The Drinking Man's Diet
The Granddaddy of Low-Carb Diets Is Back
Forbes.com
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Livi...s_040518-1.html
May 18, 2004 —"Did you ever hear of a diet which was fun to follow? A diet which would let you have two martinis before lunch, and a thick steak generously spread with Sauce Béarnaise, so that you could make your sale in a relaxed atmosphere and go back to the office without worrying about having gained so much as an ounce? A diet which allows you to take out your favorite girl for a dinner of squab and broccoli with hollandaise sauce and Chateau Lafitte, to be followed by an evening of rapture and champagne?"
So starts a jaunty little pamphlet titled The Drinking Man's Diet that first appeared in 1964. It was published by an equally jaunty San Francisco bon vivant, Robert Cameron, who priced it at $1. (Cameron used noms de plume — first Gardner Jameson and Elliott Williams, later Jeffrey W. Roberts.) In two years, he sold 2.4 million copies in 13 languages.
Now Cameron, 93, still jaunty, still a bon vivant and still admirably trim from following his own diet, is reissuing this classic. It can be bought for $4.95 through Amazon.com or through Cameron's own Web site (
www.abovebooks.com).
Then and now, the diet is a work of staggering brilliance.
Like Atkins, whose own low-carb diet followed Drinking Man nine years later, Cameron proposes healthful weight loss by reducing one's intake of carbohydrates. As far as it goes, that's fine, since what Cameron's book terms "man-type" food (also "aesthetic" and "gourmet" food) is mercifully low in carbs: well-marbled steaks, thick slabs of fish, salads strewn with Roquefort.
Then, however, he adds the animating spark of genius — a corollary that will forever lift the Drinking Man's Diet above all lesser low-carb regimens: Gin, vodka, rum, brandy, whiskies and other distilled spirits contain at most trace amounts of carbohydrate. So the low-carb adherent can drink, if he wishes, and keep on losing weight.
Figuratively speaking, Drinking Man takes the South Beach diet, adds a redeeming splash of rum and pops in an umbrella.
What makes this more enjoyable than calorie counting, "is that most of the things you like best don't have to be counted at all: steak and whisky, chicken and gin, ham, caviar, pâté de foie gras, rum and roast pheasant, veal cutlets and vodka, frogs legs and lobster claws — they all count as zero." (See sample menu below.)
No wonder the little pamphlet sold millions! Here was a diet Dean Martin could love.
'Frankly, I Like My Cocktail'
Columnists and commentators from Walter Winchel to Herb Caen talked up the diet. Time and Newsweek magazines devoted stories to it. Walter Cronkite interviewed Cameron at length on TV. At the zenith of the Drinking Man craze, funnyman Allan Sherman immortalized the diet in song. A few stanzas will suffice to give the flavor:
With every Manhattan
Your stomach will flatten
If pounds you would burn off
Then turn on your Smirnoff
The little book's format (faithfully retained for the reissue) only added to its appeal. Unlike today's ponderous diet tomes, this was tiny — just 4 inches by 7 inches, and svelte enough to slip into a shirt pocket or purse. The whole thing ran just 50 pages. Of those, only the first 13 were text — written in a breezy, slightly goatish style that strikes the modern ear as one part Rabelais, one part Austin Powers.
A section of testimonials, for instance, contains this one from "Daisy T., showgirl": "Believe me, it was no fun being taken out to a swell place and all you could eat was some celery and yogurt. Now I order double lamb chops."
Or this, from "Paula P., woman-about-town": "Frankly, I like my cocktail. But I don't like to go sashaying around with rolls of fat pushing their way around the shoulder straps of my evening dresses. Now with the Drinking Man's Diet (and why not the Drinking Woman's?) I can eat three solid meals a day. And I don't wear a girdle anymore."
The remaining pages were given over to tables that provide the carbohydrate count, in grams, of various essential foods, e.g. carrot (5), prune (5), daiquiri (6), martini (trace).
Decried as ‘Mass Murder’
All was going swimmingly for Cameron, when suddenly the tablecloth was yanked from under him.
He was traveling, promoting the book, when his mother phoned from Des Moines in tears to say that the local paper was carrying an ominous headline: "Drinking Man's Diet 'Mass Murder,' says Harvard Nutritionist."
Dr. Frederick Stare, who founded Harvard's School of Public Health in 1942, had decried Cameron's diet as unhealthful. Stare eventually retracted the "mass murder" part, but by then, as Cameron balefully notes today, the damage had been done. The accusatory headline had run on page 1; the subsequent retraction ran on page 28. In culinary terms, the Drinking Man's goose was cooked.
In a way, it hardly mattered. By then, Cameron had sold $2.4 million worth of books (in 1966 dollars). To paraphrase the lyrics of another famous old song, "They can't take that away from me."
He returned to publishing, issuing Above San Francisco, the first in what would become a series of lush coffee-table books filled with Cameron's own aerial photography. His latest title, Above Mexico City, debuts this Christmas. The series has sold, collectively, 2.5 million books.
Cameron today can afford to do what he wants. And what he has wanted to do for some time is reissue The Drinking Man's Diet. This he now has done, making only minor tweaks. The tables, for example, have been updated, allowing for more precise measurements of carbohydrate values.
‘Don’t Be a Hog’
Since 1964, innumerable dieters and drinkers have proved to their own satisfaction that the Drinking Man's Diet works. But is it good for you?
Told that Harvard's Stare once decried the diet as "mass murder," nutritionist Lisa Young of New York University burst out laughing.
Then, in a more sober vein, she went on to say that 60 grams of carbohydrate per day (the amount Cameron recommends) is too little. Likewise, she faults the diet for being too high in animal fats.
And as for downing as many martinis as you wish? "That's crazy. You can't eat or drink as much as you want of anything — except water — and come out clean."
To Cameron's credit, his original said as much in its conclusion: "Don't be a hog. If you gorge yourself with food, even if it is low in carbohydrates, you will get fat. If you drink too much, you will get drunk. Moderation in the pursuit of happiness is no vice."
The reissue closes with a coda as magical and alluring today as it must have sounded 40 years ago: "So, drinkers of the world, throw away your defatted cottage cheese and your cabbage juice; and sit down with us to roast duck and Burgundy. You have nothing to lose but your waistlines."
Drinking Man’s Diet: Sample Menu
Menu planning, the Dean Martin way! (With grams of carbohydrate)
Breakfast : 1/4 cantaloupe or 4 ounces of tomato juice (5), Ham or bacon, 2 slices (0), Egg, fried, boiled or poached (trace), Coffee or tea (0),
Lunch: Dry martini or whiskey and soda, if desired (trace), Broiled fish or steak or roast chicken (0), 2 glasses dry wine, if you wish (trace), Green beans or asparagus (1), Lettuce and tomato salad with French or Roquefort dressing (4), Coffee or tea (0)
Dinner: Martinis or highballs, if you desire (trace), Hors d'oeuvres of 2 stalks of celery stuffed with pâté (5), Shrimp cocktail (4), Beef, pork, lamb, veal chicken or turkey (0), Green beans, 1 cup, brussels sprouts, 1/2 cup, or cauliflower, 1 cup (6), 2 glasses dry wine (trace), 1/2 avocado with French dressing (8), Cheese: Roquefort, Camembert, Swiss or cheddar (trace), Coffee or tea (0), Brandy (trace)
Total grams of carbohydrate: 33
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"The Drinking Man's Diet"
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