Origins of Low Carb: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

Brillat-Savarin

In reading the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes I am pleasantly surprised to find a good deal of the long history around low carb and low carb science. One of the "fathers" of the low carb premise was Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French lawyer and physician who lived from 1755 to 1826 (to be 70 yrs and 10 months of age at his death).

And in stumbling around the Internet looking for writings of low carb superheros (like William Banting, and Dr. Atkins, and Dr.'s Eades, etc) I found the famous writing (see the web link below) of the aformentioned low carb supergenius.

It is an excellent read, and well worth spending some time perusing! I have included a handy glossary below for some of the excellent words found within the translated version of this low carb treatise.

The Physiology of Taste

by Brillat-Savarin

MEDITATION XXI.
OBESITY

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/brillat/savarin/b85p/part26.html

Word Fun - Glossary

(not in any alphabetical order):

.............................................................

Corpulent:

fat, obese, overweight

Gastrophoria:

One kind of obesity that is restricted to the stomach

Gastrophorous:

Those afflicted with the aforementioned condition

Obesity:

that state of greasy congestion in which without the sufferer being sick, the limbs gradually increase in volume, and lose their form and harmony.

farinacious: (it means starchy)

1 : having a mealy texture or surface
2 : containing or rich in starch

feculent:

foul with impurities, fecal

feculaferous:

see feculent

embonpoint :

plumpness of person : stoutness

apoplexy:

crippled by a stroke

dropsy :

retention of water, edema (perhaps as a result of congestive heart failure)

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13311

The discovery of a new dish

does more for human happiness

than the discovery of a new star.

.

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.

By this and similar conversations I elucidate a theory

I have formed about the human race, viz:

Greasy corpulence always has, as its first cause,

a diet with too much farinacious or feculent substance.

I am sure the same regime will always have the same effect.

.

Carniverous animals never become fat.

One has only to look at the wolf, jackal, lion, eagle, etc.
Herbiverous animals do not either become fat

until age has made repose a necessity.

They, however, fatten quickly when fed on potatoes, farinacious grain, etc.

.

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.

The second of the causes of obesity, is the fact that farinacious and

feculaferous matter is the basis of our daily food.

.

We have already said that all animals that live on

farinaceous substances become fat;

man obeys the common law.
.

The fecula is more prompt in its action when it is mingled with sugar.

Sugar and grease are alike in containing large

quantities of hydrogen, and are both inflammable.

.

This combination is the more powerful,

from the fact that it flatters the taste,

and that we never eat sweet things

until the appetite is already satisfied,

so that we are forced to court the luxury

of eating by every refinement of temptation.

.

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.

INCONVENIENCE OF OBESITY (excerpt)

Obesity has a lamentable influence on the two sexes,

inasmuch as it is most injurious to strength and beauty.

...
It lessens strength because it increases the weight to be moved,

while the motive power is unchanged.

...

It injures respiration, and makes all labor requiring

prolonged muscular power impossible.

...
Obesity destroys beauty by annihilating the harmony

of primitive proportions, for all the limbs do not proportionately fatten.

...

It destroys beauty by filling up cavities nature’s hand itself designed.

...
Nothing is so common as to see faces,

once very interesting,

made common–place by obesity.