Recently I’ve come across a new blog about low-carbing called Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb. It’s Author, Jimmy Moore, recently lost 180 lbs on Atkins and is writing a book about it. He writes like a fiend and it’s hard to keep up with all of his articles, but I do try to as they can be quite enjoyable. Jimmy does a lot of commentary about articles that come out on a daily basis that bash low-carb usually for illogical reasons or due to incorrect assumptions and just plain wrong information. Jimmy is very passionate about how Atkins and low-carb has led him to success over his eating problems and so sometimes this is translated into some sweeping statements, but mostly Jimmy is completely fair and will cede some of the few points that his opposition has right. Low-carb critics on the other hand, as a whole anyway, seem to want to attack low-carbers as misguided idiots and low-carbing as 100% wrong, no ifs ands or buts.
Recently Jimmy posted a piece about another blogger, Duncan Margetts, who blogs about dieting and wrote specifically about all the low-carb processed foods that for a while were really flooding the shelves only to be taken off a little later.
This is one of the subjects that I think distinguishes Atkins from the plan that I’m on, Protein Power. I do think that Atkins and Atkins followers like Jimmy rightfully warn against eating too many of these highly processed carb-imitation foods. Protein Power really emphasizes eating a diet that is close to what is hypothesized as what our ancestors ate tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago. It does not say you can’t eat such things as protein bars or that you can only eat organic produce, wild game, etc., but it does suggest that there are different “approaches” to eating within a low-carb plan and that you should pick the one that will work best for you, while also suggesting that the optimal diet (a diet even the authors admit they don’t adhere to themselves for the most part) is one that has no processed foods, only organic produce, wild fish, wild game and/or grass-fed/free-range meat and poultry. Obviously not everyone can manage a diet that is 100% natural. Often the less processed a food is, the more expensive it can be, so this becomes a factor. Convenience is another factor, and taste certainly is yet another.
I wouldn’t condemn anyone for choosing to use these processed food products, but I think it’s a sensitive topic because many of these products, like the low-fat ones before them, were simply market-driven concoctions based on the big upswell in perceived demand of low-carb taking off a year or two ago. For those who were unwilling to learn about low-carb, why it works, and how to do it right, these products became staples of a kind. Especially sweets with all their sugar alcahols which were initially being claimed as zero net carbs. Many people were eating these on a regular basis and having difficulty losing weight without realizing that at least some of the carbs in these sugar alcahols are absorbed by most people. They then decided that low carb “doesn’t work” - for them anyway. In other words, I think the availability of these products, while they definitely help add a little veriety occasionally to those who are serious and knowledgeable about low-carbing, have done a lot of harm to low-carbing. This isn’t intentional, of course. It’s not necessarily all the fault of the companies that make them, as they were just trying to fulfill the perceived demand. It was rather the people who saw the headlines that low-carbing was now “ok” and a “new” phenomenon who jumped on the bandwagon without reading the books, or at least not much of them and just assuming that they could eat unlimited amounts of anything that said “low-carb” on it.
The fact is that Duncan, while being a bit hyperbolic, does have a good point when he compares low-carb dieters eating a lot of these products like a heroine addict getting methadone treatments. I think we can all agree that for many people sugar can be an addictive substance. When you try to fool the body into believing its eating sugar, whether that’s with a sugar substitute like Splenda, sugar alcohols, or even the completely natural Stevia, you are still keeping that taste for the real thing alive and well. When I started low-carbing and Splenda was not available or hard to find, I decided to just stop using any sugar OR sugar substitute in my morning coffee. While initially it was difficult to do, the lack of anything sweet woke up my taste buds to the natural sweetness in foods. Almonds started tasting sweet to me and the mixed berries that I once couldn’t eat without some kind of sweetener added became sweet enough on their own. So I think for some people who are highly addicted to sweets and starches, it’s probably most wise to avoid these products altoghether. Keeping a pseudo-addiction going by trying to replicate the thing you’re addicted to with something that may not be as harmful isn’t really dealing with the addiction, right? Then again, if you’re addicted, does it matter? If you’re addicted, won’t you really always be addicted? I guess this is kind of the same debate over alcoholism. AA and similar approaches here in the U.S. make the point that not having any drink is the safest thing to avoid the “slippery slope” that will end in binging and backsliding. But other countries take a much less moralistic view and view alcoholism (and other addictions) as a clinical syndrome. Instead of forbidding anything they let those with this condition ration themselves a moderate amount of alcohol per week (so they can drink a half a glass or so at a meal each day, or they can save it up if they will be having a party that week). This is viewed as a condition where the person simply can’t determine on their own when enough is enough, so putting strict official guidelines in terms of how much they can drink during a given period of time helps them to control this. Of course the effectiveness of either strategy will be debated for a long time and its likely that no one strategy will work for everyone. In any case, the point is that I do think that while sugar may not cause the same problems to society as do drugs and alcohol, there is a parallel here.
If I could, I would eat a 100% natural diet, but I think it’s almost impossible unless you live on a farm and can personally vouch for everything. You never know what is and isn’t natural, even it’s labeled as such. There was an article in the New York Times recently which showed that most of the salmon being sold at various food stores in New York and labeled as “wild” were in fact farm-raised. So really you never know. I think the most important thing is to help your local farmers and ranchers be more profitable against the large factory farms. You can do this by purchasing from these smaller more natural-oriented providers whenever possible. Farmers markets are available almost everywhere and Community Sponsored Agriculture is growing.
If you are just starting a low-carb diet, of course, this is an aspect that may be a bit beyond where you are at. You may say that you want to lose your weight before doing anything else. That’s fair, but I would urge people on any diet or on no diet to consider looking at this important aspect of what kind of food they are eating. You may not be able to get rid of all highly processed foods, but it’s a good goal to limit them as much as possible. You have to be realistic do what will work for you, of course, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make an effort to slowly reduce some of the highly-processed foods you eat and replace them with some more natural equivalents.
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Just yesterday I was checking around to see if by chance the latest firmware for the Treo 650 had been released without me realizing it. I’ve been pretty busy lately, so haven’t been as current on news as I would like. There were definitely rumors that it was going to happen soon, but nothing concrete. Oh well. This morning I woke up for some reason at 5am and couldn’t fall back to sleep, so went to check email and I saw that Pa1mOne 
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