No Enemy But Bread

Bread, thou art mine enemy!

I came to this galling realization by the confluence of two events.  The first was seeing a photo of LeBron James after following a low-carb diet for the summer.  He’d lost weight and looked great.  The second was putting on a bathing suit for the first time this summer and passing a mirror.

So I thought, say, maybe I should check out this low-carb thing!  I’m not saying that following a low-carb diet would make me look like LeBron James — we’re both from Akron, sure, but he’s a lot taller than I am — but the vast expanse of pulpy flesh I saw in the mirror certainly indicates I need to lose a few stone, pronto. 

On a low-carb diet, you’re supposed to eat meat, eggs, and cheese.  Check!  You’re supposed to eat fruit and nuts.  Check!  You’re supposed to eat vegetables.  Ugh, really?  You’re not supposed to eat bread and crackers.  Wait, what?  Yep, I read it right — any wheat, barley, rye or gluten grain, whether in bread, pasta, or cracker form, is to be strictly avoided.

This sucks!  I love bread and just about any form of baked goods.  I crave crusty artisanal breads, steaming dinner rolls, flaky biscuits, stone-ground crackers, and crumbly muffins.  Heck, I even like a plain piece of toast with a glass of milk.  And having to avoid bread really limits the lunch-time options.  If you eliminate sandwiches you’ve effectively cut out about about 90 percent of the available noon-hour venues.  Following a low-carb approach in the white-collar world will be a challenge.

Ironic, isn’t it?  Archaeologists and researchers believe that bread and beer are two of the crucial building blocks of the human march to civilization.  Now we’ve got to avoid those two dietary items that helped to pull us out of the hunter-gatherer phase unless we want to look like bloated beluga whales.  I’m going to try, but I’m really going to miss crunching through the crust.