Active Low-Carber Forums - Architecture & Diet?

Active Low-Carber Forums (http://forum.lowcarber.org/index.php)

- Low-Carb War Zone (http://forum.lowcarber.org/forumdisplay.php?f=137)

- - Architecture & Diet? (http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=485089)

Architecture & Diet?

Colin Champ's latest newsletter makes this connection, and it actually works. It's about time someone discussed what is (in some sad cases, was) eaten in the countries around the Mediterranean. The common advice that eating a Mediterranean diet is healthy is a convenient adoption that distorts fact. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Quote:

Over the past several decades, multiple attempts to Le Corbusier our diets have been attempted across the world, with the strongest push by the recently created EAT Lancet Commission. Incredibly similar to the soulless architecture shift from the classical style that can be seen throughout Italy and the Mediterranean areas, soulless food recommendations have recently and rapidly trampled over the rich, delicious, appealing, and healthy Mediterranean diet. Much like utilizing incoherent verbiage to describe their drab boxes of concrete, the same verbiage was applied to the Mediterranean diet to pretend that it contained merely raw vegetables and grains, ignoring soppressata from southern Italy, Prosciutto from Parma, Comte cheese from Eastern France, chorizo from Spain, Lamb and Feta from Greece, or the deep, dark polyphenol-rich red wine from all of them. There is even now a “green” Mediterranean diet, further following the verbiage/jargon strategy to throw words around to redefine reality. Much like the purposeful removal of arches, columns, and hand-cut stone from the world’s beautiful buildings, attempts to destroy any semblance of beauty and pleasure by the internally miserable elite are out in the open for the world to see.

Just as the beautiful buildings, art, and sculptures around Italy and the Mediterranean were replaced by the elite with a higher version of smart design described by all kinds of smart words, so too the beautiful, delicious, varied diet of the cultures around the Mediterranean Sea miraculously became a worldwide example of a low-fat, soulless eating pattern; no more were Italians spending hours enjoying delicious, colorful, and beautiful foods at the dinner table. (The dinner table, and the beauty, joy, conversations, and bonding of families that it fosters must be eliminated.) No more chewing the fat.

The full article can be found here:
https://colinchamp.com/dietary-reco...burn-them-down/

My concern is that any way of eating can be adopted and adjusted into being healthy or not. So, when the constant drumbeat to the answer for which diet is healthy is "The Mediterranean Diet," I always want details. What is it exactly? I believe it's a response for those who don't understand nutrition and need a throwaway line to placate the masses. Traveling the Mediterranean countries can be a phenomenal way to experience different cultures and their cuisines, but the "Mediterranean Diet" often referred to by doctors and nutritionists doesn't represent the cultures involved. Dr. Champ's essay illustrates this dynamic very nicely, and you get some architecture thrown in for a bonus.

There are 21 countries that have a Mediterranean coastline - Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. Do the people in them all have the same foods?

Seems to me the traditional cuisine had one thing in common,: local whole foods and whatever method folks dreamed up to preserve those foods.

Nothing said in the above about the butter, olive oil and animal fats commonly used. When I butcher a chicken, everything is used, even the fat and bones. Bones into broth/ soup and the fat into a jar for waiting veggies.

When was the last time a fish was eaten whole? Small fish like sardines can be eaten whole, bones included.....though that I learned from a Rick Steves episode in the Netherlands, I bed coastal countries use similar recipes.

Fun to read the architectural comparisons. Dresses up the subject.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dodger

No, they don't.

There are some similarities, but French cuisine, for example, is very different to Albanian cuisine, as Lebanon cuisine is very different to Spanish or Italian.

In Europe, we think of the Mediterranean diet as based on the cuisine of Greece, Italy and Spain, which tends towards a higher consumption of olive oil, vegetables and fish.

Was it Ancel Keyes who came up with the Mediterranean diet? I'm probably mixing up several people. ANYWAY, the fact is that whoever came up with the idea visited the area during Lent, when they were not eating meat. Had they visited at any other time of the year, there would have been meat galore with all that delicious saturated fat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GRB5111

<...snip...> Traveling the Mediterranean countries can be a phenomenal way to experience different cultures and their cuisines, but the "Mediterranean Diet" often referred to by doctors and nutritionists doesn't represent the cultures involved. <...>

Italy, Southern France, Southern Spain and Greece have a lot of bread, noodles and rice in their diet. From what I can tell, it's nothing like the so called "Mediterranean Diet". I've been to Italy and Spain and have Greek born neighbors.

Write a book, give it a name, and make a bundle of money seems to be the name of the game.

But then I started with Atkins, found out it was based on a Ketogenic diet, gave the book to a used book store, and did my own research. If it weren't for Bob Atkins, I may not have discovered Keto.

Bob