Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Just when you think that low-carb has gotten a lot of new respect in the mainstream media, you get a whiff of the old garbage that used to be seen whenever there was an article about it. Before the new popularity of these plans caused much of the press to start not necessarily lauding it as a great thing, but simply as popular and a force that is making businesses stand up and take notice with all kinds of new products or low-carb menus at restaurants.

A blast from the past, then, was the impression I got when I read this article from The Rocky Mountain Collegian (article no longer available). Although “article,” I believe, is a misnomer. This is really an opinion pieces. I say this because the only people quoted about the diet (other than the neutral party of the waitress) were “old guard” nutritionists who are inherently critics of anything smacking of “low-carb.” Not once was an actual advocate of such diets quoted. Even the random college student they asked was a critic.

That being said, I will poke a few holes yet again in the incredible misinformation out there about these plans. For one, they are not no carbohydrate plans, they are low carbohydrate plans. This means that people can consume carbs, but they need to be careful not to consume foods that are very dense in them, like bread, pasta, potatoes, and sweets. Most vegetables tend to be very high in fiber and fiber can be subtracted from the carb count when considering them as meal options, so they end up being a very good “bargain” for low-carbers. So you end up with low “effective carbs,” “net carbs,” etc. Fiber is subtracted because it passes through your system without being converted to energy or effecting blood sugar levels. A cup of broccoli flowerets, for example, because it is so high in fiber, has only 1g of effective carbs. So one could theoretically have 20 cups of broccoli in a day without going over one’s carb allotment on the strictest phase of the strictest program!

Yet the mainstream media and the critics continue to portray these diets as meat/cheese only diets. If they simply read the books they would understand that they are far from it, but this seems to be too much work, especially when you already “know” what they are about because you’ve heard them maligned so often.

The cliché criticisms in this article can be immediately dismissed. Yes, some water weight is lost in the first week or so on these plans, just as it is on many diets. But after that, the weight loss is strictly fat. Many people have lost 100 lbs or more, and that is certainly not water weight!

As for the questions of long-term effects of the diet, well, they’ve done studies that have lasted for 1 year so far. Now many nutritionists are grudgingly agreeing that it might be ok to go on one of these plans for a short period because the studies have shown they are effective and carry health benefits and no discernable negatives for at least that first year. But nutritionists seem to have a different standard for these plans than for, say, the low-fat craze that they pushed on the public for many years. These plans were determined to be the best way to eat not based on any real world or long-term studies, but by theories and animal models. There was never a concern about the “long-term” effects of these plans because they were the politically correct ones and could not be questioned.

At the end of the article, you quote Perryman going back to the “same old message” of the USDA food guide pyramid that has done nothing to stop obesity in this country, with its emphasis on grains as the largest food group. This pyramid has been convincingly maligned by one of the most prominent and progressive nutritionists out there, Dr. Walter Willett, the Director of the Department of Nutrition for Harvard’s School of Public Health. Perryman goes on to suggest that after the first two weeks of these programs, they more or less adhere to her own view of good nutrition. If this is the case, she is making a big fuss about what amounts to two whole weeks of non-optimal (in her opinion) dieting. So what is so horrible about this then?

The answer, of course, is nothing. Nutritionists have been schooled in a certain mindset where anything labeled as “low-carb” has to be criticized. No open mind, not even a reading of the many books out there, some of which promote vegetable consumption in a very loud manner. Rather, the nutritionists and the mainstream media tend to play this game of ping pong where they trade back and forth the misconceptions that come from lack of research, understanding, and willingness to really find out the truth, and of course a pre-defined bias drilled in over many, many years.

Looks like suing is the next resort that some interest groups are entertaining! I hadn’t thought this was a possibility, but i guess I should have. This article describes the Florida Citrus Department’s new “get tough” policy. I can’t imagine that defamation can be extended to products, even in the general sense. How many products have been demonized by diet books for in past 30 years?? But this is the first time to my knowledge that a group/company is contemplating suing over it. They really must be getting desperate!

An editorial in the St. Petersburg Times published today actually surprised me in how they took on the powerful group in their own state and scolded them for being so ridiculous! All I can say is bravo! You so seldom see anything in the mainstream media that actually vigorously attacks a critic of low-carb. I was impressed. As for the Florida Citrus Department, I’m sure if they attempt to sue, they will get the same verdict as the Texas ranchers did in the Oprah case.

The problem is that there is disagreement about health claims and the healthiness of most products, except for possibly raw low-carb vegetables and fruit. There are “raw food” who advocates who claim not only that all animal-based foods are bad for you, but that simply cooking things is bad for you! Even in the 80’s and 90’s when low-fat advocates were proclaiming that almost any amount of fat was bad for one’s health, producers of oil did not get together and contemplate suing authors of low-fat diet books. So with all this debate and difference of opinion, instead of trying to prove that there is some merit in their claims about the health benefits of orange juice, or disprove the critics, the Citrus Dept. is suing. To me this says that they cannot credibly make their argument in the court of public opinion so they are resorting to threats of legal action. It truly is sad.

Having avoided the first two instances of this very popular show, I somehow have managed to catch the first two episodes of their first season. Although entertaining on a certain level, I don’t know how many more of these “audition” shows I can take. So much is repetitive. Most of it is just people getting up on stage and trying to sing. I guess people who are tone deaf cannot tell that they sound hidious. Ok, some of them are so horrible it’s funny, but after a while, it’s like… I get the point! People just can’t tell. There’s nothing inherently funny about that. It’s like thinking it’s funny that a blind man can’t tell his tie is crooked, or that some hair is sticking up, or something. You’re basically making fun of people because of a disability. What this indicates to me is a couple of things: 1) people can’t tell others to their face that they can’t sing, and 2) when someone ELSE does it, a lot of people get kicks out of this. I know it’s supposed to be entertaining, but really is it necessary to mock these people? Simon and Randy take turns trying to insult the person, and laugh at them. Randy Jackson is supposedly a music producer with 20 years of experience in the industry. But his comments are bafoonish! His complements are so general that I could have come up with them. Stuff like “you have an interesting voice” and “you’re fun” is as intricate as he gets. Then he yells out to those who end up passing in a silly voice “welcome to hollywood, baby!” He seems more of a clown than someone who has actual experience with this stuff. Half the time he seems to defer to Simon or Paula so that he will not stand out as having an opinion very different from the other two. Sorry for the rant, but these are my first impressions. I don’t know whether I will continue to watch the show or not, I suppose if I’m cooking or something and happen to have the tv on in the background, that’s the best chance!

It’s been a good 11 or 12 years since I actually called New York City “home” so I haven’t followed Bloomberg as a mayor. A recent piece by the 24-hour local news station NY1, however, just came to my attention. In the article, Bloomberg, who is noted as an avid jogger and someone who eschews high-calorie foods, ridicules the infamous Dr. Robert C. Atkins, going so far as to call into question the actual cause of his death. Stuart Trager, currently the media frontman for the Atkins Diet, wondered if it were a joke. I wonder too. This is something I might have expected from Howard Stern, but from the mayor of a metropolis? Ok, perhaps Marion Barry, former mayor of my current home town, has said much more outlandish things, but Bloomberg is not a drug addict, at least as far as we know.

Some of you out there who have similar proclivities to Bloomberg’s may actually be applauding his forthrightness. Perhaps he is brave to speak his mind, but I think there is a fair degree of stupidity mixed in with this. Millions of Americans (and New Yorkers) are on the Atkins diet or on similar low-carb regimes. By insulting their patron saint, he has immediately alienated all these people! That’s not very smart politicking! It’s one thing if Bloomberg has actual concerns about the health issues surrounding low-carb, but his comments don’t make him sound very educated about the subject, they actually make him sound like someone who has a personal aversion to fat in food, a low-fat fanatic who entertains conspiracy theories because the fact that eating fat might actually be healthy for you doesn’t jive with his view of the world.

Of course I am coming at it from a biased point of view, but even so, with the current popularity of such plans, how can any politician rail against their modern-day popularizer and expect not to get damaged by this in some way? For Pete’s sake, they guy is dead. Maybe he had flaws (don’t we all?), and maybe you personally disagree with the guy, but he help a lot of people lose weight, was a tireless advocate for his cause, and was headquartered in New York. Bloomberg should be keeping such comments to himself, lest he be labeled as an insensitive boor. But perhaps he’s already labeled that way - I haven’t been following his mayoral career, so I don’t know…

Is the owner of Atkins Nutritionals undoing 30 years of progress forged by the outspoken doctor has tried to make in the popular mindset of what is and what isn’t healthy to eat?

For those who haven’t heard yet, a big mess has just blown up in the world of low-carb dieting. Collette Heimowitz, the director of research and education for Atkins Nutritionals, put her foot in her mouth by recommending no more than 20% of calories on the diet come from saturated fat. She was quoted in the Sunday New York Times article titled “Make That Steak A Bit Smaller, Atkins Advises Today’s Dieters.” The media jumped on this as Atkins finally backtracking and telling people to eat less saturated fat and fat in general.

Where did this 20% come from? Who knows! Atkins never specified any ratio in any of his books, but did recommend eating a variety of protein sources, some which had high amounts of saturated fat, some low. The reason that was given for this new concern for an actual limit on saturated fat was “we want physicians to feel comfortable with this diet, and we want people who are going to their physicians with this diet to feel comfortable.” In other words, let’s make the diet more politically correct so that we get less flack from critics.

Many long-time low-carbers (whether followers of the specific approach Atkins outlined or not) were outraged. They called it a sell-out to the mainstream. Especially considering all the information out there that actually supports saturated fat as a healthy component of the diet, with much of this posted on own Atkins’ site, the sudden caving to the majority despite 30 years of outspokenness came as a betrayal to what Atkins followers believed Atkins himself fought for for so many years.

It seems to me almost ridiculous that now that low-carb and Atkins in particular has become so enormously popular, and an incredible marketing force, that they would choose this moment to cave. If anything, this newfound influence and money should cause them to be even bolder in their proclamations!

Soon after this story ran, of course, all the critics who have been to a large extent silenced in recent months due to the incredible new popularity of the diet, suddenly have become emboldened and pounced on the apparent backtracking: A BBC article titled “Atkins Diet Boss: ‘Eat Less Fat’” now gives the impression that an entire foundation of “fat is ok” has now gone out the window. Another article on itv.com is subtitled “Followers of the controversial Atkins diet are being warned to cut back on some of the diet’s staple foods amid health fears.” Just wait until we see comments from the die-hard critics of Atkins like Dr. Dean Ornish, the PCRM, PETA, etc.

After the media took the ball and ran with it, Atkins Nutritionals has been trying to do damage control. They’ve put out a press release that claims the media got it all wrong, that there’s nothing wrong with eating red meat or saturated fat, and the Atkins plan is the same as it’s always been. The one thing this article doesn’t address, however, is the supposed comments of Collette Heimowitz. Was she a lone gun that the news media decided to either misquote or quote and then attribute her views to Atkins Nutritionals as opposed to personal recommendations? Who knows! Some conspiracy theorists go so far as to suggest critics of Atkins high up in the news media decided to fabricate the story completely.

For the record, I follow a similar eating plan to Atkins, but it has a different in certain areas. Protein Power, developed by a married couple of doctors who treated patients at a private practice for many years using this eating plan, similarly restricts carbohydrates, but emphasized eating lots of high-fiber/low-carb veggies and fruits, grass-fed, wild, or free-range animal products, and base much of their plan off a great many medical and anthropological studies and basic physiology and metabolic science. They do not contend (like A…. auth of the South Beach Diet, Sears, Willett, and most of the nutrition/medical mainstream) that eating saturated fat is bad. They, the Atkins site, and others like Dr. Uffe Ravnskov’s Cholesterol Myths and the Weston A. Price Foundation have brought forth supporting evidence that suggests there is no proof of any harm from eating saturated fat or red meat. There could very well be a link when one COMBINES it with excessive highly refined carbohydrates, sugar, and the like, but when eaten as part of a diet low in these things, there is absolutely no case against it, and a lot of evidence that it is actually beneficial in a lot of way.

Whether or not this latest scuffle is the media’s fault, or Atkins Nutritionals, unfortunately, I believe there is at least a little blame shared by Dr. Atkins himself. Dr. Robert Atkins died last year and so cannot speak for himself - his books have to speak for him. He gave interviews of course, but his books are what sold millions upon millions of copies and is where his message could said to be most fully described. When I first read Doctor Atkins New Diet Revolution back in 2000, the overall impression I got was that of “hey, eat whatever your heart desires as long as it’s low in carbs.” Whether or not the book actually said this or not, as someone completely new to low-carbing at the time, that is the impression I got. Atkins went on and on about how you could eat this wonderful fatty thing or that. Unfortunately, critics picked up on this to mean that this is what the diet was all about. In other words, Atkins boldness in telling people “hey you can eat this stuff that everyone is saying is bad for you but is actually fine” came to mean to the press that it was only about eating these “forbidden” foods. Some misguided Atkins followers, for sure, only picked up on these highlights and actually did exactly that! The hype in most of the books Atkins put out perhaps up until his last, Atkins for Life, and his combative and defensive style, did not make him any friends in the medical community and simply caused this hype to be highlighted and distorted in the mainstream media.

The problem I see is not that this kind of eating is inherently unhealthy, but that within the context of our modern food sources, it is not the best choice. In other words, the diet that we evolved to eat and that many hunter-gatherer tribes still eat is one that is primarily of animal origin. There are exceptions of course, but in any case, the eating of primarily animal-based foods even to the exclusion of non-animal based ones can be perfectly healthy, as many anthropological studies have born out, but only when you take into consideration the other facets of what exactly is being eaten: first of all, the animals that are eaten are either wild or are grazing on their natural diets. They are not stuffed in pens, force-fed grains, and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. Because of this the nutritive value of their meat is much higher than what we get at the grocery. The meats and dairy have a great deal more Omega-3 as well as CLA. The other aspect is that these people eat the entire animal. Every part that is edible is consumed, and the different organs provide much of the nutrients that one could get from plant sources. Most of us in the “civilized” world only eat the muscle meat of animals and so don’t have access to these nutrients and must get them through another source. We can take vitamins, but most vitamins are not nearly as effective as eating the plants that contain them because vitamins have all kinds of cofactors that regulate their inclusion or exclusion into the body.

So, the point is that there’s nothing wrong with eating lots of meat and saturated fat, but that common sense needs to be applied so that you don’t eat this to the exclusion of everything else, including some vegetables and fruit. That is not what low-carbing is about, despite the fact that much of the media paints it as an all-meat, zero-vegetable diet. It seems that the fact that one can eat only meat and still observe the central guideline of Atkins of restriction of carbohydrates means that some of the uninformed will actually do this, but also that the media then feels that such an extreme variety of the diet is the diet itself. I guess the main lesson I can garner from this episode, if nothing else, is not to trust the media to ever get the story correct. Instead trust them to get it wrong, to distort to the truth either out of ignorance or out of the arrogant assumption that the public at large cannot handle anything more complex than X is good and Y is bad, period, end of story, and then to misreport things that will cause huge firestorms so that they will have more to write about and be able to sell more papers or more ads or commercials.

This article, published by the Manchester Times, derides low-carb products:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1614&dept_id=516591&newsid=10826770&PAG=461&rfi=9

The main thing I take issue with in this article is the author’s obsession with calories. We have been told over and over again by the old guard nutritionists that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. But the human body is not a test tube. It is an extremely complex metabolic mechanism that isn’t simply an equation of calories in vs. calories out. Do calories matter? Yes. Are they the end all and be all of nutrition? No. Recent studies have shown that the distribution of calories matter. People eating a restricted carbohydrate regime have been shown to lose a similar amount of weight as those on other types of eating plans but while eating 300 more calories per day. To me this indicates that it’s not as simple as calories in vs. calories out. According to Dr. Atkins, this is from reaching a state called ketosis where the body breakes down fat and actually excretes some of it without using it. According to Drs Eadeses (authors of Protein Power), it is at least partially due to the fact that protein takes a considerable amount of energy to digest, thus decreasing the net energy (caloric) gain from eating it. Whatever the case is, calories are not the main focus of low-carb plans. This isn’t mentioned in the article. Perhaps the author disagrees with the premise, but if so he states no argument as to why.

That being said, I will say that I agree with him in spirit in a sense. Although companies are starting to try to make products that are low in carbs, many are doing this by adding ingredients that are artificial, and not very pleasant tasting. A few years ago before the onslaught of all these new products, those of us eating low-carb were hard-pressed to not eat in a more natural way. Most of what you could buy at the grocery store was high in carbs except for animal products, nuts, seeds, veggies a few fruits - in other words natural, whole foods. Sure there was protein powder and protein bars, but for the most part, the foods that were available were those people were eating 200 years ago. Now that there are so many low-carb foods out there, there’s much more temptation to simply continue to eat the same foods, but just with their low-carb varieties. Even labeled “low-carb,” these products still have enough carbs to where if you have them at every meal, they will quickly swallow up your daily allotment (usually anywhere from 30-60g per day). Because of this there is precious room left for the highly nutrative vegetables and fruits one could be eating instead.

In the kitchen, there are ways of simulating things that are normally high in carbs with items that aren’t. One very popular dish amongst low-carbers is mashed cauliflower. I have tried this myself a few times and it is extraordinarily easy and tastes very much like what it is meant to replace - mashed potatoes. Yet it is high in nutrition and has no artificial stuff at all. All you do is put a head of cauliflower in a blender or food processor with 1/4 cup of butter, heavy cream, yogurt, or sour cream, puree it, and add some salt. Some people get fancy and add cheese to the fix, or other spices, but that’s not necessary.

I have nothing against these low-carb food-products as an occasional treat, but I think there is a great potential for them to be abused, especially when people don’t know a whole lot about nutrition and are just jumping onto a low-carb diet because they’ve heard they can lose a lot of weight really fast and still eat lots of fatty foods. And now that they see they can “have their cake and eat it too,” well, that just seals it for them!

A humorous article by Heidi Gaiser, poking fun at all the labeling hijinx was just published in Northern Montana’s Daily Interlake:

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/NewsEngine/SelectStory_AD.tpl?command=search&db=news.db&eqskudata=58-814651-56  (No longer available)

Actually, this article does point out something about the current craze to label everything that the food industry can as “low-carb.” I am, of course, an advocate of eating a minimal number of carbs. However, I do see the danger, though, in that many people who hear about low-carb in the mainstream media or through a few words someone spouts in their office, may jump onto the bandwagon without really knowing how or why a) it is a good way to lose weight, and b) it is actually a healthier way to eat if you do it right.

I was unlucky enough to be overweight as a kid. But I think in the end this has given me a huge advantage. Although older than many, I did go on my first real “diet” in college. I became much more conscious about food ingredients then, started reading diet books, and have continued to do this since. So I have read a good deal more about health, nutrition, and dieting than, say, the guy who has stopped exercising because of an injury at 40 and has somehow put on a bunch of weight for the first time in his life. Or that woman who’s always been thin until she had her first child and now that she’s in her 30’s her metabolism is naturally starting to slow down.

As mentioned, there’s this other factor of the mainstream media. Often they simply get things wrong, or rely on “experts” who shovel the same old dogma to the public. Then it comes out that there might actually be merit to eating low-carb. And so, the media tells us, the public is “confused.” Maybe, but only if the public cannot understand that there may be some aspects of low-carb that have been proven effective and others that are still unproven, but not DISproven. The mainstream media, though, I think inherently distrusts the intelligence of the public and so believes that it can think only in terms of the big picture and only in black and white or good and bad.

Food manufacturers then enter the fray and jump at the latest trend, trying to paint their product as healthy, or at least allowable on whatever the most popular plan of the day is. Back in the 1990’s it was low-fat and low-cholesterol. We began seeing labels touting these qualities on EVERYTHING! It didn’t matter whether no rice ever had any cholesterol, but since they COULD say their brand had none, they figured why not! It seems to be happening again now, but with low-carb labels. Herbal tea, unless you consider the sweetened “chai” drinks as herbal tea, has never been a high-carb drink. I almost expect Crisco to put “low-carb” on their trans-fat shortening at this point! It is a bit ridiculous, but it’s not like these companies are giving false statements. Perhaps one could view it positively - these companies are simply putting reminders for people who simply aren’t that familiar with food composition (or familiarity with nutritional labeling) that their product doesn’t contain carbs. Whether these companies did this or not, I don’t think matters in the scheme of things. What matters most is that consumers educate themselves as to what is healthy. There ARE different opinions out there of course, but there are differing opinions on EVERYTHING: religion; politics; sex; you name it! People are able to handle most of these without confusion; I think nutrition is no different.

An article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on what should be counted as a carb and creating legal definitions for food manufacturers to put on labels:

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/0104/18carbs.html

The article is a good one and hopefully there will be some good guidelines to come out of the FDA in February. The debate the article focuses on is whether or not fiber and sugar alcohols should be counted in the overall count of carbs. Many low-carb plans discount these because they have little or no effect on insulin levels. High insulin is the culprit that low-carb pins on obesity and health issues. You may see the term “net carbs” or “effective carbs” on some food labels. This is an equation by witch carbs from fiber and sugar alcohols are removed from the total carb count. Unfortunately, the article makes no distinction between fiber and sugar alcohols. Fiber, at least insoluble fiber, really shouldn’t be counted as far as total carbs because it is not metabolized, it simply passes through your system without effecting insulin or contributing to calories at all. Sugar alcohols, on the other hand, have varying effects. Depending on the individual and the particular sugar alcohol involved, sometimes there can be just as much of an increase in insulin as there was from a carb of sugar, sometimes there is none. There is just no way of telling, or at least no way that anyone has yet to determine. Therefor, in my opinion, “net carbs” should only subtract fiber. Perhaps a seperate “contains x grams of sugar alcohols” might be useful as those might be considered at least somewhat less impactful than regular carbs, but a lot people have gastrointestinal distress from some sugar alcohols, so it might be part hook and part warning!

So, I have decided, at least for the moment, to try to post whatever articles I find in the media concerning low-carb and, if warrented, comment on them. Here’s the first one, an article from the Minneapolis-St.Paul Start Tribune titled “Food industry counts on carbs”:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/4324443.htm (no longer available)

When I first looked at this story, I had no problems, but going back, it told me I needed to register first. I’m not sure if this is due to some policy where stories that are recent are openly accessible but once they reach a certain number of hours or days in age they become restricted, or whether they are giving you a cookie and then if you return, it sees you’ve already been there so it then requests registration. If someone goes there and has no problems viewing it, let me know (I don’t feel like deleting my cookies right now). Otherwise, you will have to register with them, which took me all of a couple of minutes.

Ok, as far as the article itself, I thought overall it was good as a medium-length synopsis of low-carb trends in both the restaurant and packaged food industries. Quotes from TGI Fridays, Prego, a dietician, an FDA spokesperson, a nutrition academician, and a random consumer, give it somewhat of a balance, as much as you can have in a short piece like this. I love dietician’s quotes on low-carb plans because they always show how ignorant they are of the details of the plans. It’s as if because they are taught to be against such plans they cannot even stand to read the books, and so end up believing in the false stereotypes that they help to propogate.

Sue Moores, a registered dietician in St. Paul and a spokeswoman for the organization, said her concern with low-carb dieting is that “people innately like to eat carbs.”

“That’s the trouble you find with this diet,” she said. “People don’t want to give up noodles and they don’t want to give up their favorite comfort foods, which are carb-heavy.

I found giving up my favorite carb-heavy foods, like popcorn, pizza, and baked potatoes, not all that hard, especially when that meant not having to worry about fat or calories, enabling me to eat all the chicken, fish, beef, lamb, pork, nuts, avacados, etc. that I care to. I don’t consider what I do a “diet” as I’ve been eating this way for almost three and a half years, however, ALL diets seem to restrict something. Low-fat is just as restrictive since you simply cannot eat certain foods because they are too high in fat. Even the current mantra of “balance” restricts eating meats that are too fatty, or sugar-filled/refined-carb laden deserts. Certainly if chocolate and ice-cream was not counterindicated, I might eat those several times a day! But part of committing to a healthy eating plan, and one that will potentially help you lose weight as well, is giving up a few of the foods that you might really enjoy. It doesn’t mean you can never have these foods again, but you just can’t have them every day let alone several times a day, and in large quantities. Sorry, but this is NOT a convincing argument for me against low-carb…

“The trick is to give up some of the bad carbohydrate foods but not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. To give up all carbohydrates is truly a disservice to your body.”

Here is where Moores displays, as most dieticians do, their ignorance of low-carb plans. Or perhaps it’s intentional disinformation. NO low-carb plan out there forces one to give up ALL carbs. Atkins and South Beach have the strictest initial phases, but even so these phases last only two weeks and allow around 20 grams of carbs (at least for Atkins) per day, which is enough for several servings of high-fiber veggies, especially considering the aspect of these plans that no dietician will complement: fiber content is not counted. What this means is that a very high-fiber food, like brocolli for example, counts for even fewer carbs than you would think because of the fiber.

“Moores and others suggest that dieters avoid the simple carbohydrates in such foods as processed sugar, snacks and white bread, but not forgo the complex carbohydrates found in such foods as fruit, potatoes and whole grains.”

Simple vs. Complex carbohydrates is an old distinction that no longer carries any scientific significance. The more recent distinctions discussed by the scientific community are glycemic index and glycemic load. This again, shows how so many dieticians are simply parroting their training which for the most part deals with a very narrow set of nutritional ideas from decades ago. Schools of nutrition in general are not bastions of open discussion and different viewpoints. They are schools where one is taught a dogma and other points of view are vilified. Of course there are probably exceptions to this - Harvard’s School of Public Health’s Nutrition Department , run by Walter Willett, is probably much more open about this stuff, given Willett’s own predisposition.

One thing I have never understood was the criticism that low-carb plans don’t include whole grains, which supposedly have tons of nutrients and fiber. Well, they may have these, but there are so many vegetables out there that both have tons of nutrients and fiber AND are MUCH lower in carbs than whole grains. So why MUST we have whole grains instead of these other nutrient sources? I cannot fathom it! I content that one can have one’s cake and eat it too (no pun intended). Dieticians make a good show of being very pro-vegetable, but by emphasizing so much consumption of grains, potatoes, and other starches (the USDA food pyramid, which many dieticians worship as the quintessential symbol of their profession, puts at its base grain products, recommending more servings from this group than all others), they are, IN EFFECT, saying we should not have as many veggies as we might otherwise. Perhaps I am biased, but I simply have not heard any explanation that makes sense of this stance. It’s fine to want people to get lots of nutrients, but grains (even whole grains) cannot be said to be the only (or even best) dense form of food that provides these. So why do so many dieticians consider them indespensible???

Middlesex, for those who’ve been living in a cave (or just watching tv and playing video games), won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last year. Penned by Jeffery Eugenides, author of the widely acclaimed Virgin Suicides, the book covers the 80-90 years worth of family history, the family of the protagonist, Caliope Stephanides, or Cal, or Callie. And the history here is not just for history’s sake, but also due to the fact that Cal is a hermaphrodite, and this genetic disorder is traced back through his ancestors as unwitting carriers, some of whom bear a certain “guilt” for contributing to it’s likelihood, despite their not understanding such consequences.

Eugenides writing style makes for addictive reading. Cal ostensibly is narrating, but she narrates details of her grandparents past that infers omniscience. In this sense it’s almost Oracular. Of course, the Stephanides family is Greek in origin like Eugenides, and so one can draw parallels to Greek tragedy or even to epic prose of Homer. I have heard others compare his style at least in Middlesex to that of Nabokov, but I cannot vouch for this, not having read any myself yet.

They story begins with his paternal grandparents who live on the mountainside town in what is now Turkey. His grandmother, Desdemona, inherits the silkworm trade of her parents at an early age and cares for her younger brother Lefty. They eventually must flee as the Ottoman army retakes the territory from the Greeks, and end up in roaring 1920’s Detroit. The rest of the book is much of a history of post World War I America as a family saga. We get a close-up picture of Fords factories, the beginnings of the black empowerment movement, World War II, Detroit race riots of 1967, and more.

Interspersed in his family and eventually personal history, Cal’s present-day persona, at 41, is still trying to come to terms with his sexuality, which still rules him and his relationships, or lack thereof. He his living in Germany and meets a woman whom he is interested in. So while we learn about Cal’s coming of age and family history, at the same time we get a present-tense story of how his current self is developing (or not) a relationship. This allows one to piece together the motives, methods, and eccentricities of present day cal as we learn about what made him what he is. This is a very effective device.

I actually listened to this book, an unabridged version from Audible.com. The narrator, Kristoffer Tabori, was as excellent as the book itself. He manages to believably encapsulate so many different characters from the 20’s to the present day, with a myriad of accents and dialects impeccably.