Reply #35: There is a direct correlation. [View All]

[kimchi]

One reason: money. Macaroni and cheese is cheap; fresh fruit is expensive. My mother rarely bought fresh fruit unless it was in season--from the orchard, when it was cheap. She also had a garden, and did lots of canning. Carbs are cheap--rice, potatoes, bread. Protein and fruit are expensive. We would go in with our neighbors and buy a half side of cow and freeze it to last all year. Many nights seven of us sat down to a lovely dinner of--fried potatoes. Or sausage gravy for breakfast; with very little sausage. We had roast once a month. I never got to eat steak; that was a treat for my parents.

We never went on vacation or out to dinner, either. My mother was morbidly obese, and it killed her. Part of it was poverty, part of it was ignorance, part of it was genetics, and part of it was just culture--we ate like the farm hands my parents once were.

The Atkins diet in one way has actually been good-- to educated people that protein is more filling than carbs. I didn't learn that from my parents, or from school, or even from college. Of course knowledge will only get you so far if you have to choose between meat and medicine.