Hackers on Low-Carb

Wow, this Salon.com article is perhaps one of the coolest I’ve read in a while, and the most up my alley in terms of combining different interests:

There’s nothing particularly bleeding-edge about eating the hamburger but not the bun, now that low-carb dieting has gone mainstream. But low-carb diets do appear to hold a special attraction for hackers, programmers and other close-to-the-machine dwellers. For some geeks, the low-carb diet is itself a clever hack, a sneaky algorithm for getting the body to do what you want it to do, a way of reprogramming yourself. Programmers, who are used to making their computers serve their will, are now finding that low-carb diets enable the same kind of control over their bodies.

The article is about how hackers have taken to low-carb dieting for a number of reasons. Who knew that people like Cory Doctorow and Doc Searls were big low-carbers? Not me! Personally speaking most of the people I know who low-carb are not programmers, except for myself of course!

Basically, the article contends that hackers see low-carbing as “hacking” their bodies – to burn calories at a different rate. I think Searls is spot on when he is quoted as saying that he doesn’t think it’s a hack at all, but rather a “feature” – something we are supposed to be doing – eating the way our bodies are meant to. This may sound preposterous to those who are only familiar with the common stereotype (repeated in this article) of low-carbing being about eating a diet of only bacon cheeseburgers without the bun, but if you consider modern hunter gatherers and their overall diets being meat-based, you will get more of an idea of what Searls may be referring to.

The article, as most, only meantions one low-carb diet – Atkins. But Atkins never talks about the evolutionary and anthropological clues scientists have dug up regarding how our ancestors ate, which seem to suggest, as I mentioned, a primarily meat-based diet, such as is discussed in the Protein Power Books, Neanderthin, the Paleo Diet, and others. Since most hackers are scientifically minded, I think they would probably find even more interest in these theories than anyone.

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