Low Carb Confidential

Let’s (actually, let me) talk about food for a few minutes.  What I’ll be saying is, of course, my own opinion, and not to be taken as a call for anybody to change what they’re doing or how they feel about it.  It’s just something to think about.

I’ve read with interest many low carb recipes, some here on this site, that attempt to recreate high carb favorites in a reduced carbohydrate version.  Just yesterday I received an emailed blog post detailing the efforts of some pretty adventurous and amazingly clever kitchen experimenters who have been developing various doppelgänger bakery-type items (check them out here).  In the heyday of the last low carb boom several years ago, food manufacturers were tripping over each other trying to satisfy the demand for low carb look-and-almost-taste-alikes of venerated food items.  There even was, for a very short time, a genetically modified low(er) carb honest-to-gosh, out-of-the-ground potato.  When the boom went bust a relatively short time later, new companies folded and established ones cut their losses by dropping their low carb offerings and concentrating on making what the majority of the public wanted.

That so many people wishing to control their weight via a low carb diet would still want to eat the way they ate before their dietary change is testament to our ingrained (no pun intended) habits.  We want to lose pounds, but we still want our bagels and toast.  We want to be thinner, but we still want mashed potatoes with our roast beef.  We want orange juice and milk and beer and pancakes and muffins and pie and cereal, and we want them all to look, smell, and taste like the genuine article while having none of the adverse side effects.  We are willing to either take great pains in making these things ourselves, or we’ll pay king’s ransoms for something someone else made.  I myself spent an ungodly amount of time and money collecting ingredients and then attempting to bake “authentic low carb English muffins.”  They came out barely edible (I’d hardly call them “authentic”) and considering the amount of oddball leftover ingredients, many of which had to be obtained at health food stores and will never be used again, I’d say each of the twelve muffins I made was worth probably $9.57.  I may have felt differently if the actual net carb count was significant (as with the old Karb Cruncher bagels I used to be able to buy that had 5.7 net carbs each), but these dinky “low carb” English muffins I made supposedly had about 14 net grams of carbs each.  A short time later, Thomas brand (that’s right, THE English muffin makers) came out with lower carb versions that had 16 net carbs each, and they both looked and tasted like the real deal.

I guess what I’m asking here is, are we all missing the point?  Are we so in need of variety, of those old “comfort” foods our moms fed us, of all those convenient concoctions of grain and sugar we gobbled down for years and that were responsible for us needing to lose weight in the first place that we can’t live without them in some form? 

Until a short time ago, I’d been eating many things I don’t eat today: cereal with milk and fresh fruit; English muffins with peanut butter; pancakes with maple syrup; sandwiches.  All these things were lower in net carb count than their “real-life” versions, but were still not able to be used during Atkins induction, so I have had to avoid them since the start of the year.  I had no plan to be on induction as long as I have, but due to unexplainable circumstances, I’m not where I want to be yet and therefore am continuing on the restricted path.  For a while, it took some getting used to not having some of these familiar foods, especially since my wife was continuing to consume them.  But after a few weeks, my perceptions of what those things used to mean to me started to change, and after reading Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories, the added knowledge of what some of these foods were doing to me physiologically made me even less interested in them.  What was I gaining eating a bowl of reduced-carb cereal with low-carb dairy beverage and low-glycemic fruit at 25 net grams of carbs?  A breakfast of bacon and eggs is just as satisfying and has roughly the same number of calories, but comes in at less than 2 net carbs.  Since January 2nd, I’ve had eggs in one form or another every day except a few where I’ve had something like smoked salmon with cream cheese.

When I feed my cats the same food at every meal, they don’t look at me with disdain, they simply eat their food.  When I fry up my eggs every day or microwave my frozen omelet, I don’t sigh and resignedly eat them, I just eat them.  I know most people get bored eating the same thing over and over.  Some say it’s one of the reasons many diets, even low carb, are hard to continue practicing… they just don’t feel like they’re worth it.  It’s hard for me to say where this propensity for variety in what we eat came from; from what little I’ve read, it seems with the advent of products made from flour and sugar starting in the 1800′s, people developed a taste for diversity.  Even in the line of meat, when I ask my wife what we should have for an entree, she’ll sometimes complain that it’s always the same thing: chicken or beef or lamb (this from a woman who would eat cereal or soup every meal of her life to avoid the bother of making choices).  And so it becomes a matter not of which meat to have, but what to do with it. 

I suppose this could be taken farther: I love cheese, and one of the joys of cheese is the amazing number of variations you can enjoy; I would likely find it less enjoyable an experience if there were only mozzarella or cheddar.  Would I relish eating the same cut of beef each night?  So, even in the basics, I too find some variety desirable.  But what about those things that are hold-overs from our high carb lives?  Can’t they be left behind?  Can’t we regard them as false friends with whom we need to break our relationships?

There was a television series in the late 1960′s called The Prisoner, which explored the attempts of a retired secret agent to retain his identity as an individual after having been abducted and trapped in an isolated village by unknown forces.  Many facets of regular society were mirrored in this microcosm of civilization, but were highly controlled by those in charge.  Although there were pubs and cocktail lounges, none of the inhabitants were allowed to be influenced by alcohol.  One’s waitress would appear at the table holding forth a tray bearing several glasses of liquid, saying, “Whiskey, gin, vodka.  Looks the same, tastes the same.”  The show’s hero naturally and vehemently railed against this while the other imbibers simply drank the offerings and enjoyed the social events associated with drinking alcohol.

Are you living in a “Village” of your own making?

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