An over-50 Generation Xer sees life through a new lens: Kathy’s Window is where Kathy shares her thoughts on the world through a new lens. From growing up in the 70s and 80s to having three Generation-Z kids, and going through certain experiences in her life, she now sees the world in a different way. Ideas that were considered the norm in the 70s, 80s and 90s are now no longer socially relevant or acceptable. Kathy explores the new ideas through the lens of someone who has been on both sides of the ‘glass’.
IN the 70s, 80s and 90s, it was common for people to go on low-fat diets to either lose weight or because dietary fat was considered the cause of heart disease and other chronic diseases. Then, low-carb diets became the popular choice of dieting when the Paleo Diet became popular after Loren Cordain’s book, The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat, came out in 2002. In recent years, the Keto Diet has gained great popularity, but it was originally developed to treat children and infants with severe epilepsy under medical supervision. Now, low-carb is considered the ‘magic bullet’ to weight loss and health.
Low-carb was actually on the scene decades ago but not as popular, eg, with the Atkins Diet. The original Banting Diet was ‘started’ by a man in 1862 who was prescribed a low-fat diet for weight loss – William Banting – and due to his ‘success’, he created a leaflet describing the diet – the supposed first diet book. The Banting Diet was popularised in South Africa by Tim Noakes, and he adopted it in his own way – called the Noakes Diet. He founded the Noakes Foundation in 2012 to help promote the diet. His subsequent popular book, The Real Meal Revolution, describes the diet in detail.
Also read: Kathy’s Window: Why the Body Mass Index (BMI) is bull and racist
The idea of low-carb diets is to lower your intake of carbohydrates and increase the intake of dietary fat and protein in order for the body to burn fat from our cells for fuel, causing a person to lose weight. The idea is that our modern diet causes our bodies to have too much glucose in the blood caused by…