I found this article in our local paper :-)))
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/o...&month=4&day=13
Tuesday, April, 13, 2004
A plague on talk of Atkins
Mayrav Saar's column.
By MAYRAV SAAR
The Orange County Register Today is the last day of Pass over, which means I am gaunt. I am aching from fiber deprivation. I am surly. So, in my pain, I thought I'd dispense with the pleasantries and get right to it:
Shut up about the Atkins diet, already.
It's great. I know. You've dropped 17 sizes and 200 pounds by eating buckets of lard. I'm proud of you. You honestly look great. You look better than I've ever seen you. But I just don't want to HEAR about it anymore.
Everyone talks about the things that are new with them, new haircuts, new cell phones. There is, however, a statute of limitations on newness. Eventually your friends no longer have to listen to the ring tones you've downloaded. We don't have to keep assuring you that you're cute as a blonde. Nor, after several months, do your pals have to listen to you blather on about how you've shunned carbs.
My friend Keith has yet to learn this lesson. For an unnaturally long time, Keith has been recounting the trials and successes of the Atkins diet. We used to have conversations. But it seems as though every other word out of his mouth is "meat."
"Hi Keith, how are you today?"
"Meaty meat, Mayrav. And you meat?"
What's particularly unnerving about Keith's proselytizing is that his no-longer-new diet wasn't new to begin with. Jews have basically been on Atkins one week a year for a few millennia. No beer. No muffins. No nothing. Remove the matzoh from Passover, and – blammo – you've got Atkins.
If I thought it would do any good, I'd play the Passover card to hush the carb talk. I could explain that a few of the 10 plagues that befell the pharaoh in Egypt even make perfect Atkins snacks: blood, frogs, lice, wild beasts, pestilence, darkness and the slaying of the first born. Nary a carbohydrate in any of 'em.
But I'm in too foul a mood to school anyone. There is a reason bread is made with yeast, and yumminess is only a part of it. Passover food turns the contents of one's bowels into a rock-hard pit of ugliness that Montezuma himself could not dislodge.
Apparently, this is something else I have in common with Atkins' Chosen People. In addition to the two pieces of sausage, the hunk of cheese, the Atkins breakfast bar and the multivitamin that have become Keith's staple breakfasts, my slim friend now also must ingest a bit of Metamucil to, um, loosen up.
At least I have an excuse for my self-inflicted constipation. Jews escaped slavery. God came to us with signs and wonders, granting freedom and hope. It's only natural to mark this miracle the way my people know best: turning our colons into dens of horror.
But Keith, what reason does he have for this? Sure, he's lost 25 pounds, and he's got abs for the first time. But he also gets leg spasms that only magnesium pills can control. Why, to paraphrase the Passover prayer book, is this diet different from all other diets? Can't you lose weight without going through Passover every day? And why do the rest of us have to hear all about it?
I think the answer lies in ancient texts. Every Passover we sit around the table and for like three hours retell the story of the Jews' exodus from Egypt - whether anyone pays attention or not.
So it is with Atkins followers. Had you told us just once that you've added three blueberries to your usual breakfast of beef, pork and sausage omelets,
dayenu, that would have been enough. But you're going to tell us over and over again. Just as we'll tell each other about the Red Sea parting as if it's news.
Since Atkins dieters are constantly leaven-free, maybe they feel they have special dispensation to tell their tales with fevered repetition. Knowing this won't make conversations with Atkins followers any more interesting, but it might make their incessant retelling a little easier to digest.