The schemers are congratulating themselves on the success
of their corner on the booze market.

"'Well,' says I, 'it does look as if we would have to take up gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves. This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten than bant any day.'

Batten means to suck blood like a vampire bat
"Bant" refers to a long forgotten fad of drastically
reducing intake of food.

Wow. What country and era were the speakers from???

They were in a small town in Texas, completely surrounded by
water because of protracted heavy rain, and had bought all
three bars in the town, and had raised price of a shot or
whiskey to a buck, and were getting rich. Until the wordy one got drunk, gave an superevangelical oration against
alcohol, and got entire town to take the pledge to abstain.
Putting them out of business.

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!

The "bant" diet had nothing to do as far as I can find
out with the Banting who was so important in diabetes
research. His is his bio:
http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1923/banting-bio.html

It turns out that the Banting who gave his name to the diet
was a remarkably interesting man, not some kind of nut as I
had suspected. At the very end of the article is the diet that helped him greatly improve his health. No quackery.
http://www.westonaprice.org/know_your_fats/banting.html

OK, so i had the dates wrong--the Banting of dieting fame wrote his book in 1863--(and i suggested it was later, 1875 or so.) -Dr Banting of Canada (not UK) was doing work on insulin post WWI (or the great war as he would have called it).

Can any of or British english speakers confirm that banting is still used as a term for a regime? --and how about far flung members of the commonweal? --any of you know banting?

I know of the word, but only from 19th century/early 20th century novels. Anything later than that, the word might appear, but always glossed as a diet which was popular before WW1.

From your article Dr. Bill:

Only three men in history have been immortalized by having their names enter the English language as verbs. The first was an Irishman, Captain Boycott, whose name entered the language in the 1860s. Another was Louis Pasteur and the third was the subject of this article—William Banting, a man who came to have a great impact on many peoples' lives, one of whom is me.

ARe we going to let them get away with that. Come on, AWADers, thinking caps on.

Bingley

Well, Dr Bill came up with one the other day - to galvanise.

He may have Americanized it, while I have Anglicised.

I haven't come across the word 'banting' before. The OED describes it as archaic. Banting, it tells us, was a treatment for obesity that involved abstinence from sugar, starch and fat. So he had the right of it, had Banting. Doesn't mention alcohol....

I think we should lynch them.