A Durban doctor began promoting the Banting diet for diabetics more than 50 years ago. According to Tim Noakes, professor emeritus at the University of Cape Town and leading advocate of the controversial diet, Dr George Campbell, a specialist physician at King Edward Hospital's diabetic clinic in the early 1960s, recommended diabetics exclude all sugar and processed carbohydrates from their diet. This included bread, cold drinks, mealie pap, mealie rice and potatoes.He said they should eat meat, cheese, tripe, chicken, boiled fish, salads, green vegetables and "small amounts" of rice or broad beans.Noakes, speaking at a Women in Leadership and Leverage Committee seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal yesterday, said the Banting diet was not a mere fad."The very first diet books published assumed it self-evident that carbohydrates cause obesity and that carbohydrate restriction is the only treatment for obesity."Noakes made reference to the research of Campbell, who noticed a rising incidence of diabetes in urbanised Zulus in Durban, compared to Zulus in rural areas of Natal.He wrote in a paper, published in 1961 in the South African Medical Journal, that: "The chief differences between these two populations was that in the town dwellers there was an inordinate intake of sugar. The town dweller ate much more bread and fats and oil."Caloric intake would appear to play a smaller part than the intake of sugar."..