Twelve Black Code Monkeys

I get these Google alerts for anything with “low-carb” in the title. For months and months, I’ve been seeing headlines “low-carb losing steam” or some such. Some of this was based on the erroneous assumption that just because people aren’t buying the processed low-carb imitation products (protein bars, low-carb candy, bread, etc.), that this means that many fewer people are low-carbing. Couldn’t it be perhaps that when the explosion of these products hit in early 2004, people new (and even some old) to low-carb were curious about them, but eventually lost interest because they either tasted bad or tasted so good that people ate too much and sabatoged their diets? Others are based on random polling.

Now there’s this report (no longer available) that suggests that low-carb has had a new surge after New Years. It has been credited to the usual surge of new dieters during this time of year, but it neglects to relate this to the whole story behind dieting trends and continues to use loaded terms like “craze.” Here’s what seems obvious to me:

1. The low-carb movement came to critical mass at the beginning of 2004. Part of this was due to the growing number of studies that were giving more legitimacy to the method of weight loss. Part of it, no doubt, was due to Gary Taubes’ high-profile defense of the low-carb movement and theory in the New York Times the previous year. Part of it was due to the notoriety of Dr. Robert Atkins death and the controversy created around the misinformation and privacy invasions perpetrated by PCRM animal rights activists. Part of it was due to a new low carb book (which the author continually claims is not a low-carb book) called The South Beach Diet. And finally, part of it was based on food companies finally sitting up and taking notice of a new potential product category that they could get in on the ground level now that low-fat products had by and large sunk to unprofitability.
2. There are constant articles in the press about how popular low-carb is becoming and this just snowballs to create more and more interest. People buy primarily only two books about low-carbing, the Atkins book, or the South Beach book, which may not even be particularly about low-carbing. Some of these people make a genuine effort, lose weight and even adopt truly healthy eating patterns - they aschew most of the processed low-carb foods for the bounty of “legal” whole foods like vegetables, meats, fish, poultry, nuts, eggs, dairy products, and even some fruits. Many more people, though, either don’t read the books, or read only the menu sections, and get a very scewed idea about what low-carb is about. They believe that low-carb is, as the press and critics have painted it, about eating all meat, fat, and cheese, no vegetables, no fruit, etc. Likewise they get the impression that all of these new products labeled low-carb are ok to eat in whatever quantity they want. Actually, anything low-carb (like meat, cheese, etc.) is considered to be an all-you-can eat affair. Despite these misconceptions, some of these people succeed in losing a lot anyway. Many others don’t. Of the people who succeed, eventually they get sick of eating the same thing over and over because they mistakenly believe that low-carb is only about eating a few types of food. They also don’t understand why or how low-carb is supposed to work to make them not only thinner but also healthier, and so their motivation to continue goes out the window.
3. By this point it’s probably the summer, and most people are more active anyway, so the weight doesn’t fly back on, and people aren’t eating huge meals in summer heat either. But neither are they buying anymore low-carb products, and so we start to hear rumblings in the press about low-carb being on its way out.
4. A few months later and even more of the bandwagon-jumpers have jumped back off and then people start gearing up for the holidays. And by gearing up I mean they start to give themselves much more leeway in what they eat. Everyone else is getting lax during this time, so it becomes much easier to let yourself go because you aren’t alone in your guilty pleasures! Even many old stalwart dieters are slackening during this period, but of course the polling taking place makes the argument that this slackening indicates a definite trend in relationship only to low-carb dieting and not an overall pattern for all dieting over many, many years.
5. Finally the New Year comes and many of our resolutions are about getting back on that horse at least for the moment and thus, yes of course, the polling now indicates that.

What I think is important to stress here is that low-carb dieting is not any different in terms of dieting trends than other diets out there. It’s the new kid on the block, or at least newly respected (by many but not all) kid on the block, so it’s going to get more attention. However, the issue, I don’t think, is so much about low carb being something that people can only do for 6 months before getting bored, as critics would say, but that the whole tradition of dieting in this country, and many others, is a very seasonal one. We expect every year to be tempted through much of November and December at Holoween, Thanksgiving, Christmass, New Years, and umpteen holiday parties spread throughout. The weather is getting colder and there’s this sense that it’s more forgivable to put on a little more “insulation” for the cold. Then there’s the obligatory concession of guilt and resolution to be good again once the New Year has arrived. Because this is a pattern that so many of us fall into, it becomes easy to ride the wave so to speak. Sharing your life experience with countless others (whether friends or strangers) even if that is not a healthy one, is a lot less lonely than being one of the few different ones.

Another part of this as I’ve mentioned above, is also that many of us are either to busy to feel like we should really learn how and why to go about eating and/or exercising. We want quick summaries and the most basic information to just “do” the diet. “Just tell me what to eat” I’ve heard from countless people itching to start low-carbing. They don’t want to read a book, even if that means they will have a much better idea of what they can eat, why, and whether eating a certain way actually makes sense to them. Nope, in this world of instant gratification, even dieting falls prey to this mentality of just cutting to the chase to get the most dumbed-down directive about how to eat.

So, in other words, I’m really sick of hearing about how trendy low-carb is or isn’t. The fact of the matter is that it shouldn’t matter! The only thing that should matter is whether low-carb works for you. If it doesn’t so be it, but just ask yourself if you really know whether you know what low-carb is about. Read a whole book, or better yet read a couple or a few and get some different information about the theories and facts behind low-carb eating and decide whether it makes sense and whether if you’ve done it in the past, were you doing it in the best way? Any diet can be adhered to technically, but also not optimally. For example, I could eat a low-fat diet full of lean protein, but I could also eat a technically low-carb diet with almost no protein, no vegetables, or fruit. I could eat just spaghetti with low-fat margarine, low-fat candy, etc. I could also eat low-carb based on the misinformed critics’ idea of mountains of fried pork topped with mounds of cheese with a liter of grease thrown in for effect! But, after reading a couple of books, it became very apparent to me that eating reasonable portions of a combination of different foods including meat, poultry, fish, nuts, eggs, vegetables, and even fruits was just as technically a low-carb diet, just not one that low-carb critics want to admit are allowable.

For years, critics have been painting low-carb diets as “fad” diets, but really most diets are fads to one degree or another. Diets come and go and while there is a diet that is officially recommended by nutritionists and the medical community which has changed over the years, that could never be labeled as a “fad,” right? Fads are bad because they are ostensibly about irrational reasons for doing something. It’s fasionable or popular, but may not have any legitimacy. However, just because a diet is popular or becomes very popular and then not so much doesn’t make it good or bad. What really matters is whether it works to help you lose weight healthfully and actually makes you more healthy. As I’m sure you know by now if you didn’t already, I am very much believe in the data that suggests that eating low-carb (in the healthy way I mention) can be very healthy. But if we keep concentrating on what the critics, the media, or pollsters say is or isn’t popular when that shouldn’t be an argument for or against anything, we will continue to maintain this really skewed understanding of eating and also our wacky and unhealthy traditions of seasonal dieting trends.

I’ve been playing with this program Replay Radio which allows me to audio streams that are playing through my computer. There are a bunch of programs that do similar things. I’m going to be posting a larger piece about this soon enough, but for now I thought I’d talk a little about NPR and how the new technologies are affecting them and will continue to in the future.

NPR is a great source of news, at least as far as I’m concerned. I know some people find it too liberal, too snobby, or whatever, but I think there’s some quality reporting and as long as you keep an ears open for bias, which exists to some extent in all reporting no matter the source (based on the questions that are asked or what is decided as relevant to a given piece), you can glean a lot from the various programming on NPR.

NPR is a special case when it comes to broadcasting of course because it does not get its revenue from advertising, the way all other radio does. It gets its money from a combination of the taxpayer through government funding and through voluntary means. It’s a bit contradictory in that sense because on the one hand you have people who are giving to NPR whether they want to or not simply by their paying taxes, and another group who not only gives through their taxes but gives again through voluntary donations.

NPR then will also charge people again if they want to obtain tapes or transcripts of recordings, or if they want to download digital versions (through Audible.com). I can understand that tapes and the writing of transcripts may mean using extra resources. Even making digital recordings can do this as well. However, one can also listen to various NPR programs via streaming audio for absolutely nothing. True, they are often in somewhat lower-quality audio (I see often 20kbps, or slightly less than what AM radio is rated at), and it is less convenient than a downloadable file, but it’s still a disparity. Then if you consider these new computer applications like Replay Radio that take that stream and convert it into a downloadable file, the disparity becomes even more of an issue.

Podcasting, of course, has made this issue all the more relevant as home-grown (and a few more professional) broadcasters have started putting out audio files that are downloaded. NPR itself is experimenting with this with podcasts of On The Media. On The Media, of course, is ahead of the curve a bit because its raison d’etre is thinking about media, media trends, new technologies, etc. I wonder if NPR is thinking about these various delivery mechanisms and how they make sense?

When Satellite Radio came on the scene a few years ago I was excited about being able to get an all-NPR channel or channels and have access to it no matter where I was roaming. But after talking to someone at XM (Sirius does carry a couple of NPR shows, but none of the bread and butter stuff), I was told that NPR didn’t want to use them because it might deplete revenue of affiliate stations.

This is where things get a little more complicated. NPR isn’t just one monolithic entity, but rather it’s a public broadcasting network and in an of itself does not do any broadcasting except over the Internet, and even with that has only been doing it for a few years. Traditionally, it’s relied on affiliate stations that pay for its content. Some of these stations actually create content themselves which is then syndicated on other affiliates, although I have no idea how this works in terms of revenue – does NPR play the middle man? Do these stations talk directly to themselves and work out compensation plans? In any case, as you can see, it’s not a simple and clear situation. Affiliates need to be able to pay for these programs, for the general NPR programs, for their facilities, for staff, etc. This is what voluntary funds are for. I wonder, though, whether any of those donations go to NPR itself and if so how much? What about government funding? Does that go solely to NPR proper or to any of the affiliates?

In any case, the issue again comes down to content and paying for that content without resorting to advertising. Certainly advertising could be resorted to, but this is what makes NPR listenable in many ways – you aren’t bombarded by ridiculous amounts of offensive ads every time you want to hear the news or some interesting stories. And anyone who listens to NPR will tell you how annoying pledge drives can get.

So, the question basically is how does NPR and all the affiliate stations make money? One answer is more government funding, but there are a lot of people who would balk at this either because they think NPR is biased and biased in a way that contradicts their own political leanings. Alternately some believe simply that people should not be forced to pay for this if they don’t listen to it. These are certainly understandable arguments, so then what’s next? Perhaps NPR really needs to be thinking about setting up a subscription-based service for “premium” listeners or members. So, basically, you would become a member through your local affiliate the way you do now, and that affiliate would get a cut of your donation, but you could apply directly to NPR as well. Instead of getting a tote bag, an umbrella, a coffee mug, or a CD, you would simply get a membership to download content from NPR or any of its affiliates. You could have graduated levels of membership that would give you access to a greater number of these files. They could package the various shows produced by affiliates, charge differently based on the sound quality (and thus file size) of the content, etc.

As a fan of NPR, and member of local affiliates, even I have difficulty sometimes justifying the fact that I’m paying extra for something that I’m already paying for via taxes. I understand why this is, but it’s still doesn’t always sit well with me. Then the fact that I can’t get the content the way I want (via a downloadable file) unless I pay yet more money, and it’s a bit frustrating. However, I’ve paid subscription fees to various other providers of content (Satellite Radio and TV, Internet Radio, etc.) and not felt it to be onerous. Subscription, I feel, is the most fair because it is opt-in. If NPR continues to receive public funding, that’s fine by me, and so taxpayers should still get access to the programming in some form, but let those who are willing to pay extra receive the content exactly the way they want. That means being able to download this content as individual files, but perhaps also as premium channels on both Satellite Radio providers. That’s my idea, anyway. Then again, as it should be clear from this entry, I’m not an expert on the internal revenue workings within NPR and its affiliates, so take this for what its worth, but I think that as radio of all kinds make a transition from the current AM/FM model of local affiliates to a more global internet-based or satellite-based model, that NPR will have to adapt just as many other traditional broadcasters will if they don’t want to be made irrelevant by the scores of independent broadcasters coming out of the woodwork that provide their content for small fees (or absolutely nothing) via podcasts or audio streaming.