Banting’s legacy: the story of a fat man

A lady from the back seat of a taxi called out loudly to the driver, “ke ea theoha moo Koporasi”, indicating that she will be getting off at the next taxi-stop. She was in her mid-thirties by the look of things, but her heavy bulk portrayed otherwise. She was fat. Despite the throbbing sound of the taxi sound system, her heavy breathing could be heard from the front seat as she pushed through the narrow passage between the seats. The taxi had already stopped to allow her to disembark. Getting off, she had to go down the two door steps in reverse. This she did holding firmly on the frame of the open door, and the other hand clutching securely on the seat near the exit. It was a mammoth task. A bead of perspiratation trickled down her shinny cheeks as she finally had one leg on the ground. For her, getting off a taxi was a mission worth a gold medal. She is perhaps one of the many adults, as well as a growing number of children, suffering from obesity in this country. Obesity, once associated with opulence and wealth, is now a global pandemic. It is worth noting that we are getting fatter and fatter by the day. There is a hefty health price to pay for being obese ranging from arthritis to heart disease to diabetes to stroke. These diseases will eventually deplete our healthcare system, leaving it bankrupt or our government swimming in debt if we cannot control our eating habits. Food is forever available, from dusk to dawn. There is food in every corner of every street. Fast-food outlets are everywhere and their foods are cheap and readily available. People are always eating, any time and all the time. Unfortunately, this is causing havoc to our metabolism. Our bodies cannot cope with the gluttony and our never-ending ravenous appetites. But it looks as if these eating habits and the escalating numbers of obesity started way back in the 19th century. William Banting, a 19th century Victorian, was a very fat man. He was fat for the same reasons so many of us are fat today. Just like we do today, Banting would indulge in confectionaries, sweets, cakes, ice-cream, and biscuits just because they are there to be eaten. Banting was an undertaker, and was doing so well in his business because it handled the funeral for the notables and royals. Food was therefore something he did not have to worry much about, except that it was fattening him beyond his liking. Banting is said to have been so fat that stooping to tie his own shoes was mission impossible. His multiple-story house did not make it any easier for him either. He had to go down the staircase backwards to relieve the excess weight off his knee joints. As if being fat was not torturous enough for him, he later on suffered an impaired vision and his hearing ability was lost. It was found later when he went to see a doctor that these were all due to his bulky body. His doctor told him, “You are too fat and the fat has obstructed one of your auditory canals. You have got to lose weight.” Luckily for Banting, his doctor did not just body-shame him, but rather gave him a strict eating regimen to follow. This was a basic-diet which has now been christened after Banting himself. The doctor told him to strictly avoid bread, sugar, beer and potatoes. These were the foods that most of us today still enjoy and hold in high esteem as healthy; the so-called innocent foods. You can imagine how he felt when the doctor told him to quit the main elements of his existence, the staple foods he grew up eating. Aching knees, heavy breathing, failing eye-sight and a loss of hearing could have been too much for him to argue with the doctor. The doctor told him that he could eat everything from that list without any quilt or remorse. He could eat as many times as he possibly could. For breakfast, he could eat meat, fish, eggs, tea without sugar, and these could be compensated with vegetable of green leaves. For lunch, he could have fish, any meat, vegetable, a fruit, and could even have a champagne. Beer was prohibited. As for supper, he could have meat or fish, similar to lunch. Gin, whisky or brandy were also allowed with this meal. With this kind of diet, Banting should not concern himself with the quantity, it was the adherence to the diet that mattered. Within months in his new eating routine, Banting’s weight began to melt away. It is said in less than a year, he had lost about 20 kilograms. Maybe his greatest joy came a day he realised that he no longer needed to go down the staircase in reverse. He later published a short pamphlet to spread the good news on his new diet. The pamphlet was titled “A letter on corpulence”. It was so popular it sold over fifty thousand copies in its six editions. Banting lived a long, healthy full life after losing his weight, he died in 1878 at 81 years of age. Fast forward to 21st century. Many of us still struggle with weight. Our eating habits, like they did in the past, still promote fat-storage. Banting, as this diet has come to be known, follows a low carbohydrates, medium proteins and high fat principle. Many people have thrived using this method of losing and maintaining their body weight. However, it is not so popular among the highly funded medical fraternity because there is no money to be made in this lifestyle. If you eat a healthy meal, bought from the local farmers, cooked from your home, there will never be a place for processed, chemically modified foods that make you sick. Self-restraint (from processed foods) is simply not something the modern diet industry is willing to discuss, perhaps because it is so difficult for many of us to achieve, maybe because it simply does not sell, or possibly because it simply has no place in a world in which consumption remains the major activity of the day. Whatever the case, your weight determines the quality of your health and that health is in your own hands. l Tšepang Ledia is a Public Relations Officer at Lesotho Electricity Company. He writes in his own capacity. For feedback, send to: mrledia@gmail.com Tšepang Ledia