Here's what this man learned from one year on a high-fat / low carb diet

boing
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Posted this to the wrong spot, the first time.
America is a very, very big place. There are vast differences from region to region. I live in the Pacific NW and vegetables and produce of all kinds are found in abundance in both grocery and restaurant. Try not to generalize.

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Echoing the other commenters. Cracker Barrel is pretty bad.

You would have better luck at Chili’s or Friday’s even.

If you’re in a big city, there’s loads of better options. Small towns, maybe not so much.

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I would contradict, but I’m stuck thinking of high-fat plants and coming up blank (seaweed discounted,) then recalling a global dietary survey (WTO//epidemiologists/city food inspection iirc) that had it (keto diet) happening periodically tropically in pseudo-festive variants of:

  1. particular non-poisonous insect pest season/roundworms infested veg. and it’s too rainy to cook (and no vinegar, and nobody wanted to brew)
  2. drought; eat fish while the getting’s cookable
  3. butter-bacon sandwiches as mountaineering food

I don’t think calling one’s diet something was a thing before drawing a pantheon, a city regimen, or Kellog’s; and it’s distinct from private meals (our challah is round in S7!) Maybe the Neolithic was the first SysCo (2 Sisters Food Group? Bakkavor?) and living outside that Venn diagram of food choices is finally distinguishable from food jags (and perhaps as latent marketing.)

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Mmmm, word salad!

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Low on calories!

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But does it have sugar or carbs?

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OK, well I’ve only visited the Pacific NW and yet, and yet, definitely experienced similar to @doop over there. Yes, fruit and veg in markets and supermarkets. However! anywhere else (unable to prepare it for ourselves), bar food, restaurants, mexican, breakfast, sandwich bars. At the standard-nice local sandwich bar lunch shop, I asked for “salad sandwich” and got a blank look like, “what no turkey? no ham? why not? what do you mean…exactly…salad?” Olympia, wash. Portland better, but not wildly different.

Further, staying with friends who went out to dinner one evening with their friends, kindly returning with takeout salad from a nice restaurant. Not cracker barrel by any means, but a salad nonetheless consisting heavily of bacon, cheese, creamy dressing, crutons &c &c. Maybe y’all just don’t notice it?

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At least it’s not howling. Yet.

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I’ve mainly been in the Midwest when I visited the US - it isn’t difficult to find fruit and vegetables, but the balance seems to be very different from what you’d see in Europe. I met plenty of healthy people and loved the daily road biking organised in my area - for a relatively low population, there seem to have been a lot of enthusiasts. However, I got the idea that this was the exception; most people would have very sedentary lives and exercise was done in their free time rather than incorporated into their daily life. That can be pretty unsustainable if you end up having kids or picking up more responsibilities at work. There were healthy options at supermarkets, but you’re either going to a more specialist store or you get the impression that healthy food is a specialist item rather than normal (e.g. there’s plain cereal, but it’s outnumbered 5:1 or more by more sugary food). The same applied to restaurants.

I try to eat healthily and stay active wherever I am, but I always gain weight on visits to the US. By way of contrast, my father-in-law started losing weight as soon as he arrived in Germany. We didn’t put him on a diet and he works from home so he could easily be more active, but his current lifestyle is healthy enough to make a difference. I take the kids around on my bike trailer and do all of my shopping and local travel by bike, so I’ve also lost weight since having kids. It certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, but there are a number of reasons for unhealthy weight gain in the US that are obvious to outsiders. (Not that being heavier is necessarily bad or losing weight is necessarily good).

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