The rest of your life...

[NickFender]

It's interesting to note how low-carb diets are showing up more and more in the media, entertainment and advertising in the U.S. This is an amazing trend right now.

Weight Watchers' latest ad campaign is a sure sign that they see low-carb as a serious threat to their business. They are going right after the low-carb eaters now, as shown in banners they are running on the web that say:

"The rest of your life is a long time to go without PASTA,"
and "Nothing is off limits with flex points."

I'm guessing that their market research tells them they are losing a lot of people to Atkins, et al., and that's what is driving this ad campaign.

My brother-in-law runs a health club and he says they are losing lots of people who have lost weight on Atkins and don't feel like they need their memberships any more. He says as many as half the members at his club might be on a low-carb diet and the owners are really worried about keeping their membership rolls up.

[Lisa N]

I imagine that Weight Watchers is feeling threatened but "The rest of your life is a long time to go without pasta"?? Their research folks obviously haven't read about maintainance on low carb! :lol: My reply to that is, the rest of your life is a long time to be hungry! :rolleyes:

It is a bit of a shame about those folks giving up their health club memberships because they've reached their goal weights (I'm assuming that this is a workout type health club) because excercise is needed for healthy bodies even at ideal weights.

[GaryW]

Ditto on Lisa N's "the rest of your life is a long time to be hungry!" ( and obese, unhealthy, etc.).

WW overmarkets those FlexPoints to hilarious, impractical proportions. I watched Dr. Phil on Larry King tonight, who's also assured Larry that unlike the Atkins, etc. diet, people can eat everything on his diet. Again, the mischaracterization of Atkins. Dr. Phil also said how diets are failures because once one goes off the diet, the weight returns... duh, Phil! I really wish Larry would have recalled what Dr. Atkins said in his apperance on his show earlier this year that it's not just some quick-fix temporary diet, but a way of life. Then again, Larry usually just plays soft-ball with his guests. And although I've not checked in detail, one of Phil's 7 keys (the nutrition one) vaguely sounded like it might have at part of it being sorta-kinda lowcarb/high fiber (correct me if the details prove otherwise). If true, then (and begging this thread's pardon for going somewhat off-topic), but at first glance, it was almost as if Dr. Phil was ripping off Atkins (?) and Dr. Fred Pescatore's value-added psych counseling, then turbo-charging more psych counseling, and voila! A number-on-on-the New York Times best-selling diet book. Imagine that.

[ItsTheWooo]

"The rest of your life is a long time to go without FEELING FULL"

corrected for accuracy.

(BTW, why do they assume REAL pasta is something you need, but not valuable fat soluable vitamins and efas? Kinda hard to live your whole life on an extremely low fat regimine...)

[GaryW]

something funny about these supposed pasta-holics: it's typically the *toppings* on top of these pasta / pizza crust carb mittons that the people (if they stop and think about it) are really enjoying. Not much flavor on unbuttered, uncheesed, untopped pasta/pizza crust. So, ace the carb-mitton and you get the best without the consequence.

[Samuel]

They make lo carb pasta now althought they don't test very good (al least to me) However, this is just the beginning, I'm sure with time there will be lo carb pasta which tests as good as the original or maybe even better.

[seyont]

Yup, the tortilla, the bread, the pasta, and the pizza crust are just a way to eat the good stuff without making more of a mess.

There was a period of withdrawal, but now I think of things like this: "Without pasta, the rest of your life is a long time".

[gawdess]

Well the rest of my life is a long time to be fat....I highly doubt Weight Watchers would have ever solved my problem. I was always starving with or without flex points

[NickFender]

something funny about these supposed pasta-holics: it's typically the *toppings* on top of these pasta / pizza crust carb mittons that the people (if they stop and think about it) are really enjoying. Not much flavor on unbuttered, uncheesed, untopped pasta/pizza crust. So, ace the carb-mitton and you get the best without the consequence.

As a former pasta-holic, I agree that pasta, bread, etc. are great fat/flavor delivery vehicles, but I have to take issue with this. I used to love a rotini tossed with a little olive oil and a couple of tablespoons of grated parmasean, but the idea of eating just the oil and cheese by themselves turns my stomach!

[gotbeer]

but the idea of eating just the oil and cheese by themselves turns my stomach!

Me too, until I tried it. A couple of swallows of flax seed oil in the morning and I am off to work, unhungry for hours. A chunk of Parmesano Reggiano is a great afternoon or evening snack - and again, no more hunger.

[becky160]

My brother-in-law runs a health club and he says they are losing lots of people who have lost weight on Atkins and don't feel like they need their memberships any more. He says as many as half the members at his club might be on a low-carb diet and the owners are really worried about keeping their membership rolls up.

They could also do a some marketing to attract people like, "Get fit the Atkins Way!"
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Samuel]

It happened too fast!

In my previous post I said that "Lo carb psta does not taste very good now, however with time there will be lo carb pasta which tastes as good as the original."

This has already happened. Trader Joes is now selling a new Italian made lo carb pasta called "Bella Vita" which tastes great! It gives 10 grams of net carbs + 8 grams of fiber per serving.

Someone should tell Weight Watcher to stop their commercial now!

Sam

[Yar]

I do not crave grains in anyway, i know what it is like to do so, but it does wear off.
Yar

FATTY RUBBISH AND FILTH IN FLOUR

Scientists connected with the flour industry have for many years been publishing articles in trade journals not seen by the general public which describe in detail the deteriorated fatty materials and filth found in flour. According to these articles, the wheat grain from which flour is made has a deep fold or groove on one side going more than half way through the grain. This fold contains dirt, filth and microbes in such a secluded position that the grain cannot be thoroughly cleaned. Additionally, by the time grain reaches the mills, it is vermin infested and contains insects, and droppings urine and hair from rats and mice. Many insects, grubs and their droppings are inside the wheat grains, so cannot be separated out easily. The mills do what they can to clean the grain, but flour is such a cheap and competitive product that they cannot afford to do very much and some of the filth goes on through the mill with the grain and is ground up into the flour. The flour experts have written that microscopic examination of flour commonly reveals ground up fragments of insects and rat hair, and traces of rat dung and urine. Bacteriological tests of flour have indicated an extremely high content of microbes. Flour is thus by the reports of the industry's own experts a highly contaminated filthy material, the like of which is not to be found in the whole food industry.

The experts have also described in great detail how wheat grain contains 3% or more of oily fatty materials, including sitosterol which is closely similar to cholesterol, and how it is desirable that the resulting fatty content of the flour be in an oxidized, hardened and dried out form so that the bread will rise higher and make more loaves per sack of flour. They call this the "baking quality" of the flour, but it does not improve the eating quality, only cheapening the bread. Long ago, drying out of the flour oil was done by storing the flour to "age" it before baking, but nowadays the mills add oxidizing chemicals called "maturing" or "improving" agents to the flour so this hardening of the oils is accomplished rapidly by artificial means. Flour is usually made from cheap run-of-the-trade wheat, often wheat which has been stored for many years as crop surplus, and consequently is very stale.

I have found that these hardened oils and other similar hardened materials in flour are the worst source of the fatty rubbish which causes arteriosclerosis, and this rubbish is further hardened by the baking process like baked enamel paint, so it remains lodged in our arteries after we eat bread and other flour products. The condition that makes fatty rubbish from flour so much more dangerous than any other food is its finely ground form, so fine that it can slip through the walls of our intestines with the food stream and get into our blood very easily, whereas if it were coarser most of it would pass on out of the body with little harm.

The most recent findings for this sixth edition have shown that even coarse flour, home-made flour, stone-ground flour, whole wheat flour, oatmeal, farina, grits, cornmeal, even rice, processed grains of any and every kind, contain considerable fatty rubbish and cause choked arteries in varying degree. Some people have been using their own home mills to grind their own flour, and say they have had some improvement, however where a person is trying to reduce very high blood pressure or avoid a surgical operation for choked arteries, the best thing to do is completely avoid flour and meal of any and every kind, even homemade. Potatoes are a good substitute for bread, and it has been found there is no real problem in getting used to doing without bread.

Since some people have notions about bread and flour being the indispensable "Staff of life" and so forth, we should look at the true facts. Bread and flour as we know them were developed in the Middle East only a few thousand years ago, and have become popular mostly in the industrialized nations. (Ref. "Flour for Man's Bread" by Storck & Teague, pub. 1952 by Univ. of Minn.) However, bread was not adopted everywhere, for even today there are many parts of the world where the use of bread is mostly limited to the cities, notably in the Far East, tropical Africa and South America. Since there are millions of happy well-fed people living today who do not eat flour or bread, it is very clear that it is not necessary.

Ready-to-eat cereals are made of finely ground flour and various other grains, so must be considered stale food.
-------------------------------

[adkpam]

Wow! Thanks for that incredible update on the flour situation.
My own feeling was that grains are a "recent" invention, and I can get along without it.

[Angeline]

I'd like to know the origin of this information Yar. If there is one thing I have learned over the past year is not to take everything I read at face value. Without knowing where this info comes from and the agenda of the writer I can't possibly give it any credibility.

[Yar]

Insect Fragment Count
This measurement was investigated and found to be too complex for immediate implementation. The requirement was to find a single rodent hair and\or 20 insect fragments in 50 grams of flour. A concentration step, called a filth test, was required prior to measurement of the insect fragments and rodent hairs. This concentration step also isolated other contaminants, such as weed seeds, dirt and metal bits. Given the wide variety of material present in the sample and the inability to predict what might be present, we were unable to derive a satisfactory dye method to solve this problem.

http://www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/research/archives/researchfund/ofpdocs/fp4016.htm
...................................
For this reason Central Hudson Lab will purchase and test a different brand of flour each month. The results of our filth analysis will be published three times a year
2001 Results on 50 gram sample using AOAC extraction procedures:
(month collected is noted below)


JAN 2001

8 insect fragments

FEB 2001 4 insect fragments

MAR 2001 11 insect fragments
2 rodent hair (4, 0.25mm)*

APR 2001 14 insect fragments
1 mite
1 rodent hair (2mm)*

MAY 2001 4 insect fragments

JUN 2001 110 insect fragments*
1 rodent hair (3mm)*

JUL 2001 4 insect fragments
1 thrip skin

AUG 2001 16 insect fragments
1 rodent hair (1mm)*

SEP 2001 19 insect fragments

OCT 2001 11 insect fragments

NOV 2001 5 insect fragments
1 thrip skin

DEC 2001 123 insect fragments*
http://www.centralhudsonlab.com/flour.shtml

...................................
The above samples represents 50 grams of flour, not sure how much flour in a loaf of bread, if a loaf of bread is one pounf call it a bit over, say 500 grams, that means a loaf of bread would contain 10 times the amount of insect fragments etc..
The ingredient for a loaf of bread in June should read, also contains 1100 insect fragments and 10 rodent hairs.
Maybe February and May may be the best month's to buy flour. :agree:

Yar

[alaskaman]

Notice how many cookbooks tell you to sift the flour? have been told two things bout that, one that it aerates and unpacks the flour, so you get consistent measurements. two, it strains out mouse pellets and such. Well, consider primitive agriculture, oxen grinding out the corn, most likely defiling it a bit. Hams hung in the attic, who knows what crawled over them. Bits of caked-on crap falling from the cow's udder into the milk pail. We're still here, possibly mankind does not need to be quite as puckey-free as we civilized types would like. Oh yes, my mom worked in a ketchup factory, they were supposed to get MOST of the worms out of the tomatoes as they sped by on a belt to the squishing machine. Most. There, Yar, we've grossed everybody out, at least they'll be glad they are not eating flour and ketchup anymore. Bill

[Yar]

I use to push those lumpy bits through the sieve, no one told me they were mouse pellets, yet, true i am still here.

Fresh worms in tomatoes, they are ok, they are going into ketchup and will get there dose of preservatives, bit of extra protein, no problem.

Rotted meat, in the form of dead insects, not really my cup of tea, something i do without, together with the dirt and metal bits, not to mention the residual pesticides.

A good all round wholesome food.

I understand where you are coming from, yes we can go a bit overboard to be, "puckey-free", most likely to our detriment.

Yar