Keto Diet (Ketogenic)

The keto (ketogenic) diet rests on a simple idea: if you cut carbohydrates to a minimum (usually under 50 g per day) and eat predominantly fat, the body runs out of its usual energy source (glucose) and switches to burning fat, entering a state called ketosis.

It is a restrictive diet with clear rules about what you can and cannot eat. Many people choose it because it produces a strong sense of satiety without counting calories. At the same time, eliminating entire food groups makes it hard to sustain long-term and unsuitable for certain individuals.

History and origin

The ketogenic diet was introduced as a medical treatment in 1921 by Russell Wilder at the Mayo Clinic, as an alternative to complete fasting that had been used to control epilepsy. Wilder observed that maintaining ketosis through diet produced anticonvulsant effects similar to fasting, without starving the patient. The protocol became the standard treatment for paediatric epilepsy in the 1920s–1930s and was widely practised in American and European clinics for several decades.

With the arrival of the first effective antiepileptic drugs in the 1950s–1960s (phenytoin, phenobarbital), the ketogenic diet fell out of routine use, considered too difficult compared with pharmacological alternatives. It was kept alive by a handful of specialists and returned to public attention in 1993–1994 through the story of Charlie Abrahams, a child with drug-resistant epilepsy whose father, film producer Jim Abrahams, discovered the diet in medical archives. The treatment’s remarkable success led Jim Abrahams to fund research and found the Charlie Foundation, helping to revive medical interest in the ketogenic diet.

The application of keto for weight loss came later, in the context of the low-carb diet boom of the 1990s–2000s. Researchers such as Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney studied metabolic adaptation to the ketogenic diet in healthy adults and athletes, publishing work that gave an academic foundation to the weight-loss application. The commercial explosion came after 2015, when rapid growth of the internet and social media transformed keto from a specialised medical protocol into one of the most searched nutrition terms worldwide.