Dana Carpender

Please tell me I'm not the only one who talks back to the television. Okay, what I really do is yell at the television. I yell at politicians, and the people on my soap operas. I yell with real gusto at food ads.

Each week Dana will be writing helpful and entertaining articles about the low carb lifestyle at Carb Smart Magazine healthy eating and anything else she wants to write about.

I have, over the years, resolutely kept my political views out of my writing about carb-controlled nutrition. Not that I don't have such views, you understand. I'm just as opinionated in that part of my life as I am about food. I just had this mental image of someone with severe metabolic syndrome reading my work, finding some political view he or she disagreed with, and saying, "I'm not going to listen to anything that nutcase says!" After which, of course, they'd get their feet amputated and go blind from diabetic complications, and it would all be my fault. Or at least partly my fault.

A story I've heard quite often is this: Someone will start out on their low carb diet, paying attention to their nutrition, feeling better physically and mentally. Then something awful will happen - a death in the family, a job loss, a divorce, something like that. The dieter will be derailed. They will start eating chocolate and pasta and anything else they can get their hands on in the vain hope that it will somehow make them feel better. The exercise program will go out the window. And pretty soon, in addition to the pain caused by the initial, awful incident, they'll be dealing with the unpleasant side effects of bad nutrition and physical stagnation.

I'm not a huge fan of soy. I certainly do not believe it is the Wonder Health Food Of All Existence it has been made out to be.

Still, there's one truly wonderful thing about late summer here in the Midwest: Local vine-ripened tomatoes. This time of year folks sell them out of pickup trucks all over town. I often buy them from a lovely old man who stakes his claim in the parking lot of the local Kmart. Heck, my neighbors simply gave me a sackful the other day, bless them.

Going on a picnic is one of the great joys of summer. Few things are more pleasant than spreading a blanket under a tree and lazing away an afternoon, noshing on simple but tasty foods. A picnic is a great way to entertain friends, too - because you won't be stuck running back and forth to the kitchen while everyone else is enjoying themselves!

Heck, he's on a freakin' rotisserie! Will the slanders and misuses of my hero's name ever stop? First it was all those people claiming to be "doing Atkins" when they hadn't read word one of the book and were just making it up as they went along. At the same time we had all the "journalists" who criticized the diet without bothering to read it either. (You could tell because they'd always claim that "The Atkins diet only allows 20 grams of carbohydrate a day!" as if Induction were the whole diet. Either that, or they'd call it a "no-carb" diet, or an "all-meat" diet.)

It's that family vacation time of year! This means that many of us will be at the mercy of truck stops, or worse, airlines. Here are some suggestions for making it through the flights and the road trips without carbing out:

Sometimes the articles just write themselves. I was futzing around on line when I found this webpage: A Low Carbs (sic) Diet is Hazardous to Your Health For Ten Reasons. It was so off the mark, I had to write a response. Then, as I finished it, I realized I'd just written my article for this week!

Your life, I mean. No, I'm not talking theologically; let's not get into issues of divine creation and salvation and such; we're here to talk diet and health. I'm talking about the indisputable truth that 90% of the time, our lives, good or bad, are largely the result of the choices we make. Yes, your genetics play a role. Yes, your upbringing influences you. Yes, the tides of history can intervene, and wash away all trace of the life you carefully created for yourself - ask anyone in a war torn land. Still, and always, our choices, our actions, are the single most powerful influence we have on creating our lives, for good or ill.

Once you start paying attention to food advertising, you start to realize how much our attitudes about food have been shaped by it - and generally not for the better.