Re:"Bant" refers to a long forgotten fad of drastically reducing intake of food.

where did i just read this? it was in an article about fad diets, that pointed out the the Dr Atkins diet really was a revival of a fad diet from the last quarter of the 1800-- when fad diets (like Dr Graham's --of the crackers, and Kellogg's (of Battle Creek) were two of the more famous 'fad diet' proponents (along with Dr Fletcher --who advocated chewing each mouthful of food 40 times.)

a Mr Banting wrote/had ghosted a book about his wonderful diet plan (low carb if recall right--or was it low fat?) and his book became a best seller.. 'Banting' became is still a term used for dieting. (and Bant became 'diet'!)

i think it is more used in UK (and banting/dieting was used by my nana, - parents didn't use it. (because it fell out of favor in UK/ireland? or because it was generaly an unknown term in US? i don't know!