Anita Creamer: Low-carb fast-food dinner leads to bun envy
By Anita Creamer
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Sunday, February 1, 2004
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Lettuce is not a bun. And low carb, the diet craze du jour, is not a lifestyle to be embraced by the faint of heart, or by the hungry.
"Anything else?" the young woman at the Burger King counter asks after I've ordered a low-carb Whopper and a Diet Coke.
A low-carb Whopper, for all of you lucky enough to have avoided it so far, is a grilled burger patty hidden underneath Whopper innards - chopped iceberg lettuce, sliced tomatoes and onions, four pickle slices - presented in a plastic container with a plastic knife and fork on the side. Oh, yum.
Plunging into sloppiness and outright barbarism, other fast-food chains' low-carb burgers involve lettuce-wrapped meat patties, which the diner eats sans utensils. How primitive.
Of course, writing about lifestyle issues occasionally entails testing the waters of the latest trends - which means, right now, tasting just what low carb means.
It's time to think outside the bun.
Let's memorialize this special moment. Faced with a low-carb request, the young woman taking my order has failed to reflexively ask the immortal, pronoun-free, fast-food question: "Fries with that?"
Instead, she says simply: "Anything else?"
Yes, for the love of God, yes! Isn't it obvious? Burgers need buns. Without the bun, the burger experience is fairly pointless.
The low-carb trend amounts to Americans' latest hope for a quick fix.
Health statistics, not to mention a stroll through the shopping mall of your choice, show that we're an increasingly obese and sedentary people. That's a nice way, you realize, of saying fat and lazy.
Losing weight not only requires burning more calories than you consume; it also involves commitment and long-term change. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be a committed, long-term change kind of group.
We prefer easy answers and the latest gimmicks. Hence, low carb.
Sure, you'll probably lose weight if you eat low-carb burgers and avoid bread, pasta and other evil, high-carb foods.
But you'll also lose weight if you make the healthier choice of avoiding fast food altogether, eating sensible portions and getting a little exercise. And studies show you'll be likelier to stick with your new regimen when you don't feel so deprived.
Maybe we need a little starch and sugar in life, after all.
"I want us to go have an all-carb lunch," says a friend. "We'll have macaroni and cheese as an appetizer, followed by waffles. For the main course, we'll just eat the bread basket. And for dessert, we'll snort flour. Right out there in the open."
She's a little weary of the low-carb fuss, it seems.
"Carbs aren't the enemy," she says. "My lack of exercise and portion control are the reason for these thighs."
Honesty, the last refuge of the diet dropout.
Not that they used the term at the time, but low carb partly accounts for the gnawing, low-level unhappiness of women in the 1950s and 1960s. Baby boomers' mothers were always on diets, trying to fit into slender pedal pushers and dresses with nipped waistlines.
For weeks on end, they starved themselves on hamburger patties, boiled eggs and iceberg lettuce, and for exercise, they flew into ketonic rages.
Had the early women's movement simply recommended spaghetti and mashed potatoes instead of advocating jobs and equality, the world would be a far different place today.
No one else at the Burger King this lunch hour is eating low carb. No, they're torturing me with their supersized fries and their Double Whoppers. With cheese. And lots of ketchup.
They have buns. They sure do. How can they live with themselves, these carb-fueled creatures with their expanding waistlines and their increased health risks?
Quite easily, it seems.
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About the Writer
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The Bee's Anita Creamer can be reached at (916) 321-1136 or acreamer~sacbee.com.
"Anita Creamer: Low-carb fast-food dinner leads to bun envy"
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