Burn, Fat, Burn

Carb-cutting is back in a new guise – but is the keto diet safe?

- Roisín Dervish-O’ Kane

Shredding serious fat is the premise of the ketogenic diet. Even Alicia Vikander turned to it to get lean for the reboot of Lara Croft. The keto diet is garnering a hype – and a following – that most people would associate with a truly ground-breaking nutritional phenomenon, yet its primary tenet isn’t entirely new. “Keto’s aim of prompting the body to enter a state of ketosis – where it burns fat rather than sugar to fuel its processes – was the basic scientific grounding of other mainstream diets that have proved popular in the past,” says Rebecca McManamon of the British Dietetic Association. Low-carb diets have existed since the 19th century when William Banting began promoting a low-carb way of life. Banting got resuscitated by Tim Noakes in SA in 2012 and it was hard not to see a red Banting bible everywhere you looked. Then there’s also Atkins, which took credit for Jennifer Aniston’s lithe figure in the days of Friends, before the backlash when research linked it to raised risk of heart attack and stroke. Then came the Middleton diet of choice, Dukan, responsible for the pre-Royal Wedding waist shrinkage of Pippa and Carole, which was carb elimination by any other name and had medical experts arguing whether the negatives outweighed the positives. It’s the same science, just sold to a new generation. Which does make us ask: why is anyone falling for keto this time around? Well, the fact that it’s being pitched as a 360-degree mind and body improver probably has something to do with it. It’s this promise that has captured the imaginations of bio-hacking techindustry heavyweights in California’s Silicon Valley, who are, lest we forget, individuals with grand aspirations to achieve superhuman functioning and the financial means to make them come to fruition. We take a closer look at the diet du jour.