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William Banting (1796-1878), English, was one of the first people to manage his weight by going on a formal low-carbohydrate diet to reduce his weight. His method for doing so was supervised by Dr. William Harvey, who notified the public of his success in 1863.

He wrote a booklet called "Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public" which contained the particular plan for the diet he followed. The pamphlet's popularity was such that the question "do you bant?" referred to his method, and eventually to dieting in general. Although originating from the English verb banting, this word is nowadays the Swedish verb meaning "to diet", bantning.

William Banting was a distant relative of Sir Frederick Grant Banting, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of insulin.^[1]

Agatha Christie, the crime fiction writer, not infrequently used the term 'banting' in her novels. This was a convenient way of excluding characters from the possibility of ingesting poison, or making them more vulnerable. That is, if the murder-method was to poison the meal served generally, the character engaging in banting escaped. On the other hand, if that character was the target, their adherence to a special food regime meant they could more readily be targeted. It also meant that if character doing the banting was in fact the killer, s/he had a ready made excuse for not ingesting the food laced with poison. As a chemist, Agatha Christie had a repository of knowledge about poisons, their origin and effects, which in turn she used to good effect. (Along with the habit of dieting or, as she titled it consistent with the times, banting.)

1. ^ Pringle, Patrick, "Great Discoveries in Modern Science".

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