It occurs to me that I haven't publicly made it clear just how asinine I find the low-carb craze that has swept the nation. Here's the problem: diets as extreme as the Atkins Diet can be quite effective for rapid, short-term weight loss. Losing weight and then maintaining that weight loss safely is not a short-term activity; it's a long-term commitment. It's a commitment to health. People know this. However, people don't want to make a commitment to their health. People want to lose weight. So they do. And then they gain it back, because that's what happens when you take a short-term approach to a long-term problem. So a cycle begins: people get thin on the Atkins Diet. People get less thin when they go off the Atkins Diet. And because the reason people get sucked into this cycle in the first place is that they want to be thin, they start to feel like they should be on the Atkins Diet ALL THE TIME.

Look: Atkins is not a reasonable way to eat for the rest of your life. Carbs are not the Dark Side to your Force. They are not evil. They have a place in every reasonable diet, and they will not kill you. Cutting them out of your diet in favor of protein, on the other hand, very well might kill you. Sandra Woodruff, nutritionist and author of the Good Carb Cookbook: Secrets of Eating Low on the Glycemic Index, elaborates:

• Too much protein burdens the kidneys and liver, which have the job of excreting any excess protein that the body cannot see.


• High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets deprive the brain of glucose, its preferred fuel.


• High-fat meats and dairy products are rich in saturated fats, which raise the risk for heart disease.


• Pesticides and other environmental toxins accumulate in foods high on the food chain, so meats and dairy products (especially high-fat versions) contain higher concentrations of these substances than plant foods do.


• High-meat diets cause the consumption and pollution of far more natural resources than plant-based diets do.


• A diet high in meat and low in plant foods lacks the phytochemicals (nutrients found only in plant foods), antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that delay aging and fight cancer, heart disease, and many other health problems.


• High-meat diets are very low in fiber and can cause chronic constipation and diseases of the colon.

(page 36)

Part of my irritation with the low-carb fad is the kind of irritation I feel with all sorts of things that oversaturate the American popular culture market, both as concepts and as products. The other part of my irritation--the larger part--is a very serious concern about the potential effects on public health of a diet that makes you feel guilty for eating an apple. An apple! I mean, Jesus, people. Book of Genesis aside, there are very good reasons why thinking of an apple as verboten is counter-intuitive. It probably should also get you on some sort of list of potential threats to national security. Homeland Security is watching you, apple haters! You're in their register, right next to the baseball haters and the people who say bad things about Mickey Mouse. Apples are good for you. Fourteen of them? Not so much. But how much intellectual work should it really take to figure out that it doesn't matter what you have at Souplantation if you eat three platefuls of it?

Let me be clear that I'm not holding myself up as a paragon of health, here. I'm not a paragon of anything. I just find it astonishing how hungry (cough) people seem to be for a formula--low fat, low carb, low whatever--because they are resistant to something most of them already know, which is that for the vast majority of people, the best way to lose weight and maintain that weight loss is to:

It's not rocket science. Most of us already know a good deal about healthier eating choices and at least a little bit about exercise. You know that dumping four ounces of ranch dressing on your salad does not constitute a healthy eating choice. You know that eating at McDonald's three times in one week is a bad idea. You know that the pint of Ben & Jerry's you just ate will go straight to your thighs. You know you didn't need to eat the entire box of macaroni and cheese. If you make these choices, fine: they're yours. I make them, too. But I also know that if I sit around eating Girl Scout cookies, drinking beer, and watching TV for a week, I'll gain weight and feel sluggish--and that if I want to counteract that, I'm going to have to: I honestly believe that most people who want to lose weight already know everything they need to know to do so in a healthy way--if that's what they choose. Most of us can also benefit from adding to what we already know with good sources of information. The cookbook I quoted above is one of the many good sources available; this particular book has six full chapters on the differences between refined and complex carbohydrates, as well as tables of data on the glycemic index of various foods and an extensive bibliography that cites sources not just on weight loss and carbs, but also on topics like insulin resistance and polycystic ovary syndrome. If you want to get complex about things, it's possible, and that can be a good thing. What I find distressing is the fact that the marketing that arose out of and continues to drive the low-carb obsession is so powerful that people would rather eat something that is labeled good for them than something that actually is good for them. I keep expecting that any day now, I'm going to walk into the mall and find that Cinnabon is selling a "low carb cinnamon roll," and would you like a tub of low-carb butter with that?

While I was in line at the grocery store last night, I saw a magazine--I think it was TV Guide--with a cover brightly announcing that inside, you would find information on the "Survivor Diet." As in Survivor, the television show, which simulates people being stranded on a desert island without any food. Life really shouldn't turn into an article from The Onion, I thought to myself as the cashier rang up my purchases. It's funny, but not funny ha-ha. Now I'm waiting for the "Apprentice Diet" to come out. It will be great fun to watch a bunch of thirty-somethings eat nothing but fajitas (they're fired--on the grill!) washed down with massive quantities of Trump Ice.