Eat this

So my dad calls me up the other day.

Dad: “Turn on ABC. They’re doing a story about Atkins. It’s supposed to be bad for you.”

Me (embellishing): “I’m about to eat the kids. They’re the other, other white meat.”

Dad: “I told you this diet was bad for you.”

Me (embellishing): “Yeah, that’s why I’ve lost 40 pounds and I’m off my diabetes meds because it’s bad for me.”

So as the ABC report says (which, by the way, appeared in the New York Times like a week ago): “Even the Atkins people admit that eating a half a cow a day could be bad for chicken and fish industry. And, oh, that much saturated fat might be bad for you.” (I love how TV qualifies everything.)

So, a couple of days later, a woman at the office jumps into the fray.

Woman:”I heard that the Atkins diet is bad for you because cows make you mad.”

Or something like that.

Well, lets set the record straight. Here’s what the New York Times really had to say:

After advising dieters for years to satisfy their hunger with liberal amounts of steak, eggs and other saturated fats, the promoters of the Atkins diet now say that people on their plan should limit the amount of red meat and saturated fat they eat.

Responding to years of criticism from scientists that the Atkins version of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat regimen might lead to heart disease and other health problems, the director of research and education for Atkins Nutritionals, Colette Heimowitz, is telling health professionals in seminars around the country that only 20 percent of a dieter’s calories should come from saturated fat. Atkins Nutritionals was set up by Dr. Robert C. Atkins to sell Atkins products and promote the diet.

An Atkins spokesman said Ms. Heimowitz has been giving these seminars for five years, but that they do not represent a departure from the original premise of the diet.

Atkins representatives say that Dr. Atkins, who died last year, always maintained that people should eat other food besides red meat, but had difficulty getting that message out. There has been a revision in expressing how the diet should be followed, not in the diet itself, they say.

I love how people hear what they want to hear.

Anyway, I gotta go finish my 20-ounce Porterhouse with bacon and cheese. But no steak sauce; too carby.