Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Last weekend, I couldn’t get to a bulletin board which I’ve spend ridiculous amounts of time over the last 4 years. It’s the official Protein Power Bulletin Board, linked to the official Protein Power website. Protein Power is the “diet” that I’ve been on for four years running, the longest I’ve ever eaten according to more or less the same configuration.

It is, as many of you know, one of those dreaded “low-carb” plans. But while it shares many things with the much-maligned Atkins Diet, as well as others with that brash startup South Beach, it first was published about 9 years ago. How I wish I had read it then, but that was still at the peak of the low-fat movement and reading something going so much against the grain (no pun intended) at the time, would have been unthinkable. I was not about nutritional rebelliousness quite yet. As I’ve probably written here and elsewhere on numerous occasions, Protein Power, or “PP” as the aficionados call it, is a rational, scientifically based set of guidelines for eating the most optimally nutritious diet, one that promotes improvement in critical areas of health. Weight loss, although a part of this, is not the end-all and be all. The authors explain the science in a fair degree of depth compared to any other diet book out there that I know of. They even go so far as to say that they don’t have all the answers, something you will never hear from the “diet docs” who scream and yell both in their books and on tv or radio talk shows.

But one of the key reasons I think I have stayed with the plan so long is that the Eades (the doctors who wrote Protein Power) where nice enough to provide a bulletin board for those wanting to talk about the plan and anything related. They don’t really participate themselves except on a few rare occasions, but a nurse that assisted them in their practice does show up from time to time and also does regular chat sessions. Aside from her, an extremely knowledgeable microbiologist is an administrator and there are many folks on the boards with a great deal of knowledge concerning nutrition, health, fitness, you name it. Going between this board and other diet-related boards is like going from night to day. Instead of the incessant banter, bickering and useless “me to!” messages with gazillions of unicorn pictures, animated smileys and other detritus, most threads are gems of information and perspective, well thought-out and well-written. Discussions are simply on another level. Sure there are debates, but even when people disagree, they do it in such a mature and reasonable manner, it’s like a breath of fresh air compared to the constant flame wars that make up, sadly, much of the history of internet discussions.

I am actually one of the moderators on one of the Protein Power boards and when I tried accessing them last weekend I was bet with a page not available error. Occasionally technical glitches happened, so I did not think much of this. When I tried on Monday I found the same thing. Last year there was actually concern about losing the board and so we set up a “backup” Yahoo! Group to handle situations like this. Soon there were messages from others that they were also worried. I contacted the administrator who was able to get in touch with one of the authors, Dr. Mary Dan Eades, who allayed fears that the board was going away. It turned out that it was the hurricanes in Florida, where the server is hosted on which the boards exist. Now going to the main website one is greeted with the following message:

“Due to power outages and downed communication lines
caused by Hurricane Frances, eatprotein.com is temporarily off-line.
Technicians are working to restore connectivity as soon as possible.”

Hopefully this will not last that much longer, as many people get support and a great deal of useful information from these boards, and simply enjoy chatting with our friends that we have developed over years of discourse.

While this hurricane season has been devastating to much of Florida (and now Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi), it has also at least indirectly affected others not only around the U.S., but in other parts of the world.

One of the other members of that board has a blog but hasn’t commented yet on the board going down. I’ve gotten emails from other members and I would just say that any members reading this post a comment and say hi. At least maybe we can keep somewhat of a conversation going while the boards are down.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

Three women from Los Angeles just started a company called Carb Couture with the aim to defend their right to enjoy carbs. How silly is this? It is really sad when people feel so threatened by their environment that they have to declare their love of a food and right to eat it. I know, I come from the opposite place. Up until this year, or at most last year, my low carb ways were ridiculed by a majority of people as unhealthy. Now the tables have turned and those who eat lots of carbs are apparently getting the brunt of some people’s ire, at least in LA. I think what this shows mostly is that people shouldn’t be critical of other’s eating habits. Still, while I was being assailed by friends or colleagues as that wacky guy who used to be a vegetarian and is now on that “meat diet,” I didn’t make up T-shirts saying “If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?” No, it was a personal choice, one that I didn’t feel I had to defend to the world (just a few lucky friends and family members ). Hey, if these women want to talk about how they “love their carbs” more power to them. I love carbs too, they just don’t love me. They tolerate me at best.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

A new crack team has been assembled to battle the evil Atkins empire, the low-carb movement that has taken the world by storm in 2004 and, according to this group, threatens to make us all invalids after maybe just a couple of years on the horribly dangerous diet. How odd that I feel better than ever after almost four years and I know others who are going strong after many more than that. We must, I suppose, be genetic anomalies, nay, “mutants.” Yeah, that’s it! I’m Wolverine, damn it! My arteries, heart, liver, and kidneys somehow just keep healing themselves despite the constant onslaught of deadly fat and protein!

What’s amazing to me is that most of their claims are unsubstantiated myth without any foundation, or extremely theoretical foundations. I really thought that we were beyond these “vampire myths” but I guess not. As utterly tired of them as I am, though, in a way I think this may be more helpful than hurtful. Sure some uninformed people may get all alarmed, but these people – if they are currently on a low-carb – are doing it without really knowing why, and perhaps not even doing it in the best way, so chances are they have two strikes against them anyway. Moreover, I think it will get the Atkins folks and others to come back with very specific rebuttals to each of their points. Atkins’ current response seems to be a very quick and dirty general refutation of their claims. Maybe, like myself, they are just tired of dealing with ridiculous stuff like this. It takes a bit of time to find the studies that that supposedly show linkages, but half this stuff isn’t even backed up by studies, it’s just conjecture, so you have to write your own analysis as to why the conjecture isn’t accurate and isn’t supported by any data. I’m hoping they come out with something more detailed tomorrow.

So, who is behind this exactly? It’s not precisely clear. Of course, 11 non-profits are listed on the site, but despite the fact that non-profits legally have to reveal who they get funding from, there is no mention of their funders on the website – at least not on this first day of their initial press release. What are they trying to hide? In fact, it seems that Weight Watchers and so-called “consumer groups” helped fund this effort. I immediately thought this also must be one of PCRM’s (the radical vegan group that has been attacking Atkins for years because they advocate eating animal products, oh my!) dirty tricks, however so far it looks like they aren’t a part of it. Instead, Weight Watchers, is apparently one of the funders, and they have been struggling recently and have blamed mainly the low-carb movement on their financial woes. My guess is that other than Weight Watchers, the funders are food companies or segments of the food industry (the potato and orange juice industries are two that have recently tried combating the low-carb movement on their own) and really anyone whose business is threatened by low-carb. This even includes some medical groups. After all, without patients, you’re out of business, right? Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but whereas most individual doctors want to give their patients the best possible treatment, their hands are tied by larger associations that lay down the law as to what is considered the party line, and also the highly litigious atmosphere in which they work promotes extreme conservatism in approach. Then you have the non-MD “experts” – the dietiticians and nutritionists – who have been recommending the same low-fat approach for twenty plus years who are being rejected in favor of a more popular approach. I’m actually shocked that the American Dietetic Association isn’t a big part of this! I am really looking forward to some further investigatory work of exactly where the funding is coming from, and I’m betting we will see something really enlightening once it’s revealed.

Let me supplement this by saying what most of us know already. You can indeed do (and many people have done) any diet or eating plan in a non-optimal way. Low-fat dieters can eat lots of lean protein, fruits and veggies, or they can eat a tremendous amount of low-fat cookies instead. Low-carbers can eat a nice array of whole foods – meats, fish, cheese, nuts, veggies, and fruits, but they can also eat only fast-food hamburgers fried in trans fats with highly processed cheese but without the bun, low-carb candy, and low-carb ice cream. If these groups truly wanted to educate people about how they could eat better, instead of using the same old myths and scare tactics, they could have taken the high road and suggested a whole-foods, optimal approach to low-carb eating, such as one advocated in Protein Power. This group says that people are eating fewer fruits and veggies because they think they are not part of a low-carb plan. If so, why not simply educate those people that they can and should get pleanty of high-fiber/low-carb fruits and veggies even on a carb-restricted diet? Because this group has not been formed to educate, it’s been formed in hopes that they can scare a lot of people away from low-carb entirely, and back into carb-centric diet. They have a vendetta against Atkins because his company, and others that have been part of the low-carb movement, have made a lot of money, whereas the Krispy Cremes, the pasta makers, bakeries, juice producers, and anyone else whose product or service is antithetical to low-carb is now losing money. It’s so transparent it’s laughable, if it weren’t also so sad.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

A local TV station in Miami did a piece recently about how many vegetarians have flocked to low-carb plans like the South Beach Diet. Their reaction is basically shock. They can’t believe that what has been painted as a meat and butter diet by their own kind can actually be done by someone who doesn’t eat meat.

Many vegetarians out there have the same opinion of low-carb plans, as they are characterized as plans about meat and nothing else, but they aren’t. That is one of the stereotypes that will forever haunt low-carbers. Until, of course, enough vegetarians decide to try the diet and find that it is doable without meat. Sure it’s harder because things that are lower in carbs and higher in protein and fat are generally animal based, but not always. Soy products are a good example. The stricter a vegetarian is in terms of what he or she will eat will also make a difference. If eggs and dairy are eaten, they provide more choices. Fish and shellfish provide even more, although some wouldn’t call those who eats fish and shellfish true vegetarians.

Vegans, on the other hand, are another matter. Vegans eat no animal products whatsoever. Basically, they would have to eat primarily soy products for their diet, because practically anything else they eat is mostly carbohydrate. Although the whole issue of whether soy is healthy for you is becoming more controversial, it’s probably a safe bet that eating 90% of your calories from soy is probably not going to be the greatest thing.

In any case, I have this wish that one day vegetarians will not see the low-carb movement or low-carbers as their nemesis, and likewise low-carbers will welcome vegetarians into an eating plan that so many people have found to be beneficial. Many vegetarians, of course, give up meat for religious or spiritual reasons, and that’s fine, that is a personal choice and I will not begrudge anyone of this. However, I would just in kind not like to be judged for what is a personal choice to eat meat. If meat eaters can manage not to make fun of (ethical) vegetarians for liking animals to much to eat them, and (ethical) vegetarians can manage not to condemn meat eaters their personal choice to do something humans (and animals) have been doing since we existed on this planet, then maybe, just maybe, we can obtain world peace.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

WebMD has an article about a recent study that supposedly pits two potential ways of eating low carb, one which has more fat, one that has less. The problem is that the study conducted was NOT on low-carb. According to the study, both groups, the high-fat and the more “balanced” group both consumed the same number of carbs, 37% of total calories! Perhaps this is lower carb than the typical American diet, but only slightly.

Let’s figure out what how many carbs these people were consuming. Let’s estimate about 2,000 calories. 37% of that is 740 calories of carbs. 1 gram of carbohydrate is 4 calories, so 740/4 = 167 grams of carbohydrates! Even a pretty calorically-restricted diet of 1500 calories would still mean over 125 grams. For those unfamiliar with low-carb plans, generally speaking, the initial part of the diet which would last 2 weeks, or sometimes longer if the dieter chooses, restricts one to somewhere between 20 and 40 grams of carbs. A second phase differs between plans, but is probably going to be anywhere between 25g and 60g. The third and final phase, which is usually called “maintenance” because you go on it once you’ve reached your goal and now need only to maintain your weight, also varies not just on the plan but on the individual based on what level of carbs they can consume while not gaining. Let’s just say that this would probably be somewhere between 50g and 120g. For a few people it might be lower, and for a few higher, but probably most people would fit somewhere within this wide range. Now, even at 125g, you are exceeding what the vast majority of low-carb dieters consume in carbs even on the phase they reach once they’ve already lost all their weight. At 167g, you are consuming probably three to four times the amount of carbs that the average low-carber (all phases here) is.

The study, which was only for 12 weeks and looking at all of 19 dieters did find that there was no difference in either weight or health factors. But again, these folks were NOT on a low-carb diet.

What I found beyond ridiculous were the obligatory comments of the “expert” dietician, Althea Zanecosky.

“In a high-fat diet, you end up leaving out a majority of fruits and vegetables that have been very much applauded for positive effects on long-term health and weight,” says Zanecosky. “For 25 years I’ve been a dietitian, and I’ve always advised fruits and vegetables. They are very pleasant foods to eat. To not have a banana on my cereal or strawberries over my yogurt would be awful!”

My first comment is: who determines what is “high”? A low-fat dieter might consider a tablespoon of fat a significant amount, but high is a relative term. Secondly, just because your diet is high in fat doesn’t mean that you can’t eat pleanty of vegetables and fruit. I do, and millions of others who eat low-carb plans do as well. Perhaps we don’t have 5 pieces of fruit a day, but who’s to say that eating all that fruit isn’t excessive? Sure, according to Zanecosky, it’s been “very much applauded” but I do not see studies backing up eating a diet of primarily fruits and vegetables. This is not what we were evolved to eat. Our ancestors way before the recent advent of agriculture did not have easily obtainable fruits and vegetables, and those that were found in the wild were much less edible, not having been bred and crossbred by farmers over multiple generations to yield the highly nutritive species we have today.

Basically what Zanecosky is saying here is this: “I have always recommended this, so it must be right, and I could never actually admit to being wrong, and furthermore these foods are pleasant, so they must be good for you in any quantity, and finally, it would just be awful to have to give up something that I’m used to eating.” Well, gee, althea, that convinced me!

The problem is that these so-called “experts” are simply toting this party line that has been honed over the last 25 or 30 years. Following their advice has gotten this country fatter and less healthy than ever before. “But you’re not following our advice” the dieticians cry. Well, certainly not everyone is, and especially not now that the success and popularity of low-carb has thrown cold-water on their movement. But plenty of people did try to follow the low-fat/high-carb regime that these dieticians evangelized for years and it simply did not work or could not be followed over the long haul.

The dieticians mantra and message has failed, and yet they are still given credence, still looked at by the press as the oracles of health. Why? This makes no sense to me. I don’t care if they studied about nutrition for 2 years or 6 years, the problem is that the schools of nutrition have a very official stance on what should and shouldn’t be eaten for good health and weight loss. There is simply no debate. Or at least there hasn’t been. It would be interesting to find out whether the current surge of low-carb plans out there has actually started an internal debate within nutrition schools or whether this has simply made them all the more defensive and uncompromising in all of their students holding the party line.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

Coke C2 has apparently made it to stores, or at least to Carbwire. For those who’ve yet to hear anything about it, it is Coke’s answer to the low-carb craze of 2004. Lets ignore the fact that diet sodas have zero carbs, Coke thought it would be a good marketing move to create a new soda specifically marketed at low-carbers. So instead of the zero carbs per bottle, you now have 24g per 16oz bottle. For most Atkinites or even more moderate plans such as South Beach or Protein Power, this would constitute all or most of your daily regimen of carbs. What a brilliant idea! Waste all your carbs on high-fructose corn syrup instead of fibrous veggies and fruits and thus become a walking stereotype of the supposed lack of nutrition of a low-carb diet. Aside from the harmful HFCS, C2 still contains all the phosphorus and carbonation, both of which could potentially promote bone loss, and lets not forget all the wonderful artificial preservatives and flavoring.

Some people have shunned diet soda because of the artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet (Aspartame) whose safety has been questioned. A newer sweetener, Splenda (or Sucralose) shows to be a little more promising, but really there haven’t been enough studies to make it really clear that it is absolutely safe to consume it on a daily basis. But at least some companies, like the makers of Snapple and Diet Rite, have adopted Splenda over Nutrasweet. Still, as much as I like carbonation, that could be just as much of an issue over the long run.

The thing to do, of course, is to wean one’s self off of sweetness in general. Just as with most things, when you don’t eat something as often, or in as concentrated amounts, you tend to get more and more sensitive to the taste and to taste in general. After I stopped putting artificial sweeteners in my coffee (and almost everything else that was “supposed to be” sweet, I started tasting the natural sweetness in foods. You wouldn’t believe how sweet almonds can taste, for example, when you don’t consume sugar or artificial sweeteners on a regular basis. But of course this isn’t easy to do. Lots of stuff tastes pretty sour or bitter without sugar or artificial sweetener added to it, you just have to trust that this will fade eventually and taste buds CAN be retrained. A lot of people won’t have the patience for this and won’t except eating something that tastes bad even for one sitting, but all I can say is that if you can manage to suffer through a few weeks of not getting that sweet-fix, you will be able to get it continuously after that without any added sugar or artificial sweetener…

Coke is just trying to jump on the bandwagon of low-carb without offering a truly low-carb product, and with the additional caveat of offering a product which has pleanty of other potential harmful components other than the sugar. Even if you don’t try my “shock therapy” idea of sharpening your sweet-tooth, you still may find one thing without sugar to be pretty sweet. I find it very sweet. It’s a type of herbal tea called Good Earth. It’s the “original flavor” that has the spices that make it taste sweet. I steep it for a pretty long time, maybe 20 minutes or even longer, then drink it hot or put it in the fridge and make it iced tea. To me, anyway, it simply tastes like it has lots of sugar in it, but at least according to the carton it’s just regular unsweetened herbal tea.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

Wonderful! Not that Self Magazine is a paragon of journalism, nor Jessica Simpson a paragon of nutrition, but unfortunately celebrities to have influence over a large group of people. It seems Simpson was “messed up” because she couldn’t get through the 2-week induction part of the diet and so had to cave to all the temptations around her. I’m not sure how this is getting “messed up.” I think instead it shows that Simpson has little self-discipline, or who knows, maybe she was just doing a creative version of Atkins that was 80% fake carb products, with a bunch of low-fat food thrown in? We have no idea mainly because there’s just not enough info presented. You hear rumors of various celebs doing one diet or another but few are outspoken advocates who trumpet their own experiences. I think a couple of exceptions here would be Marry Lou Henner and Suzanne Summers, but those are the only two I can think of.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

Atkins has responded to the suit brought by PCRM mentioned in my last entry. It does a much better job than my own commentary at punching wholes through PCRM and its motivations. I’m glad Atkins has gotten smart and tough about defending itself. In the past, when the only one who was defending the diet was Dr. Atkins himself, who was not exactly trained in good PR, the whole issue of whether or not low-carb plans were healthy was not as well served. Although some aspects about a large company with commercial interests taking the healm of the Atkins name has concerned me and other low-carb dieters who fear that their main motivation from here on in will be to sell as many low-carb products as possible, we do have some benefits of a well-funded and well-organized company that can activate its personnel to quickly come to the defense of both feeble as well as substantial challenges. And lets face it, even feeble challenges can, when not responded to, become accepted as fact.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

Well, our wacky friends at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) are at it again. I’m surprised it’s taken them this long. It seems they have finally hooked a fish from the website they have had up for many, many months that has been asking for people to submit info about how they were harmed by the Atkins diet. It was, no doubt, with this goal in mind that the website was created. Although PCRM is an organization that evangelizes veganism and condemns any and all uses of animals (for food, medicine development, testing, medical training, even seeing eye dogs for the blind), they are truly predatory when it comes to attacking anything that they see as a threat to their goals.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least, and “predatory litigators” or “ambulance chasers” is actually somewhat of a step down from the more recent enlightenment of how far PCRM is willing to go to and how radical and uncompromising they are in their approach. The whole debacle over Atkins’ medical reports showed that PCRM has no professional or ethical scrupples, let alone common dignity for a deceased person and their family. But as you read more about their ties to PETA and other animal “liberation” groups, some of which are open proponents of violence, one starts to really wonder about the sanity of these people and whether they are truly dangerous to the public – “terrorists” as some people have started to call them.

As far as this suit goes, I’m not a lawyer, and sometimes the law seems to rule against common sense, so anything’s possible. However, it seems to me ludicrous that someone can claim a diet they were on gave them high cholesterol. Generally as we age, our cholesterol goes up, even with the same diet. Also, there is still no proof that high cholesterol gives one heart disease. Yes, you heard me right! I know, it sounds like an amazing statement, but it is true! Sure, doctors have played up cholesterol as the evil that must be eliminated at any cost, but there are many medically trained skeptics out there who have very good arguments against any link between the two, other than the red herring that has helped doctors push millions of people onto risky medications to the benefit of the pharmaceutical companies bottom lines and to the benefit of the doctors who prescribe them as they are wined and dined and given other perks by these drug companies as incentives to push yet more people onto the unnecessary meds.

In fact, study after study has shown that for most people, cholesterol actually gets lowered markedly by consuming a low-carb diet! HDL, the “good” cholesterol goes up, triglycerides tend to drop quickly and precipitously, and LDL, the “bad” cholesterol may rise initially only to drop back down to below the initial value. LDL is still seen by most mainstream doctors as the main component to look at when trying to determine whether someone needs drugs. Amazingly, though, this fails to take into account the fact that LDL is actually composed of different subparticles, one group that is associated with health benefits! Those healthy LDL particles seem to increase in proportion to the unhealthy LDL particles on a low carb diet even as the total LDL remains the same, thus improving overal health indicators, but of course this is ignored by most doctors who are eager to put as many patients as possible on drugs. The reason why tests to determine these LDL subparticle groupings are not done as part of the standard cholesterol test, I am sure, is that if this were done, many people might show a more healthy cholesterol profile and would then be harder to convince to take medication.

I’m hoping someone decides to sue PCRM for promoting a vegan diet, which can certainly be abused as much as a low-carb diet to where it becomes unhealthy. That is part of the issue, too, I think. Any diet can be abused. People who don’t understand basic nutrition can take Weight Watchers, Dean Ornish, Atkins, or anyone else’s plan, and creatively mutate it to the point where one is still theoretically “following” the diet, but not eating in a very optimal way. I suppose, though, in this litigious society we have, unless people are told exactly what to eat at every meal in exact quantities, diet books potentially open themselves up to suit when someone who’s followed them for all of a few weeks develops some probably completely unrelated health condition. PCRM of course, has a whole other agenda. Their single-mindedness marks them as not to be trusted in any kind of debate to get at the truth of what is healthy and what is harmful. Their tactics are sensationalistic and in no way represent the scientific sounding name they use which should indicate a body that endeavors to search objectively for the truth, not being dogmatic, aiding frivolous lawsuits, or publicizing private medical records.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

 

This weekend I went with a group of buddies to The Preakness. These guys know I’m a big low-carb follower and tease me about it sometimes in a good-natured way. I have heard stories from others who get lots of flak from their friends or coworkers about eating low-carb, but I suppose this is probably happening less these days with the popularity of such plans.

For the first time I can remember, though, I did get into somewhat of a debate about the efficacy of such plans. I don’t mind debating about this stuff, but I always feel unprepared because I don’t have actual studies that I can pull out to prove a point. What I did get out of this discussion was that there are studies purporting to “prove” or at least indicate a connection between low-carb eating and health benefits as well as low-carb eating and health dangers. Without looking at these studies individually, and reading them carefully and fully, you can’t use them for any kind of ammunition. You can punch holes through studies which on the surface seem fine, but when you dig deeper you find that they don’t account for some important variables, or that they use animal models instead of human models, or that they are flawed in of a million different ways. Unfortunately most studies are funded by a company or even a government institution that could be considered somewhat to obviously biased. These groups have agendas, and whether they are blatant about theirs to the scientists they give money to or not, theirs at least a subconscious understanding that one should bite the hand that feeds you. Look at what’s been revealed in the medical industry with the Neurontin debacle. Cynicism has lead me really to not believe anything I read in the papers reporting the benefits or dangers of any drug or diet. I don’t have the time or energy to read all these studies word for word, so I suppose I will just reserve judgment until I have cause to do so.

Anyway, we went to Philips for lunch on Sunday. Philips is a regional chain of seafood restaurants around here, and like many other chains, they have started to include a section for low-carbers. It was nice that with their low-carb entrees they offered both a veggie and a salad, whereas on other entrées if you wanted to add a salad you had to pay. So, I ordered a broiled salmon and when the waiter came and started handing out our plates and saying what was on them, he said for mine “low-carb salmon.” Ok, well, maybe it’s not that bad, but Salmon is not low carb or high carb, it is NO carb! Ok, so maybe he’s just referring to the plate and not the fish, but I still thought it was funny.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!