Grow Slim

[Celeriac]

I noticed a photo on Twitter recently, of a book entitled 'Eat Fat and Grow Slim'. Another low carb diet book, but this one was written by Dr Richard Mackarness MB BS DPM, who helped found the organisation Action Against Allergy - in 1958. Dr Mackarness (1916-1996) called his diet 'The Stone Age Diet' and it obviously pre-dates Dr Loren Cordain's Paleo diet by many years.

I bought a hardback 6th reprint from 1960, via Amazon UK. The first thing that strikes me about a book published before I was born, is that humans keep on reinventing the wheel because this doctor was explaining how a low carb diet helps with weight loss and diabetes, fifty years ago.

Before the Internet, books went out of print, libraries had clear-outs and papers got destroyed. Now, we have a chance to keep information and build upon it and when we don't, like George Santayana said: " Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it ".

Dr Mackarness' book showed me that a German doctor of medicine and professor of physiology named Nathan Zuntz (1847-1920) had run an experiment in 1898 in Berlin that proved that a man on a high carb diet gained weight and lost it on a low carb diet, even when both diets were of equal caloric value.

Benedict and Miller confirmed this study in 1907 in the USA, using a 'bicycle ergometer' to make sure that the subject also did the same amount of exercise per day as well as intaking the same number of calories.

Dr Mackarness mentions Donaldson and Pennington having put people on high fat diets since 1944 in the USA and on Dr Andreas Eenfeldt's website he has a piece about Dr A W Pennington's moderate carb diet from 1953, which inspired Dr Robert C. Atkins http://www.dietdoctor.com/a-low-carb-high-fat-diet-from-1953

Dr Mackarness doesn't just reference doctors and diets before him, he also addresses criticism of low carb high fat diets. I was astonished to find that as far back as 1829, William Webb, Surgeon Extra-ordinary to the Prince Regent, was ascribing obesity to " over-indulgence at table".

It seems that London undertaker William Banting, (who made the Duke of Wellington's coffin), author of 'Letter on Corpulence' (1864) which can be downloaded via https://archive.org/details/letteroncorpulen00bant also faced critics, as did his doctor, Dr William Harvey. It wasn't until 1956 that the BBC gave Banting and Harvey the credit they deserved, when it included them in a broadcast called 'Beautifully Less'. Too late for Dr Harvey, who having been hounded by a Dr Felix von Niemeyer of Stuttgart, finely gave in nine years after the publication of 'Letter On Corpulence' and apologised, saying that Banting wouldn't have written it if it weren't for his deafness. (No I don't see the connection to weight loss success or failure either). According to Dr Mackarness, Dr Niemayer was a fashionable physician, associated with a pill containing quinine, digitalis and opium.

Dr Mackarness has two blob men, Mr Constant Weight and Mr Fatten Easily in diagrams by Leslie Dahl which attempt to explain how metabolism differs and why people put on weight and some of them seem relevant even now.

There is a diet at the back and dieters can eat as much as they like of asparagus, French beans, runner beans, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, raw and boiled celery, chicory, cucumber, lettuce, marrow, mushrooms, onions, radishes, spinach, spring greens, raw tomatoes, turnips, watercress, stewed gooseberries, grapefruit, lemon juice, loganberries and stewed rhubarb. The protein to fat ratios of various meat, fish, poultry, game and dairy are given including things like boiled brain, beef dripping, fried liver and boiled mutton leg. There's even a small section on what to buy when eating in a pub, with prices included.

Very entertaining read and if you can get one from a secondhand bookshop, charity shop, boot fair, Amazon etc I would recommend it.

 

[Brunneria]

I remember The Stoneage Diet!

I think it was the first intro i had to LC. He placed an emphasis on game and organ meat, if i remember correctly.

I bought it in Waterstones, i think.
Paperback with a grey or grey-blue cover.
Still living at home at the time (late teens, sometime in the early 80s) and my mother thought it absurd that i wanted to eat expensive meat and not fill up on cheap potato.

 

[carol43]

I found an article on this. It's a PDF file. Makes interesting reading.

http://www.ultimatehealthprotocol.com/support-files/eat_fat.pdf

 

[timerich]

I remember The Stoneage Diet!

I think it was the first intro i had to LC. He placed an emphasis on game and organ meat, if i remember correctly.

I bought it in Waterstones, i think.
Paperback with a grey or grey-blue cover.
Still living at home at the time (late teens, sometime in the early 80s) and my mother thought it absurd that i wanted to eat expensive meat and not fill up on cheap potato.

That's part of the reason for a high carb diet, trying to feed a family on a budget all the meals I cooked were high on pasta, rice, potatoes and bread, it made feeding a family affordable and then it was backed by so called 'health experts'

 

[Celeriac]

When my father was diagnosed with high cholesterol and high blood pressure he was rationed to two eggs a week and my mother went overboard on the low fat everything. Suddenly we were eating less meat and more veg but also more pasta and rice and bread.

A cheap diet is a high carb diet, if you look at value meals and other budget ranges, lots of it is pasta and rice-based. Mind you I was in Waitrose this afternoon and nearly fell over when my mother bought a Charlie Bigham's spinach cannelloni ready meal for £7 just to feed herself. I got five Waitrose Duchy organic Welsh lamb chops for less than that !

 

[vintageutopia]

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Growing up, we ate a good deal from the garden and my dad hunted, so we didn't eat much processed food. That said, many meals were filled with starches (potatoes AND bread, plus pudding), because it was a cheap filler. I started my battle with PCOS in my teens...oh, how I wish I knew then what I know now.

And now I want stewed rhubarb.