I Can't Even Call it Journalism

I just giggled my way through a newspaper article from the Arizona Republic. Apparently the writer has taken it upon herself to declare that the low-carb diet fad has ended. I have no idea who Karen Fernau is or what dog she has in this fight but she went to two solid experts on the topic, Cynthia Harriman, spokeswoman for the Whole Grain Council in Boston and Wade Moises, chef at Sassi, a high-end Italian eatery in Scottsdale, Ariz. Two people who are intimately familiar with the low-carb lifestyle. Let's see what they had to say.

Cynthia says, "The carb mania finally has subsided." And now she can go back to making money!

Chef Moises says,

"It never made sense to me that people believed that if they stayed away from pasta for more red meat they would be thinner and healthier. Those of us who know the power of pasta survived the attack by realizing that moderation eventually will prevail."

Well, it makes sense to me and plenty of other people who have taken the time to learn about it. It is pretty easy to understand and has been the way humans have eaten for the last few million years, except for the last 10,000 or so (just the blink of an eye on the time line).

What kind of nutritional value do these carbs provide us? Let's see what Karen Fernau tells us:

"Pasta is fortified with folic acid, an essential B vitamin. A half-cup serving contains a mere 99 calories, less than half a gram of fat and less than 5 milligrams of sodium."

So pasta isn't good for us but the folic acid that it is fortified with is good for us. So she thinks a processed food is good for us. Let's think about grains and how edible they are. Oh wait, they aren't edible. First they need to be harvested in huge quantities to give us any usable quantity. Then they need to go through a process to convert the hard waxy kernels into something at least digestible. Next they are stripped of all their fiber and nutrients for shipping and an extended shelf life. Finally, they are ground into a fine powder and bleached. Mmmmmmm, sounds yummy so far. Somewhere in the process the folic acid is added to give the product an once of nutrition.