Notice the hidden agenda here: Admit there was a "low-carb craze" and that it had some "influence" on the sacred-cow guide. Then make some sort of homage to the "craze" by making some sort of token effort to "improve" the guide so that some fools believe that the craze served some sort of "good" that set the government straight, etc. Thus, you sucker more people into believing the new-and-improved guide now follows the essence of what low-carb meant.

All a ploy to shutup any stray questioners of the sacred food guide.

cjl (eat 5 food guides a day made from carved roast beef)

You've been doing LC since 1971? Did I read your profile correctly? If so, I didn't realize it's been around that long. I'd only heard of it the past couple years. Anyways, it seems like a pretty good way. I haven't been on a diet since the early 80's and it was the "Beverly Hills Diet". The one where you only ate fruit! People actually died from it. I lost alot of weight, thank good ness I didn't die!

I gained weight

LOL!

I'm not a huge fruit lover so it would be hard for me to gain on that diet. The people that died probably didn't like fruit much!

Anyways, I read your profile and I have puppies too. I LOVE pups and dogs! My boyfriend calls me the "dog lady".

As I have posted before, I was an early adopter, having come across excerpts of the book before the big release in early '72. I did pretty well back then, considering I didn't know what I was doing; I assumed that unlimited salad was OK until I realized that tomatoes and to some extent raw onions can be a problem. The big epiphany was when I realized I missed chewing on bread, but wasn't hungry, etc.

I actually first got wind of it from someone I knew back then, let's just call him Phil F. Phil was a somewhat "shadowy" figure in that he was known to work for various companies that had military-consultancy status, etc. and was hired for his programming skills, etc.

Phil had done what some people had done back then, got out of the draft as a 4-F [I never was] by either becoming too underweight [I know a few who succeeded!] or in his case the more plausible overweight method. Phil was 5'7" and at his worst [when even his neck succumbed to fat depositation] weighed in at about 302.

By 1973, Phil was having trouble getting rid of those last few stubborn lbs. He weighed 157. [Talk about losing half of "Jared" !] Needless to say, he was an inspiration to the rest of the growing list of us who were considered nuts by family and friends [talk about a negative "support group"].

Over the years, through various forms of poor social connections, etc. I have been associated with partners who helped me sabotage the diet, though I did manage one 8 year stretch of virtually solid following the diet correctly. [By mostly being partnerless!] My current status is married to a wonderful woman who is a) also on the diet, and b) an excellent cook! [And she is doing better than me; I spend way too much time at a computer as both a business and a hobby/wol, etc. while she works at a job that has her moving all the time, etc.)

My only regrets looking back is the ignorance of having done it somewhat "wrong" compared to knowing today exactly what the factors are, etc. Of course reading the '72 book cover-to-cover corrected a lot! But today, anyone can have the "luxury" of having it all laid down before them. The only real problem is avoiding the various LC con-men and all others who have an agenda to undermine everyone, etc.

btw, Atkins was a well-known figure before this time. He was one of the concerned scientists [real ones!] who was complaining about the phony Canadian study that led to the trumped-up FDA ban on Cyclamates [and at the same time Hexachlorophene, i.e. Phisohex, for unrelated reasons, just time coincidence) who wanted a US-based corroborative study to confirm the dubious findings, etc. [This was the nonsense about solid cyclamates placed under the skin of rats causing cancer, but done every day from birth, and at a rate equivalent of 10,000 times the dosage a human might consume from a can of soda; and it was later found out paid for by big sugar, etc.] This was 1968, and Dr. Atkins was seen on the TV news explaining the fallacy and asking for new studies. Since then he was targeted by the sugar industry; the diet only made things far worse for him.

Curiously, Phisohex was never taken off the market, just needed a prescription [translation, you now could easily get it, just have to pay a lot more!]. Cyclamates quietly became legal in the US again in 1997 but apparently is disused since we have "better" sweeteners now. [I am waiting for Coke and others to reintroduce soda sweetened with 90% cyclamates and 10% sacharrin; I guess they could call it "retro" Tab ]

cjl (finally in a very good place).

ps: I find it somewhat ironic that our cat has food enriched with L-Carnitine. I guess IAMS knows better how to feed cats than some of us do ourselves!