Slouching Towards Macrobiotics - Who thought of it First? Part 2

I love how a blog series drives up my traffic!!  Today's quiz will be easy for most of my dear and faithful readers.

This diet was promoted by a concerned fellow citizen of the world who felt that our diet was ruining the planet.  Not ecologically, necessarily, but spiritually, or morally, well not sure on that.  Of course, the experts thought all that was bunk....

To correct the imbalance, food was supposed to be grown, harvested, prepared and eaten in a natural state.  Meats were to be a small item on the table, and all food was to be gently prepared by steaming, braising and cooking with low heat.

Food was not to be seasoned with gobs of sugary and chemical-laden sauces purchased from the grocery store, but was to be carefully seasoned with tiny amounts of natural ingredients or home-prepared condiments.  Most foods were to be eaten plain, with no seasoning added at all.  Herbs and spices were discouraged, and reserved only for special occasions, like illness.  Herbs and spices were seen more as a drug, and with unintended consequences (like lack of balance, or even obesity) if consumed regularly.

OK, you're probably thinking right now, trick me once, but never twice, 'cause you can tell by the title that this is the same sort of trick that I tried to pull when I used that title the last time.

And....DING DING DING DING DING... you are correct.  This is a trick blog post.  Who is this guru?  It's Michio Kushi again.  Not Dr. Guyenet.  By the way, I eventually gained weight on this macrobiotic diet, so not only is Dr. G wrong, he's not even first!  Not good for a PhD, not good at all, to not be first, that is.  And to top all of that, a REAL doctor from a REAL school like Harvard has declared macrobiotics to be a fad diet and many of its fans to be eating-disordered, at least more disordered than paleo.

And here's a little end-note, to educate some of the experts.  People who flock from fad to fad are just seekers who haven't found the diet that is right for their situation.  Maybe some of the anxiety is caused by brain chemicals, but I'll suspect lots of the anxiety comes from the trashy way society treats fat people, and the un-ease fat people feel about their continued placement in that fat camp.  So, it is good that Dr. Emily continues to clarify her position on eating disorders, and I hope she continues to herd the tribe towards a suitable and civil response to the camp.

Rewarding Food Friday!!!!!

Announcing:  Several Extremely Disrespectful Low-Carb Zealots are staging a virtual internet progressive dinner.  How rewarding is that?

Check out Tess's decluttering series.
Then head on over to the pizza party at Woo's place.
Who wouldn't want to follow up all that goodness with this?

I am getting in some afternoon reading before an evening trip to the theater.  I don't have lots of time to cook, so I sliced off a chunk of turduken.  For the uninitiated, it contains pork sausage stuffed in chicken and duck, and stuffed in a turkey breast.

It was a bit dry so I served it over a bed of wilted......BACON!!!!

So, what is it?  A Paula-inspired bacon-wrapped turduken?  A turporky  baconducken?  A nutritional nightmare?  At least it doesn't contain horsemeat, or even DOG meat.  Oh well, you decide.

Spiceless in Seattle

The first few days of the Guyenet-endorsed Dan's plan didn't go according to plan at all.

I just could not stick to only one spice in my coffee!  I had just "booted up" a new nutmeg, and took a whole 20 minutes while monitoring the pressure cooker to grind the WHOLE THING.  It is fresh and fragrant, and I wanted to use it while it is hot.

So, cinnamon and nutmeg into the coffee.  I can feel myself gaining weight already.  Boo hoo!

There is another known danger of using multiple spices.  Since we piled on the cinnamon and put it in everything, when one container was completed, I pulled out another.  I got complaints from the "service dining room" that they couldn't find the cinnamon.  So I solved that problem by putting the cinnamon in a large cinnamon container and the nutmeg in the small cinnamon container.

And, you are probably laughing right now with the container mix-up, but I am telling you, living with all these spices confuses judgement even more.  One of my diners sheepishly entered the kitchen to explain that he had accidentally put tons of cumin into his coffee, instead of taking from any of the numerous containers marked "cinnamon".  Worse yet, the cumin doesn't have a shaker top.

I tasted the concoction.  It was exotic, floral, strangely Indian, but also not.  I longed for cardamom, and then disappointingly realized that cumin is just the gateway drug for all types of Indian food debauchery.

My thoughts went to giant platters of papadam, topped with bright green mint-coriander condiment, then drifted off to chick-pea sweets and tandoori chicken.  If you need a visual, check out the video accompanying this post.  (And look how fat and lazy they are!)

Now I am 8 pounds higher than when I drank yesterday's coffee, and I am certain that if we had just stuck to plain cinnamon, non of this tragedy would have happened.

Extremely Disrespectful Zealot - Is it really n=1?

Dr. Guyenet has really become unglued on his blog site lately, and the purpose of this post is to clear some things up and set the record straight.

Dr. G said on one of his posts that there are many examples of folks gaining weight on a low carb diet.  Now, I know plenty of people who have lost lots of weight on a low carb diet, and plenty of people who gradually gained a few pounds of that weight when they went into maintenance mode.  My theory, if you will, is that that so-called maintenance mode the low carb diet authors promote is unworkable for many.  That maintenance mode includes, surprise, more carbs!

For the record, I NEVER GAINED WEIGHT ON A LOW CARB DIET.  I ONLY GAIN WEIGHT WHEN I ADD IN MORE CARBS.  (OK, now for the inside voice.)  I seem to lose the low carb magic after about three days of eating a typical carb-laden whole foods diet, and it is especially worse if that diet includes wheat or corn.  If I go back on a low carb diet, I can usually lose the added weight quickly, but this seems to be harder in the winter and summer.  It works better in spring and fall.  For me, at least, I seem to leave my ability to burn fat very quickly.

I am annoyed at Dr. G's current attempt to discredit and belittle anyone who has data points that do not correspond with his theories.  Despite his insistence that he removes "extremely disrespectful" posts from his blog, I have only seen him do this with people who disagree with him.  Not with all the other "extremely disrespectful" posters that populate the paleo cesspool.

This issue came up for me well before the famous G-T dust-up at AHS11.  There were some particularly "disrespectful zealots" that IMHO were so bad that I called out by name here on my blog.  One gained the title through her continual bashing of anyone interested in Jack Kruse and an award for the most creative use of moderatorship, and the other gained the title through his constant and creepy support of Dr. G on various websites.  You can read about it here and here and here. Note that both the zealots came by, and instead of offering an apology, continued with more denial and lies.  Go read the comments for yourself lol.  It was during the comments section of Dr. G's blog where I first read Woo.  I have continued to read her blog because despite the wackiness and mis-placed passion, she continues to supply good information in an entertaining fashion.

And just a shout-out to the other zealots.  Carbsane has never gone after me, anywhere, as far as I can tell, so, like Woo, she gets a free hall pass.  But, Jack!  Quit hatin' on Jimmy and his struggles with weight.