By now you may be thinking, ``But what is there left to eat? If staying healthy means eating less protein and cutting back on fats and sugars, how can I eat my fill?``
The answer is: Eat the same foods our evolutionary ancestors ate--the complex carbohydrates, or starches, such as potatoes, rice, pasta, bulgur, kasha, couscous, millet, corn, peas and beans, along with fruits and vegetables.
When consumed mainly in their unrefined state, the complex carbohydrates represent the only category of foods that won`t undermine health, even if as many as 80 percent of the calories come from starch. This presumes that the remainder of the caloric intake provides the protein, fatty acids and additional vitamins and minerals needed to sustain life.
The first thing most Americans do when they decide to shed unwanted pounds is to cut out bread, pass up potatoes and rice and cross spaghetti dinners off entirely. Instead, they may subsist on steak and salad, cottage cheese and fruit, tuna salad and tomatoes, chicken and green beans or some such combination of a high-protein animal food and low-calorie fruit or vegetable. Before long they are feeling tired, listless and bored, and even may have trouble falling asleep at night.
A high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet can make a laboratory animal fatter faster than a low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet will.
Several recent studies indicate that the body ``wastes`` more of the calories derived from complex carbohydrates than those that come from protein foods. There are at least two reasons for this caloric waste:
First, carbohydrates seem to stoke the body furnace, causing more calories to be burned up as heat. This, incidentally, helps to keep one warm, which may explain why some women, many of whom subsist on high-protein diets, are ``always cold.``
Second, up to a third of carbohydrate calories are not digested and instead are excreted unabsorbed. Thus, some carbohydrate calories do not count as far as the body is concerned. This is true only of complex carbohydrates. Unless one has an enzyme deficiency, sugars usually are fully digested and absorbed.
Furthermore, foods high in complex carbohydrates are less fattening than many of the most popular diet foods.
The reason is they contain less fat, and fat is far more fattening than the same amount of starch, sugar or protein. For example, a 5-ounce steak provides about 550 calories, 80 percent of which are fat calories. A 5-ounce baked potato, however, has about 100 calories, none of which is fat if no fat is added. Even with 2 pats of butter or margarine or 2 tablespoons of sour cream, the potato has less than 200 calories.
My husband is a perfect example of what can happen when one reduces the reliance on meats and eats more starches instead. If he ate less than 1/2 pound of meat at dinner, he said, he still would be hungry. Then he decided to give the high-carbohydrate plan a try.
A year later he was 26 pounds thinner without having gone on a diet and without ever feeling hungry or deprived. He is thinner at 52 than he was at 32 when we were married, and he feels healthier and more energetic than he has in years.
As he puts it, ``I hadn`t realized that in cutting back on meats, I could eat more potatoes, rice, spaghetti and bread. When I fill up on the starches, I`m satisfied with less meat.``
And by eating less meat and other animal foods, he consumes less fat and fewer calories.
Now, the 1/2 pound of flesh my husband used to eat for dinner feeds our four-member family, including two fast-growing teenaged boys. In the process, we all eat less fat and save money in the bargain.
Our 2-ounce portions of animal protein are supplemented by the protein in the starchy foods that are the foundation of our meals. And some dinners contain little or no animal protein because this essential nutrient is provided by protein-rich legumes--dried beans and peas. Additional protein contributions come from our vegetables, bread and milk.
Next: Pasta as a health food.