Dana's Low-Carb for Life (Podcast)
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It's All the Same To Me
Submitted by Dana on Wed, 2010-12-08 21:15
Met a really nice woman at my chiropractor's office today, and had a good 15 minutes or so of conversation with her. We're both massage therapists, so we had a major "thing" in common. I mentioned writing about low carb, and it transpired that she eats a gluten-free diet, which has a lot in common with low carbing. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that one of the things I love about the way I eat is that there's no division between types of food.
I mean, if you're eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), you've got some kinda real food -- most people eat some meat and veg somewhere along the line, even if it's in the form of chicken nuggets, or the lettuce and tomato that comes on their burgers. But a lot of the SAD is made up of "food" that doesn't merit the title. People know it, too, which is why they give it different names: Junk food. Snack food. Comfort food. Convenience food. If all you've had during the course of the day is a couple of Pop-Tarts and a bag of microwave popcorn, you know that you'd best eat some "real food," another term we hear pretty commonly. That your "real food" may consist of a frozen entree with a bunch of processed carbs and chemicals and a big 20 grams of protein is another matter. People are aware of a line between "fun food" (there's another special title) and "real food."
None of these distinctions exist in my life. If I have leftover cake in the house, there is no reason not to eat it for breakfast. Why not? Because it will be made from almond meal, vanilla whey protein, and eggs, and very likely have more protein in a serving than a ham-and-cheese omelet. If I get a snack attack in the middle of the afternoon and fill up on my beloved Golden Flake Pork Cracklin's, and later have no appetite for supper, who cares? Those cracklin's had a ton of protein and healthy pork fat in 'em; they're very little different from the chop I might otherwise have had. Speaking of pork, my favorite cookie recipe of the past year is Cocoa-Peanut Porkies, made from -- do not snicker -- pork rinds. With 6 grams of protein apiece, and 7 grams of carb, 5 of which are fiber, I might as well have a couple for lunch. Better than pasta salad, that's for sure!
Since I've axed the carbs, there just isn't any serious junk food in my life. All of it is a riff on protein, fat, the best possible carbs -- vegetables, nuts and seeds, a little fruit, sugar-free chocolate, spices -- and fiber. There simply isn't a line between "junk food" and "real food" in my life. It's all real, it's all nutritious. There's no reason not to eat cookies for breakfast if those cookies are as nourishing as anything else I might eat.
Many people would think of the way I eat as terribly constricted. But I find this absence of a division between good food and fun food peculiarly freeing.
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"Chicken" nuggets
Since you brought up chicken nuggets, thought you might get a kick out of this article I just posted on my blog:
http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/2010/12/simple-joy-of-unconsciousness.html
Most folks assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know, for example, that a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is 56% corn?
The following paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma:
“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the [GMO]corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.
According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”
Just thought you should know.
I've had trouble with LC & GF together...
Hi Dana,
My husband was just diagnosed with celiac disease, so we have gone Gluten Free. Mind you, before this, I had been trying to maintain a LC lifestyle. I am having difficulty figuring out how I can do GF low carb, while hubby can be Gluten Free. (He'd do the low carb lifestyle, but has a serious addiction to Rice Chex.) I've looked through a variety of books, and am having a tough time. Any recommendations?
Oh---by the way, the Cocoa-Peanut Porkies are WONDERFUL! I can have a snack of two of them, and be completely full---and not crave any more sugar!! Now I just have to get some of those Golden Flake pork rinds.....
Thx,
Jackie
To me, it's different!
Thank you for your books and your blog, Dana. I enjoy reading what you have to say, and my life has been enriched with your recipes.
This post hit a bit of a nerve with me, though. I'm glad that you can eat the things you mention, but I have found that until I stopped eating low-carb concoctions like cake and cookies, I simply stayed fat. Low-carb cake for breakfast kept me fat for nearly a decade.
To me, something as difficult to harvest and process as nuts (not to mention being full of harmful oils and defensive proteins), doesn't really count as real food, and neither does anything that imitates sweetness, or that is stuffed full of fiber so that I can pretend it doesn't count.
I would love it if I could eat that stuff and still get to a healthy weight, but it didn't work that way for me.
Pie for breakfast and dip for
Pie for breakfast and dip for dinner. I like it.
I agree...
I agree completely. My husband doesn't low carb with me, but I find that I don't crave his foods, and I feel happy with my own choices. When I first started, it was difficult to watch him eat whatever he wanted, but that disappeared rather quickly.
Slightly off topic: I was browsing a news site tonight, and found a link to this one article with two different titles: "How many carbohydrates am I eating?" and "How to estimate carbs in 10 hidden foods" on health.com: http://www.health.com/health/gallery/thumbnails/0,,20432882,00.html. I couldn't believe it - in an article somewhat meant for diabetes patients, it says it's ok to eat some arbitrarily preset amounts of bread, crackers, orange juice, and pasta. They also said that "a bowl of cereal with skim milk is a great choice for the first meal of the day." Also, "yogurt is a great, healthy choice, as long as you go the nonfat route." I don't have diabetes, but I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (which is linked to insulin resistance), and I know that eating like that just would make me feel worse in so many ways (getting fatter being only one of many concerns).
It's just amazing.