Frederick Banting An article he read about the pancreas piqued Banting's interest in diabetes. Banting had to give a talk on the pancreas to one of his classes at the University of Western Ontario on November 1, 1920, and he was therefore reading reports that other scientists had written. Research by Naunyn, Minkowski, Opie, Sharpey-Schafer, and others suggested that diabetes resulted from a lack of a protein hormone secreted by the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. Schafer had named this putative hormone "insulin". The hormone was thought to control the metabolism of sugar; its lack led to an increase of sugar
William Banting is still available on-line. The popularity of the pamphlet mentioned above was such that the questions "Do you bant?" or "Are you banting?", still occasionally in use today, refer to his method, and sometimes even to dieting in general. In Sweden "banta" is still the main verb for "being on a diet". Scientist Tim Noakes popularised Banting in South Africa when he named his high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet after Banting. Gary Taubes' study of carbohydrates, "Good Calories, Bad Calories", begins with a prologue entitled "A brief history of Banting" and discusses Banting at some length. Discussions of low-carbohydrate diets often begin