RE: Anyone old enough to remember "starch"?
[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Aug-29-02 AT 08:27PM (Est)[/font][p]The funny thing is, Bev is that everything is a carb except for fats and proteins. I just find it funny that the word carb has came to mean junk food. When I was growing up ... there was a healthy way of eating and junk food eating. I grew up in the same era ... "Watch the starch," my mother would say.
The key is that when I was younger, my mother would cook and she would make things with beans and barley and quinoa and parsnips etc. We only had one McDonalds in our town and it was a real treat to go there. Maybe once a month. Now there is one on almost every major section of road, not to mention BK, Taco Bell, and others.
It's very easy, count your calories and your fiber, move your butt and drink your water. To heck with the rest of it.
Keep your food as close to natural as possible and as close to the ground ... soon, poof ... the mysterious battle of the bulge just kind of disappears.
I understand that fruits and veggies are part of the carb counts, but the unfortunate thing is that it's only some of them. Grains, beans, and lentils are not consumed regularly. And those are natures wonder foods ... the nutrients in them cannot be surpassed by fruits and veggies alone. Folican is the big hitter in beans and lentils.
The wonderful FDA does recommend that the American public get at least three servings of whole grains a day ... that's at least.
A consumer, these days, will pick up a loaf of bread that has the wonderful words "whole-grain." Thinking that they're eating good for them only upon some education and some investigation, it's not better than the white bread right next to it. It's from the labeling laws that this country has. I find it funny that now the low carb diets are now producing low carb pastas. Have you read the labels? It's amazing! Even those low carb nutrition bars have the following printed right on the fine print ... "On the back of the Atkins Advantage bar it states the following . . . **Polydextrose and glycerine, while included in the "Calories" count, have been omitted from the "Total Carbs" count as their impact on blood sugar / insulin levels is negligible. The original carb count on the bar was reported at 2.6 grams. " The real count was 42 grams of carbs ... how is that possible? Our wonderful labeling laws.
I will make a statement here, that if there is a bad food group it’s the junk food. And with all the processing that is going out there these days in the food industry, the junk food food group makes up at least 50% of our grocery stores. There is so much junk food out there put in “healthy” packaging that the consumer is taking it in the shorts … hips … stomach … etc.
I can honestly say that my entire family (a husband, two teenaged boys, and myself) goes through a pound of butter in three months – I’ve even had it spoil, yes it can spoil. We eat mayo two to three times a year. We eat regular pasta maybe once a month if that – now whole-wheat pasta we eat all the time. I cannot even remember the last time that we ate white bread or any other bread that uses those traps to try to catch the consumer on. That’s where the fiber rules saves my butt every time. Otherwise we go through whole-wheat @ 4 – 5 grams of fiber a slice maybe one loaf once a quarter. I usually have to throw it away. Potatoes, we have them twice a month. Processed foods, maybe once a week if I get on a pizza crave. We haven’t eaten a frozen dinner or meal thing in … I cannot even remember when we did that. We eat beans, lentils and grains (including meals such as cornmeal – which is rarely enjoyed these days by the mass population) everyday. Lots of veggies, lots of high quality oils (that’s my passion) … not too many fruits – it makes me very very sick. Dairy daily and meat on average three times a week sometimes more.
So, it that’s a low carb diet, then I guess I’m on one. The unfortunate thing is that low carb proponents usually don’t see that diet as a low carb diet. It’s high in protein, carbs, fiber, and low in fat. There is nothing off limits in the diet and I don’t have to supplement. Those two things right there send up red flags to me on whether a diet will be successful for long term or not.
I’ve went on and on about this. Now I’ll stop, but what is really the serious problem is that this diet and nutrition stuff has been made way to difficult for the average American. The average American is lazy about counting calories, cooking and planning. The average American doesn’t do enough investigation into individual foods and what are their nutritional contents.
Ok, off the soapbox.
Keta.
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