Various people have been criticizing low-carb eating for decades, even including myself up until a few years ago when I started reading more about it. I thought I would try to convey a few of the most obvious points that might help some of those critics to understand that it’s not all about eating pork rinds and steak, and that it would be more productive for them to join the movement so that they could help meld it with their own concerns in mind, rather than simply attack it as 100% bad.
First off, this is not geared towards the total extremists of any kind. Those who have little patience for other people’s views might as well stop reading now because you already “know” the truth. If, however, you are willing to consider that you don’t know everything and you might even be wrong in some of your current assumptions, I invite you to read on, and, if you have anything constructive to say, critical or not, to add your own voice to the debate.
Many of the critics of low-carb eating are old-school dieticians and nutritionists, and other health “experts” or “authorities” who have not kept up with, or are unwilling to recognize the validity of many of the recent studies that vindicate it. These critics have been preaching low-fat or moderate-fat eating for many, many years, and so their reputations are to some extent on the line. If they were to all of a sudden back low-carb, they probably fear, perhaps rightly so, that people would completely stop trusting them. I for one, though, trust much more in someone who has discovered and admits to being wrong and that they can actually change their opinion rather than someone who is so stuck as to be resistant to admitting that they were ever wrong about anything despite the facts staring them in the face.
Critics often assert that there is “overwhelming evidence” that decreasing fat intake makes one healthier. While this may be true to a limited extent, it does not account for varying the amount of carbs in the diet. There is no study that proves or even hints at a possibility that eating low-fat/high-carb is somehow healthier (or even more effective at losing weight) than eating an opposite high-fat/low-carb diet. Rather, fat simply became the red herring scapegoat and it still the enemy in many of our minds. We’ve been brainwashed to the extent that fat has to be bad. If one looks objectively at the studies that the critics use to bolster their case, it’s very easy to poke holes in them because they start with a premise or assumption that fat is bad and that is what they are out to prove. Yet, the critics speak with the “authority” that only a true-believer has, and their confidence both comes from, and perpetuates, the feeling of many people that they are right. Say something enough times and forcibly enough, as sociologists have pointed out, and people start believing it as pure fact.
Double standards abound. The critics are very selective, of course, in terms of which studies they choose to site. Those that don’t serve their cause, of course, that muddy the water or even hurt their cause, are ignored. But this isn’t politics or economics, but rather “science;” the science of nutrition. Or is it? When critics do acknowledge the more recent studies which specifically take into account low-carb, and show they are superior to or at the very least similar to low-fat diets in their health and weight-loss benefits, the overwhelming qualification tacked onto the end of this admittance is that these studies are still too “short-term.” They have only been going for a year or two at the longest, and so this doesn’t allow enough time to definitively say whether they are proven healthy in the long run. This seems perfectly logical until one brings up a couple of points. First is the double standard. When low-fat started gaining steam in the 1970’s and 80’s, were any of these same critics saying anything similar about low-fat? Were they demanding studies that specifically compared low-fat to higher-fat diets before they would suggest people using them? No, because it seemed logical to many that “fat made you fat” and so there was very little resistance to the growing push towards low-fat eating. That push was as much an economic and political one imposed by government agencies than it was a scientific one. Secondly, if eating a certain way actually improves one’s health over a one-year period, as these recent studies have indicated, does it really make much sense that over a longer period of time one’s health will start to deteriorate? Of course anything’s possible and no one can be sure without studies proving it, but it just doesn’t make much sense to me. The critics, in other words, seem to be incredibly conservative when trying to judge low-carb, whereas they gave low-fat a pass without really much analysis. In other words, double standard.
The critics use stereotypes. Most people know the stereotypes of low-carb dieting, but unfortunately for a huge chunk of the population, that’s all they know. The media propagate these stereotypes and then even those who decide to do low-carb diets often buy into these stereotypes thus making them self-fulfilling! I’m talking about the idea that low-carb is about eating steak and butter and pork rinds and heavy cream, and nothing else. For once and all, that is not what low-carb is about! Yes, you can eat these things on a low-carb plan, but that doesn’t mean that you have to, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you have to eat them to the exclusion of everything else! Just as low-carb diets can be “abused” by people who either don’t understand them (probably because they’ve been fed these stereotypes constantly), so can any diet. One could eat nothing but low-fat candies and cookies, and would still theoretically be eating “low-fat.”
Unfortunately it seems few people like to actually read. Critics don’t seem to have the knowledge that belies having actually read any of the low-carb books out there cover to cover. If they did, they could not contend as they often do, that the plans are “extreme” or unhealthy. Neither do many people who have started these plans because they have seen them talked about on TV or at the office water cooler. I know some people like this and they just don’t have the patience to learn why such plans are healthy, but moreover how do them in the most healthy way – with lots of veggies, fruits, organic/free-range/wild/raw/grass-fed animal products, but few processed low-carb junk like low-carb candies, bread, etc. I would challenge critics to actually read a few low-carb books from cover to cover, not just looking for the words “steak” and “cheese” but just as prevalent “broccoli” and “berries.”
The idea that I hear so often from critics in the media is about how “getting rid of carbs” also decreases needed nutrients. Of course this is misinformation, perhaps even disinformation. For one, no low-carb diet encourages eliminating carbs from the diet completely. The strictest of them, Atkins, limits one to 20 grams of carbs (minus fiber) during its strictest phase which lasts all of the first two weeks. After this, carbs can be increased to any level that allows one to lose weight at a very slow pace. Because many vegetables contain loads of fiber, which can be subtracted because it doesn’t get metabolized, their “effective” or “net” carb count is pretty low. For example, a cup of broccoli has so much fiber that its net amount of carbs is only a single gram! So one could theoretically eat 20 cups worth of broccoli (or a similarly fibrous veggie) per day on the strictest phase of the strictest low-carb plan out there without breaking one’s daily limit! Why, then, must people consume bread and potatoes, which contain comparatively little fiber compared to the amount of carbs that they contain? Do bread, pasta, potatoes have some special nutrients that are vital to health that one can’t get from the hundreds of different kinds of much lower-carb fruits and veggies that are available? If so, after three and a half years of abstaining from these items I should be pretty sick, yet I’m exceedingly healthy. Most people who go on low-carb diets are coming from the “Standard American Diet” which is full of highly refined carbs. So they are ditching that processed hamburger bun for a side veggie or salad. Can someone tell me why this is worse? Critics will say that while it may not be worse, it’s not as good as it could be if they also ditched the burger. But that’s not the choice here. People have already tried low-fat veggie burgers or the like and for the most part found them so lacking in taste that they could not tolerate them for very long. Instead of the critics saying “all or nothing” how about them at least admitting that low-carb has some benefits to the way the average person eats in the U.S.?
There are also those that are “balance” chanters. This group is perhaps not committed to either the low-carb camp or the low-fat camp, and chant “balance” and “moderation.” This is a very attractive idea for many of us who think extremists are rude, close-minded clods, or for those who are sick of various camps yelling at each other that their kind of eating is better than their opponents. There isn’t anything wrong with the idea of “balance” except that if there is something truly unhealthy for you, wouldn’t it be better to avoid it altogether? Why does one have to balance the positive and negative, in order to come out just at a big fat zero? Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on eating things one knows are good? What does “in moderation” mean anyway? Does it mean that we don’t eat cheese fries and donuts at every meal but only every few days? Or does it mean once a week? My point is that “moderation” seems to have a different definition depending on the food you are talking about, the more horrible it is deemed the smaller a “moderate” amount becomes, and even then people disagree on how bad certain foods are for you. Moderation, in other words, is in the eye of the beholder, and thus, to me, a pretty useless term. Common sense, of course, dictates that we shouldn’t eat 10 lbs of food at a sitting, and not eat an entire meal of cake and pie, but other than these extreme and obvious no no’s, it really depends on the individual. Does it really make sense to be eating good AND bad foods constantly just because “balance” somehow appeals to our ideals of “fairness” more than adopting a specific ideal of what we think is healthy? I can hear the naysayers already. How “boring” life would be if we weren’t able to eat something “bad” once in a while. People who were concerned with health for a long, long time, were derisively termed “health food nuts” but to me, even if someone is committed to low-fat, at least they are doing so ostensibly because they care about their health enough to want to eat foods that they believe are optimal to them. The “balance” people are really taking no stand at all. They are fence-sitters; cynics who want to keep all their options open and don’t have the will to actually give anything up because it might deprive them of some “fun.” That’s fine as a personal decision; I don’t begrudge them that choice. But I dislike when people espouse this (just as I dislike when people espouse any eating plans) as something others should adopt because someone has come to the conclusion that it is the best plan for them, and thus should be the only choice for us all.
I have a final suggestion for critics of low-carb. Instead of sitting on high horses and calling out that the sky is falling, trying yet to smear low-carb because some people do it in an unhealthy way, why not recognize that there are many of use who do it in a much more healthy way, and actually try to promote this “healthier low-carb” way of eating as opposed to dismissing all-low carb out of hand as bad. Stop trying to win a debate and actually try to promote the health of the public by doing something effective. There are people who have long ago given up on low-fat and even “balanced” approaches because they didn’t work for them, and are now low-carbing, and you can help to steer them towards a method of low-carbing that fits closest with your ideals. You may have to give up some ideals like that carbs in and of themselves are absolutely necessary in and of themselves (they obviously aren’t as millions of people have existed healthfully without their help), and concentrate your efforts on suggesting which carbs people should concentrate on, given their limited allotment on low-carb regimes. In other words, become campaigners not for bread and potatoes and orange juice, but for bok choy, garlic, spinach, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, nuts, seeds, red peppers, berries, melons, and all the myriad other low-carb/high-fiber fruits and veggies that deliver the biggest bang for the buck (the greatest number of vitamins, minerals, photochemicals, fiber, and antioxidants for each gram of carb). If you feel strongly that saturated fat is a problem (I for one again see know definitive proof of this especially within a low-carb diet), then by all means suggest low-carbers eat lots of fish and and lean meats, chicken, etc. Many of us do this already, of course, but the self-fulfilling stereotype makes new dieters convinced that they must eat either steak or pork as their choice of protein. I guarantee you, you will win many more adherents and people will trust your point of view much more if instead of constantly attacking, you choose to help those jumping onto the low-carb bandwagon to understand that there are other things to eat besides steak and low-carb candies, something you yourselves have helped to convince people of!
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