Noakes should promote boozy Banting diet

IHAVE seen several Cape restaurants now offering a “Banting” option as well as their regular meals. I guess they want to attract health-conscious diners who might otherwise stay at home and have a lettuce leaf. For most of us this seems to be a mere passing fad to be skipped over mentally while we select our lunch-time cottage pie and chips.

I doubt whether many people actually know what the Banting diet is, apart from the fact it is often mentioned in connection with Professor Tim Noakes’s name and apparently you have to make your pizzas out of cauliflower, or something weird.

It goes back to 1869 when an overweight cabinet maker called William Banting published his

which set out menus for each meal of the day – breakfast, dinner (which we call lunch) tea, supper and a nightcap.

Banting declared: “Of all the parasites that affect humanity I do not know of – nor can I imagine – any more distressing than obesity.”

And he should know. He claimed he had managed to reduce his weight from 202lb to 150lb over a year. That’s quite a dramatic loss, 52lb is about 24kg.

I think it must have been very difficult to be an efficient cabinet maker when he weighed a whopping 202lb. That’s about 92kg – too much to fit comfortably into a workshop.

One of the interesting features of Banting’s diet is the amount of booze he recommends. This aspect is seldom mentioned on today’s Banting menus.

He suggests, for example, that dinner (midday) be accompanied by “two or three glasses of claret, sherry or Madeira, but not Champagne, beer or port”. Supper includes “a glass or two of claret or sherry with water”, and for a nightcap he recommends “a tumbler of grog (gin, whisky or brandy without sugar) or a glass or two of claret or sherry.”

That is a total of about six glasses of red wine during the day and a couple of brandies before bedtime.

I think the Cape’s wine industry should encourage more people to bant. It could be a useful boost of local wine and brandy sales.

One difference is that people did not get behind the steering wheels of cars after their dinners in 1869 because there were no cars then.

I wonder whether there was a legal limit of blood alcohol for carriage drivers or horsemen in those days.

They had one advantage over modern motorists; horses can usually find their way home without any guidance.

I guess you could have your two glasses of claret or grog then slump onto your horse and fall sleep while you were taken gently home and parked in your stable.

Last Laugh

A struggling artist was cornered by his landlady who demanded he pay the three months rent he owed. “I want the rent money NOW!” she insisted. “But just think,” said Fred, “if you let me stay, one day people will walk past here and say: ‘That’s where the great artist Fred Jones used to live’.”

“Unless you pay me now,” said the landlady, “they’ll be saying that tomorrow.”