Twelve Black Code Monkeys

For our family, food always took a central place. Perhaps it was the fact that we ate out at least once a week, but often more, and that my parents always took the kids with them to restaurants, but I developed a great taste for delicious foods. Fortunately and unfortunately my mother was also a health nut. Fortunately because we didn’t have soda and sweets in the house, but unfortunately because for most of my childhood we used margarine because that was supposed to be better – at least the reduced fat kind. All along we were consuming tons of trans fats. I was at least somewhat overweight from the time my dad died when I was nine.

I started my first official diet in college some 15 years ago and although I reached my goal, I continued to lose and gain the same 20-35 lbs of excess weight for many years. Of course all of this dieting was of the low-fat, low-calorie type up until a few years ago when being religious about what I ate and how much I exercised still would not push me below the +25lb mark.

That’s when I started low-carbing. I had actually read a bit of Atkins a few years earlier and was not impressed. I like to understand why something should work and Atkins was not very descriptive. His book seemed repetitive and ranting. But after a 9-month stint at extreme low-fat/low-cal/lots of exercise with little to show, I gave in to a suggestion to at least try the idea that I thought was opposite what I thought was healthy. I trudged through the Atkins book again and was still unimpressed. Then someone mentioned Protein Power as a better book, so I picked it up and I have been a low-fat to low-carb convert ever since. Protein Power gets into the details of why eating low-carb is actually healthier for you, not just why it helps you lose weight. Anyone who is a geek or a science nerd will enjoy reading about the technical details, but it is not written for people with scientific backgrounds, just laymen with a minimal ability to understand some basic scientific ideas.

When I started low-carbing back in the fall of 2000, it was still a vilified way of eating. Over the last three years there have been great strides, however. We continue to hear about short term and medium-term studies that indicate that restricting carbohydrates improve cholesterol level and are more effective in weight loss than other methods. To be sure there are still vehement critics, but anecdotally I hear of more and more doctors recommending low-carb to their overweight patients to lose weight and to their patients with high cholesterol as a stopgap to prevent having to resort to drug therapy. An article in the New York Times Magazine by Gary Taubes, What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie, in July of last year probably had the biggest effect. The expose by the award-winning science writer attacked the status quo and made some very lucid arguments about at least trying honestly to determine whether low-carb was the healthiest way to eat. A new book by Dr. Atkins and then even Dr. Atkins unfortunate and untimely death due to slipping on ice from a late-winter freak snow storm in New York earlier this year both added to the hype about low-carb.

With all this added attention and popularity, those of us stalwarts who have been doing it a while without the benefit of such popular support finally are experiencing some vindication from our peers. My family’s cries of warning that I would be killing myself with the evil fat have transformed into words of admiration for having “discovered” this way of eating before it was accepted by the mainstream. Last year when I came to my new job, I was the only person doing low-carb. Now most of my department is either doing this or considering it. I promise you that I have in no way pushed this on people, but of course I share my experiences when people ask.

The new popularity of low-carb has engendered a new push by the food industry to produce products for this growing market. It was only a matter of time, and in fact I think it’s even a bit late in coming, but nonetheless we are finally starting to see critical mass in this area. The first low-carb product from a major manufacturer to come out was the low-carb beer Michelob Ultra. Just recently Bryers has come out with a low-carb ice cream. Even the ultimate carb-fest that fast food restaurants are have been (with their sandwich buns, French fries, sodas, and shakes) are starting to jump on the bandwagon. McDonalds will soon be offering a “McDonald’s Real Life Choices menu” in their New York area stores where items low in fat, low in carbs, and low in calories will be highlighted on the menu. And others fast food chains or individual stores are experimenting with offering low-carb bread or even lettuce as an alternative to buns to hold the contents of a sandwich together.

However, I’ve also seen a troubling example of what may become common. KFC has a new commercial out touting the fact that their fried chicken is relatively low in carbs. While this may be technically true, I believe it is targeting the “dark side” of the low-carb lifestyle.

Although low-carb as a principle to losing weight has been around since Banting came out with his “Letter on Corpulence” some 134 years ago, and up until about 30 years ago it was a common to restrict “starches” (as opposed to carbs) if one wanted to lose weight or prevent gaining, it was really Atkins who pioneered the modern low-carb mindset. He was one of the first to vehemently attack carbs as the culprit for excess weight and health issues back in the 60’s and through his books became overwhelmingly the most popular low-carb guru. By the 90’s, other doctors as well as non-MDs latched onto the low-carb philosophy but with different approaches. The Eadeses, authors of Protein Power, for example, came at it from a very scientific standpoint. They of course saw the positive results it was having in their patients, but they wanted to understand why this was happening so they could determine whether it was healthy in the long run. Their preoccupation with health motivated them to incorporate other aspects into their plan that was not simply low-carb. So they warned against eating trans fats, and promoted eating foods high in omega-3 fatty acids and low in omega-6, as well as urging people to eat a variety of high quality whole foods including lots of vegetables and even fruits that are high in antioxidants. And of course their cornerstone that they put at an even higher priority than restricting carbs is that of making sure one is eating enough protein.

The “dark side,” however, refers to a very simplistic view of low-carb way of eating. This one is only concerned with restricting carbs. As long as carbs are restricted to a certain amount, according to this thinking it really doesn’t matter what you are eating. So you could be eating McDonalds hamburgers without the bun for every meal, no vegetables and low-carb candy, ice cream, or protein bars for snacks. I will not say that the Atkins diet promotes this kind of diet. It certainly doesn’t anymore. However, its emphasis on being able to eat the “forbidden” foods that are high in fat and in particular saturated fat created an impression that one didn’t really need to eat anything else. This probably did the most initial damage to the repution of the Atkins plan and low-carb plans in general as critics picked up immediately on this and attacked the most controversial aspects of the diet because that was what Atkins was hyping in his books. Lots of Atkins followers picked up on it too, but in this case embracing these forbidden items was more of a way to thumb their nose at health nuts while still losing weight.

My main fear is that with the popularization of low-carb, the main emphasis that we will see is that put on by the mainstream press of a dumbed-down version of Atkins that’s only about carb counts and nothing else. One that hypes eating all the meat you can stand without concern for getting any other healthful foods which are also low in carbs, like fruits and veggies, fish, etc. KFC and McDonalds will promote their “low-carb” options while frying them in dangerous concoctions of trans-fats and pumbing them with all kinds of preservatives, artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. The masses looking to lose will read a blurb in People magazine, then maybe eat this way for a few weeks or months then wonder why they either aren’t losing or their health issues aren’t getting better and then determine that somehow eating low carb doesn’t work for them, or doesn’t work at all.

What I propose is a marriage. The radical health nuts of the 60’s and 70’s need to lose their fear and loathing of fat (even saturated) and even meat. They at least knew that sugar was bad for you and that processing food adds questionable chemicals to your system. What they didn’t understand was how some of the starches they used to replace the politically incorrect meat were wreaking havoc on their insulin levels. The Atkins for Dummies set and the Good ol’ Boys Meat and Potatoes set need to look at food in a different way. Not just as a recreation, but as a way to stay healthy, a way to feel good and live long. They know that meat tastes good, but they need to think in more detail about what KIND is good. It’s not just about meat vs. the stereotypical “rabit food” salad, but rather the mass-produced hormone and antibiotic-pumped meat vs. a grass-fed or free-range alternative. Wild game and fish of course will fit well into this mentality. But the veggies and fruit shouldn’t be banished just because they’re not meat, but rather as a good way to add extra nutrition without too many carbs.

The marriage is already visible in some forms of low-carb plans like Protein Power and those that follow them. One can only hope that if the US swings to the low-carb dark side given it’s new fascination with it and the natural tendency to go to an extreme when trying something new, that eventually we will see the pendulum turn back a bit to a point where people think about what they are eating more, but don’t do so in a dogmatic way. So much of the low-fat movement was about a guideline that was practically mandated by the government and doctors that it was doomed to fail. No one wants to be forced to eat something even if it is supposed to be good for you, and especially if it tastes horrible. Low-carb has finally broke through, but it took a very long and pitched battle due to the entrenched financial interests behind low-fat as well as the egos of those who promoted it for so long that to now recant would be too much of an embarrassment. Lets hope that low-carb remains an open methodology and mindset and one which can be combined with other not specifically low-carb ideas to create a diet that is the healthiest one for all of us.