MAN-ABOUT-KITCHENS
One man went on this diet so wholeheartedly that he decided to prepare his own meals. He had always fancied himself as a master meat chef, and here was his opportunity to perform. He became so proud that when he went out to dinner at his friends’ homes, he moved right into the kitchen. To hear him tell it, he is now pretty generally admired as a man-about-kitchens.
Particularly when the diet is prepared at home, there are any number of quirks for adding variety and making up for the missing salt. Doctor Pennington suggested several and I proffered a few of my own. Sliced, cooked sweet potatoes placed in the broiler pan under the rack on which the pork chops sit gather goodness from the meat juice and melting fat. As for baked potatoes, tuck in a few crisp pieces of fried beef suet, add a spoonful of juice from steak or roast beef and you’ve all the flavor you need. Paprika and chopped fresh parsley on boiled potatoes help a lot and so does a sizable bunch of celery tops simmering with the potatoes in a hearty lamb stew. Nobody has to be told how good pan-browned potatoes can be when roast beef is on the menu, but a surprisingly large number of people have still to discover the delights of freshly ground black pepper. Rubbed into meat before cooking begins, black pepper adds its own aromatic bouquet and makes the flavor of even the freshest white pepper seem pallid by comparison. A pepper mill is a good investment, for with it the peppercorns are ground at the very instant they seasoning is used.
Bubbling hot pork fat spooned over rice is a bonanza for any dieter, and there’s much to be said for fried rice, either tossed loosely into the pan or formed into thin patties.
On a summer morning a good beginning for breakfast is a slim slice of honeydew with a garnish of fresh raspberries; blueberries and cantaloupe balls are good together too.
I tried to think of the questions most people might ask about the diet. Some which occurred to me at once were:
“May I make substitutions and, if so, what?”
Substitutions were entirely possible, Doctor Pennington said, but experience has shown that they confuse the dieter and make a breakover a good deal more likely. Moreover, the “second course” foods were chosen largely because they seem to be less frequently associated with food allergies than certain others. One’s own physician could, if need be, “custom tailor” the list within limits to fit the dieter.
“Isn’t so much red meat bad for people with high blood pressure?”
“Could all that fat cause gall-bladder trouble?”
The answers to my second and third questions, according to current research, are “no” and “no.”
FORGET THE CALORIES
Another point that needs clearing up, Doctor Pennington told me, is any question of possible liver damage because of the drastic reduction in the amount of carbohydrates in the diet. Doctor Pennington picked up a copy of the Journal of the American Medical Association (February 11, 1950) and read aloud an excerpt from a paper prepared by a group of physicians at the request of the Council on Foods and Nutrition. The title was “Nutritional Needs in Illness and Disease” and the text said, in part: “The belief that a high carbohydrate diet protects the liver from subsequent injury stems from the work of Rosenfeld and Opie and Alford. More recent work has indicated that the protein in the diet and available to the liver is of considerably more importance.”
“A practical problem having to do with fat came up in the early days of the program,” Doctor Pennington volunteered. “Some people had to learn to like it.” That would vary, of course, with the part of the country and the type of work the dieter does. Southerners or Westerners, especially if they worked outdoors, would find lots of fat very much to their taste. Often our dieters developed a positive liking for fats, but one of our men had to train his eye as well as his taste. This particular dieter measured out and weighed the lean and the fat for the first few meals in order to teach himself how to gauge the quantities by looking at them.
“A problem nobody had was learning to like meat! That’s the one thing we have to thank, more than any other, for the fact that people stayed on the diet and liked it. Or maybe I’d do better to put that the other way round. Our dieters liked this all-the-meat-you-want pattern for losing weight so much that they stuck to the program in spite of the few other things about it they didn’t like quite so well.”
High protein, then, was not the whole secret of the diet’s success. High pleasure in the eating was, apparently, the top trump. People welcomed a reducing diet that allowed them all they wanted of the food they liked so well, meat.
The diet offers appetizing combinations too. Sizzling double lamb chops with cool, fresh fruit to follow. Crisp-skinned pork roasts surrounded by sweet potatoes cooked in the same pan. Over-browned white potatoes flavored all through with the richness of Sunday’s standing rib roast of beef. Savory stews and rice to catch the gravy. Hamburgers buried in banana slices for the days when the budget won’t stretch to steak.
But, on as many days as possible, steak! Steak sending out its fragrance from the broiler while potatoes bake in their scrubbed and well-oiled jackets. Steak still sputtering as the blade crackles through the fat and the first thick slice, rare and pink and tender, falls back on the platter.
It’s all yours! Another slice? As many as you want.
The calories? Forget them.
THE END

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Odille
Terranora, northern NSW, Australia
Fem 53, 170 cms - doing Atkins
SW 131 / CW 103 / GW 64 (kgs)
SW 288.5 / CW 227 / GW 140(lbs)
BP-Nov05 176/96; Dec 05 154/84; Jan 06 122/80; Mar 06 110/76