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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Salon persuades four foodies to open wide for some unappetizing low-carb foods spawned by the Atkins-South Beach craze.
May 11, 2004 | Low-carbing is the diet craze that will not die. And while the rules can be rigid -- restricting the intake of white sugar, wheat, pasta and bread, and in some cases, fresh fruit -- an ever-growing number of Americans are jumping on the Atkins train, convinced they've found the answer to their weight troubles. Suddenly, orange juice is the enemy and rump steak is looking pretty good. Fast-food giants like Burger King are even offering low-carb substitute meals (a steakburger wrapped in lettuce!).
But man cannot live on rump steak alone; occasionally, he may also want corn chips. And these days, thanks to the wizards in the prepackaged-food industry and their new faux-carb substitutes (including unlikely products like low-carb ketchup, ice cream bars and milk), he might be able to have a few. Instead of using the delicious but deadly white flour and sugar, these products use alternative staples: spelt, soy, nut flour, etc. (The good news? They are all made with fat, the bane of the '80s dieter's existence.)
But whether those replacement corn chips will resemble the actual goods is a different story. Salon decided to hold a taste test for some of the prepackaged and from-a-mix food products designed to replace the wheaty goodness of regularly carbed diets. Four guinea pigs showed up on a recent sunny Thursday morning to try out our selection of dishes, ranging from fettuccine to snickerdoodles: Mark Bittman, the "Minimalist" columnist for the New York Times and the author of "How to Cook Everything"; former Saveur editor Liza Schoenfein, now a freelance writer for Budget Living, Organic Style and Elle; Josh Friedland, the editor and owner of The Food Section blog, and Salon's own Laura Miller.
All were dubious about the task at hand; Bittman went so far as to suggest that we'd chosen the wrong sample group. "I had a full dinner with pasta and bread last night, so how good could this taste to me?" he asked. "You should have people in here who haven't eaten a muffin in six weeks."
He had a point: To understand the true appeal of dehydrated low-carb mashed potatoes, perhaps it's necessary to first survive on bunless hamburgers for six months. But we were unrelenting: why should low-carb dieters get treatment as second-class citizens whose tastebuds are set at a lower frequency than the gourmands among us? Let the food that promises good taste be tested as such.
Tally-ho!
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Keto Ketato Potato Mix
Ingredients: Oat fiber, soy protein isolate, dehydrated potatoes, calcium caseinate, dried cream powder, whey protein concentrate, milk protein isolate, natural flavor, salt. 90 calories, 11 g carbohydrates, 2 g fat.
Miller: This looks like mashed potatoes...
Bittman: I thought it was hummus.
Schoenfein: [Takes a bite.] This is very gluey -- it tastes grainy, like it has powder in it.
Miller: It's sort of like what you would imagine plaster would taste like. Salted plaster ... with a vitamin-like aftertaste.
Bittman: It bears no relationship to potatoes. Is it an adequate substitute for potatoes? No. Is it an adequate substitute for potatoes from a box mix? I don't know.
Miller: You know, on the South Beach diet, they tell you to eat puréed cauliflower, which I like better than potatoes anyway.
Schoenfein: Yeah, or puréed parsnips, with butter. They're great.
Bittman: But parsnips have a lot of carbs.
Schoenfein: Oh, yeah. I forgot.
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Keto Macaroni & Cheese Dinner
Ingredients: Macaroni product (soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, durum wheat semolina, egg albumin, carrageenan gum, salt, potassium sorbate and sodium citrate), cheese sauce mix (dehydrated cheddar cheese, whey disodium phosphate, enzymes and sodium citrate). 130 calories, 7 g carbohydrates, 1 g fat.
Miller: That is nasty!
Schoenfein: Instead of doing Kraft for my 6-year-old, I sometimes make Amy's Organic or Annie's from a box. This is not the same.
Bittman: I like the noodles. They're not noodles, but there's something I like about them. And the sauce is actually like that regular boxed cheese sauce.
Schoenfein: [Leans toward the reporter conspiratorially.] They're hard to chew.
Friedland: I think this is actually edible. Compared to boxed, anyway. This is not horrible.
Bittman: What are we saying? It's not going to make you puke? That's our highest praise: If it's four in the afternoon and you haven't had anything to eat all day and you're plotzing, you would eat this!
