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Two men lived on an exclusive meat diet for 1 year and a third man for 10 days. The relative amounts of lean and fat, meat ingested were left to the instinctive choice of the individuals. At the end of the year, the subjects were mentally alert, physically active, and showed no specific physical changes in any system of the body. Vitamin deficiencies did not appear. Kidney function tests revealed no evidence of kidney damage. In these trained subjects, the clinical observations and laboratory studies gave no evidence that any ill effects had occurred from the prolonged use of the exclusive meat diet.

In what's billed as the "world's first diet book," William Banting offered his strategy for losing weight. He ate four meals a day, didn't exercise much, drank alcohol, and swore off only a few foods. And, what's more, anyone familiar with current low-carb diets will find similar advice here -- advice given in 1864. William Banting was a carpenter in Victorian London whose weight spiraled out of control. His eyesight and hearing failed, he had weak knees, and he suffered an umbilical rupture, health problems he attributed to his weight. He consulted doctors but nothing helped. Then Banting discovered this diet and got results within just a few days. He ate lots of meat, a few vegetables, shunned some foods that he's previously overindulged in, and drank alcohol with lunch and dinner. He lost fifty pounds, and his health improved. He published this pamphlet detailing his diet and distributed the copies for free. By its third printing it had sold 63,000 copies, and the term "Banting" became synonymous with "dieting" in England.