Our very own, Patricia and Harv are making the rounds with their new book:

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Still carb crazy

By SKANA GEE
The Daily News

Wednesday, November 06, 2002
JANET KIMBER
Author Patricia Haakonson and Chicken with Citrus Cranberry Sauce.

It’s one fad that doesn’t seem to be fading.

Low-carbohydrate diet books still line the shelves at local book stores, the topic brings up thousands of sites on the Internet, and recent articles in the New York Times and Washington Post have sparked a big “fat” debate in the scientific community.

“Some people saw it as the “in” thing that was going to come and go,” admits Patricia Haakonson, the Nova Scotia-raised author of two books on the subject.

“But I think the research supports the medical information — that it’s not going to come and go, that it is based in science, that it is effective.”

Haakonson published Easy Low Carb Cooking after losing 40 pounds and it sold 2,000 copies. The response, including e-mails from across North America, prompted the Victoria, B.C. writer — and her husband, retired physician Harv Haakonson — to pen Easy Low Carb Living: Simple & Practical Low Carb Lifestyle Advice.

It’s aimed at helping people maintain their standards in a world that frowns on sausage for breakfast and dishes out bread baskets with every restaurant meal.

“We don’t take a hard line — we give people general guidelines, broad parameters. We make it as flexible as possible,” says Patricia, in metro recently during a lengthy tour (by motorhome) of Canada and the United States.

“We didn’t want to be diet gurus, as such. What we really wanted to do was explain the principles to people and provide them with enough of an understanding, and some general guidelines, so they could adopt it and adapt it themselves and have it work for them.”

While the couple endorses the theory that our substantial intake of carbohydrates has resulted in an overweight society, they indeed take a moderate approach.

“We don’t ask that people take their carb count down as far as (fellow low-carb author Robert) Atkins, we do recommend that they eat fruit,” explains Patricia. “We do recommend they eat lots of fresh vegetables and salads … we also don’t recommend the protein loading. We do recommend you eat a little protein at every meal, but we don’t recommend you have two steaks for dinner.”

The new book — along with a revised edition of the cookbook, sales have has a combined sales of 8,000 since June — describes the mechanism of low-carb diets, provides success strategies and menus for weight loss, maintenance and entertaining, as well as a food diary and carb counter. It also compares the popular variations of the recognizable diets, including The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution and Eat Great Lose Weight by actress Suzanne Somers.

“They’re basically all talking low-carb with a twist,” says Harv. A marathon runner who lost 35 pounds in his wife’s footsteps, he says many of the plans are more complicated than need be.

“If we’re going to live this way for the rest of our lives, it has to be easy or we’re not going to stick to it,” says Harv.

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