perfidy

Pork rinds do contain two of the Four Southern Foods Groups: fat and salt. Add sugar and starch and you're home!

There IS a god in heaven now that blue cheese burgers (sans bun) are diet food. [No, I don't take this Atkins stuff seriously. I know what I gotta do: eat fewer calories, exercise more.] But you have to admit it sounds so good!

Oh, I agree! I lurrrve me a good blue cheese burger (WITH bun, thank you very much!), and pork rinds (especially the spicy kind) are one of the greatest inventions of humankind.

I should engage in a li'l full disclosure here. I'm a fanatical home baker. I bake every weekend if I can, turning out home versions of sourdough, pain levain, Wonderbread, a great half-sour oatmeal loaf, and New England regional favorite anadama bread. I take my bread's temperature. I account for the acidity and water content (20%) of molasses when substituting it for sugar in a recipe. I'm a freak.

And so when these Atkins folks come along and tell me that the gorgeous blessing of the earth I just took from the oven is in fact killing me (killing me? So why did my internist give me a cleaner bill of health now that I cut down on the meat?), I know that they can go pound salt.

My roommates did the South Beach Diet and they did pretty well on it. They had salads and meat every night. It worked for them and it wasn't too far unhealthy. Their portions of meat weren't any bigger than they normally would have been if there was bread on the side.

Hm.... sourdough... There is shitty sourdough in DC. I'm getting desperate enough to order overpriced sourdough bread from Boudain's.

Now looky here, Johno:

I know, you said "no offense to the Atkins Assholes", but I still felt compelled to chime in with a thing or three.

First, have you heard the Bud Light commercial with the "Mr. Over the Top Carb Counter" theme? A classic, among classics.

Second, Atkins may be a fad, but it's a very, very, very old fad - I remember my parents using these odd Ketostix thingies when I was just a wee lad in the 1960s.

Finally, as a guy who's gotten on the Atkins wagon, and is now getting off of it, I've got a definition of the sort of folk to whom it might be most applicable: Those who've never, ever, ever had to lose weight, and as a result, have no idea how to do it.

That was me. I picked up 10 lbs. over the holidays last year, seemingly out of nowhere, to a weight 210 or so. I wasn't overweight before, and wasn't frankly very overweight at 210. But I didn't know where the pounds came from (most likely advancing age) and had less than zero clue what to do to get rid of them, as I've never dieted in my life. For retards like me, Atkins is perfect.

I dropped the weight in about a month, and am now quite comfortable eating bread (among my favorite foods, and my wife is now "allowed" to bake it again) and a whole bunch of other things I like, such as pizza, including the flippin' crust. However, I now tend to avoid binge chocolate eating, as it's a habit I'd picked up and now no longer possess.

Anything carried to extreme can be bad, including excessive carbs. Excessive, however, is a meter that swings both ways, and the search for too few carbs is a sign of obsession. I've got many character flaws, but obsession's not one of them.

The charm for the proles is that you can have as much fat and protein as you want, and heck, who wouldn't want to be on a diet where you don't care about fat, and can eat pork rinds until you puke? The Atkins folks would be distressed if everyone found out what I believe I've discovered, namely that once you learn to simply moderate your level of carbohydrates, the search for zero carbs tends to become a fool's errand.

Addendum: [url=http://www.illwillpress.com/fatkins.html]this[/url] just hit my inbox, and I had to share.

Patton,

fair enough, though I never said "Atkins Assholes" and wouldn't. I'm not about to fault someone for getting serious about getting healthy, and it certainly seems like you have your head screwed on straight when it comes to eating.

It's the fool's errand side of the coin that disturbs me, and I think the Atkins "industry," including bandwagon followers like the beer and fast food companies, has done a great disservice in promoting the no-carb diet as the ne plus ultra of healthy eating.

Myself, I don't do very well without large quantities of complex (complex!) carbohydrates. I eat enough brown rice and whole wheat to kill an entire houseful of hippies, not to mention green leafies and proto-A rich root veggies. Although Atkins himself was very clear on the dif between brown rice, which your body has to work very hard to process, and corn syrup, which is like rocket fuel in comparison, his followers seem to have forgotten that fact.

If our paths ever cross, I will gladly share a plate of steak frites with you.

One last question to you: though the ketosis thing has been around for a long time, there are no serious long-term studies of that diet's effects on the human body. I personally fear that people who get on Akins/Zone/etc. are setting themselves up for health problems later in life. Any thoughts?

J- I've heard that you can't do Atkins forever. That's where the unwise/unhealthy part of Atkins comes in. There is no way that a person should consume meat every day for the rest of their lives. But how long is too long? 2 months? 6 months? 1 year? I think my roommates did it for about 2-3 months at most.

Patton- so did you monitor your cholesterol when you did the diet?

Johno:

Of course you didn't say Atkins Assholes, but I know several of them, and the alliteration on my part seemed appropriate.

While I'm no expert in diet, nutrition, or anything of the sort, the "fools" are those who begin to believe that all carbs are bad, and it's not about the carbs, really - it's about their effect on blood sugar. Complex carbs have a much kinder effect than retard carbs, of the sort I used to favor.

There used to be stories that Atkins caused muscle to shrink after long-time use of the diet, particularly the heart muscle - these were debunked some time ago, if I recall.

In an Economist">http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1994262]Economist article last summer, several interesting points were made about both the science and the business of Atkins.

Primary among them was the assertion by some that the diet works not by burning fat rather than carbs, but by causing its adherents to inadvertently consume fewer calories. Two words occurred to me when I read it: What. Ever.

As I said before, the sole apparent driver in the success I had with the diet was to get through my thick skull that eating fat doesn't cause fat and that eating less simple carbs is a decent strategy.

MG: My cholesterol was a bit above 200 when I started the diet and is now below 180. I tend to take such readings less seriously than perhaps I should, simply because 200 used to be acceptable, until it was deemed no-longer acceptable, and now 180 is at the high end. I ignore games where the goalposts tend to move.

Personally, I long for the days when substantial weight meant you were a person of substance. By giving in completely to my desires for donuts, french fries, and the like - I could have almost instantly achieved high social status.

It just goes to show that wealth exhibits itself in ways that require resources unavailable to the proles. Back in the Henry VII days, only the rich had access to plentiful, yummy, fat-rich food. Now, only the well-to-do have continual access to the time and money to be "well put together" which requires money for the nutritionally perfect diet and personal exercise trainers, leisure for an even tan, and so on. Us poor slobs sitting behind computer screens become pasty, fat and unfashionable. Even though pasty and fat *was* fashionable only a relatively short time ago.

" the nutritionally perfect diet" is within anyone's reach, Bucket, as long as they live in the USA. Ms. Johno and I are poor as fuck (by middle class standards) but we eat very well.

Problem is, you wouldn't like it. Lots of dried beans, rice, tofu and the like.

meat. meat. meat.

Yah, but meat's too expens-o. Though it don't taste a thing like steak, a bowl of rice with edamame and a side of kale gets you most of the same nutrients and protein. Like I said, you wouldn't like it (though I can cook a MEAN vegetarian dinner. Mean like a mothereffer. Tasty as hell).

yum... steak... two nights in a row... yum... God bless America!

Johno, while I am in awe of your cooking skills, especially in the area of Bread manufacture; I have issues with your use of the words, "mean" and "vegetarian" in the same sentence referring to the same thing.

Sullen, and vegetarian - maybe. Sensitive, and vegetarian, surely. Cranky, and vegetarian, possibly. Pissy, and vegetarian, I can see that. Mean and vegetarian, no way. Tofu and meanness are worlds apart. Lentils may have nasty side effects, but they are not mean. Alfalfa, bean sprouts, and soy patties are not the nutritious cornerstone of a mean breakfast.

With two exceptions, plants and their derivatives are simply too passive, in their very nature to ever merit the adjective mean. One, chili peppers and assorted hot spices. Two, potatoes. Chilis have some inherent meanness, but they are force multipliers for the meanness of meat, you can't commit them to battle alone. Potatoes have a bit of meanness, just because they hang out with meat a lot, and are often fried.

Buckethead:

I'll never look at vegetables the same way again. "Force multipliers", "commit them to battle", "hang out with meat", indeed.

Thanks, I think.