Crispy Pepperoni Chips

fried pepperoni?!
Originally uploaded by misfitgirl

Since eating better, I've noticed that I've been missing textures. I know that probably sounds weird, but there's just something about the light fluffy texture of fresh bread or the crunch of a potato chip. At the same time, chips are a good scoop too -- dips, chili, etc.

I decided to look around for low carb chip substitutes and I stumbled up Crispy Pepperoni Chips over at the Food Network. Honestly, the recipe couldn't be more straight forward -- take sliced pepperoni and put it in the oven until crispy. They definitely were crispy and worked well as a chip and a cracker. I ate them with cream cheese but next time I might find a low carb dip to add a little more flavor.

Through this recipe hunt, I found out that the Food Network used to have a low carb show, Low Carb and Lovin' It. Apparently it was on during the height of the low carb craze when every food related company was trying to cash in.

For all those who have struggled to lose weight and failed: Meet George Stella, the low carb chef. Once weighing in at 465 pounds, George transformed his life with controlled carbohydrate eating. Now he shares his secrets to successful weight loss, proving that the low carb lifestyle doesn’t have to be boring.

It is a shame the Food Network doesn't have the old episodes of the show available on their website, I'd love to watch them.

Cauliflower Mashed “Potatoes”

Cauliflower Mashed “Potatoes”
Originally uploaded by Ozma of Oz and the Wogglebug

Lately for dinner, I've been having the same dinner: two cans of tuna, mayo, cheese and lettuce. While that's good and satiating, I noticed that I was slowly growing bored of it. To add some variety, I tried salmon but that didn't work out too well. Last night I had a bit of an eureka moment when I saw that sliced steaks are 0 carbs. I don't know why it was surprising -- I was just expecting lots of sugary additives.

What goes with steak? Potatoes! But those are strictly out on the low-carb eating plan. I googled around a bit and stumbled upon a recipe for Creamy Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes.

1 bag frozen cauliflower florets
4-6 oz of cream cheese (to taste)
1/4 cup heavy cream
2-4 oz of butter, softened (to taste)

I made these tonight and they certainly look like mashed potatoes, but thats where the similarities ended. The first batch had too much cream cheese and both batches were really watery, so I didn't have to add any cream. I'd recommend trying them, but don't try to pass them off as potatoes at your next dinner party.

Obesity and the Regulation of Weight

red meat in our kitchen (for the first time?) - _MG_4181
Originally uploaded by sean dreilinger

I finally powered through and finished Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. After two long parts discussing high-fat/low-carb vs. low-fat/high-carb, this part got down to the nuts and bolts of dieting and losing weight. It takes aim at busting two of the common mantras of weight loss: "Calories In, Calories Out" and "A Calories is a Calories is a Calories." The late, great Dr. Atkins is also discussed in length including the tragic story of how he was ostricized by the medical community for daring to preach anything but low-fat/high-carb.

What I found most interesting was the story of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who ate nothing but meat for one year and emerged perfectly healthy. He did it to prove to scientists what he learned from the Inuit (indigenous people living in the arctic regions of Alaska, Greenland, and Canada) -- you can live perfectly well on nothing but meat.

The Inuit considered vegetables and fruit "not proper human food," Stefansson wrote, but they occasionnally ate the roots of the knotweed plant in times of dire necessity."

In the end, I was disappointed by the lack of conclusions drawn by the book, but that wasn't the author's fault. He points out that no research has been done to positively prove whether or not a low-carb diet is the best way to eat and he hopes that his book will inspire that research to be done. Personally, I've been doing amazingly well on Atkins Introduction and the information in this book has only affirmed that what I'm doing is not only safe, but good for me.

What is Sugar Alcohol?

Antique Absinthe Glass and Spoon
Originally uploaded by ldandersen

Until I started Atkins, if you had mentioned sugar alcohol to me, I would have thought you were talking about something like absinthe. But as it turns out, sugar alcohol is a carbohydrate that doesn't count towards the daily limit of 20g. I noticed that most food labels don't mention sugar alcohol; instead, they have total carbohydrates, fiber and sugar. Apparently a food manufacturer is only required to list sugar alcohol if they claim their product is sugar free, but they can do so voluntarily like many Atkins supplements do.

Technically called polyol, sugar alcohol is neither sugar nor alcohol. Per gram, sugar alcohol has less calories than sugar and it does not require insulin to turn into energy. The most common types of sugar alcohol are sorbitol, maltitol, isomalt, and xylitol (used in sugar-free gum).

And ofcourse, there are side effects of eating too much sugar alcohol. Common problems are gastrointestinal in nature, including bloating and diarrhea. These problems are more pronounced in people who have had gastric-bypass surgery.

The Carbohydrate Hypothesis

No Bread Today
Originally uploaded by Mr. Guybrarian

Today I finished the second part of Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories and I must say that this book continued to hurt my head. As I warned before, the discussion is full of dense scientific research and history. On top of that, it astounds me how much good science has been ignored or disregarded because it doesn't conform to the low-fat mantra.

Essentially, the carbohydrate hypothesis states that it is carbohydrates that cause the diseases of civilization -- obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some forms of cancer. Refined carbs, like polished rice, white flour and white sugar, were pointed out as some of the more dangerous ingredients but high-fructose corn syrup also made the list.

In this hypothesis, it is the quality of the calories consumed that regulates weight, and the quantity--more calories consumed than expended--is a second phenomenon

In summary, part one of the book was "this is why everything you know is wrong" and part two was "this is why everything you don't know is right." The third part of the book promises to discuss weight loss and I'm hoping some sort of recommendations will be made there. There is a lot of information presented for the author not to provide a summary and conclusion.

Salad with your Oil, Sir?

Fresh olive oil on counter
Originally uploaded by madmaxx

One of the things that has saved me so far on the Atkins diet is being able to put some sort of dressing on my salad. Normally, salad dressings are forbidden or limited to the meager two tablespoon serving. I'm one of those people who regularly is asked "Would you like some salad with your dressing?" Thankfully, vegetable oil mixed with vingegar is carb free. A number of oils have health benefits aside from being non-carb calories!

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil Full of antioxidants and helps promote heart health.
• Canola Oil Enriched with omega-3 fatty acid, this type of oil can help raise HDL, the good type of cholesterol.
• Grapeseed Oil A good source of vitamins A & E.
• Walnut Oil While a rich source of antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids, this oil was apparently a popular snake oil in the past!

Throughout the ages, walnut oil has been thought to be a cure for many ailments, including stomach & skin problems, tuberculosis, hairloss, diabetes and various sexual afflictions.

So enjoy your oil and vinegar dressing! My current favorite recipe is equal parts of red wine vinegar, extra light olive oil and yellow mustard. I prefer the extra light olive oil to the extra virgin variety for purely taste reasons. Despite its health benefits, I can't stomach the extra virgin flavor.

Atkins Nutritional Approach

at cracker barrel, a half-pound bacon cheeseburger qualifies as a low carb offering
Originally uploaded by andrew d miller

Inspired by my recent reading, I've decided to try a low-carb diet for the month of January and what better one to start with than the most famous of them all: Atkins. I know there is a lot of bad press surrounding the Atkins diet, but Jimmy Moore, one of the most vocal low-carb bloggers around, lost a lot of weight and kept it off.

As far as I can tell, there are actually four different Atkins diet plans available, only two of which were written by Dr. Atkins himself.

1. Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution Originally published in 1972, this plan aims to achieve "biologically zero" carbs for the first week. My only exposure to this book when I was in college. One of my co-workers handed it to me and said "I thought you might like to read this." I consider offering someone unsolicited weightloss advice akin to saying "Hey, you're fat and don't know it!" so I promptly ignored the book.
   
2. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution In his new plan, released in 1992, Dr. Atkins recommended limiting non-fiber carbs to 20g per day during the induction phase. Later phases would allow the user to gradually add carbs to their diet to find the proper level for losing and maintaining weight. This plan also puts emphasis on good carbs over bad carbs (i.e. Glycemic Index).
   
3. Atkins Nutritional Approach Available online at atkins.com, this plan seems to be very similar to the 1992 book, however instead of counting vegetables by the cup, it counts them by the carb. It recommends eating 12-15g of carbs per day from vegetables.
   
4. The All-New Atkins Advantage Recently released, this book is a twelve week program designed to ease the reader in to the low-carb lifestyle. It includes both diet and exercise instructions.

Out of those four plans, I'm going to be following number three. Since not all vegetables are created equally, I would rather count the carbs in what I eat then limit myself arbitrarily to cups per day. Plus, the eating plan is available online for free. It looks like their business model is selling low-carb supplements like shakes and bars, but the actual nutritional information doesn't push the supplements.

The Fat-Cholesterol Hypothesis

calorie box
Originally uploaded by lou tamposi

For Christmas, my grandmother got me a copy of Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. I've been reading a little bit each day since then and I just finished the first section. Normally I read faster than this, but this book is very dense. It is literally page after page of the author reviewing and discussing health studies. While the information provided is itself very interesting, after about one chapter, my brain protests and I can't focus on it any more.

The prologue of the book, A Brief History of Banting discusses what is believed to be the first published low-carb diet, Letter on Corpulence by William Banting. Published in 1869, Banting's letter discusses how he suffered from obesity in his later years and a low-fat diet mixed with exercise only left him hungry and in poorer health. Eventually he adopted a low-carb diet and lost the weight.

The first four chapters of the book are grouped together in a section called The Fat-Cholesterol Hypothesis. The primary focus of this part of the book is to discuss the commonly held belief that eating low-fat, low-cholesterol foods lowers your blood cholesterol levels and in turn helps prevent heart disease. Taubes asserts that this hypothesis is based on selective antedotal evidence and runs contrary to the results of what few good studies have been conducted. In 2001, the Cochrane Collaration combed the literature fro all possibly relevant studies and published a review of "reduced or modified dietary fat for preventing cardiovascular disease."

The review concluded that the diets, whether low-fat or cholesterol-lower, had no effect on longevity and not even a "significant effect on cardiovascular events."

All in all, I'd recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of nutrition. I will warn you that this isn't a diet book -- the author doesn't prescribe a specific dietary plan, but it is clear that he is a proponent of the low-carb lifestyle.