My Life As A Low-Carb Lunatic

"The Low Carb Craze..." It's the buzz of the year, that little phrase. Blamed for everything from soggy profits at Krispy Kreme to pasta company bankruptcies to orange juice slumps.

Well, if low carb is a craze, then I'm a lunatic. And many of you are, too.

I'm assuming that YOU don't like the innuendo here any more than I do. Like, we're all a bunch of lemmings blindly going off the low carb cliff. Us stupid, fat American consumers—we'll fall for anything that sounds good, won't we?

I mean, it's not like there's any actual PROOF that low carb diets work. (Oh wait, aren't there all these studies that support low carb? Bah, who pays attention to science, anyway!)

It's not like gazillions of people are seeing results with low carb or anything. (See our "success" stories here at the site. I admit we don't have a gazillion. But we've got a bunch.)

And it's not like Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution was #1 on the best seller list for over a year before major industry players actually acknowledged "low carb". (Actually, it was. So why was everyone so surprised????)

Naw. We're just a bunch of brainwashed morons, succumbing to the marketing gurus at Atkins Nutritionals. (Of course, it's only very recently that they actually started their major print and TV ads. But you know, they just 'osmosed' it into us. Very powerful in the ways of of The Force, they are over there at Atkins. NOT.)

Sigh.

Frankly, I think that if the media and big industry people would admit it, this is the biggest case of "Who Moved My Wheat" ever recorded in the history of history.

THEY were in such deep denial about what was happening, so convinced that the status quo would never be seriously challenged, that THEY just didn't see it coming.

WHAT was coming, you ask? The craze?

NO. The ANTI-CRAZE.

Low Carb was not a "trend" created by clever marketing wizards that put a spell over the population. The Low Carb Revolution was, for a very long time, a 'counter-culture' movement, a reaction to the ultra-low fat and low calorie diets of the past that just didn't work for the majority of people. The momentum towards low carb was gathering LONG BEFORE Kellog's and Kraft and Krispy Kreme were talking about low carb products. The momentum was gathering LONG BEFORE Dr. Atkins' untimely passing, and the buy-out of Atkins Nutritionals and the advent of major marketing dollars being spent by Atkins. The momentum was gathering LONG BEFORE low carb came into the mainstream.

This has nothing to do with any of that.

LOW CARB REACHED CRITICAL MASS WHEN ENOUGH CONSUMERS GOT ENOUGH EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATON ABOUT LOW CARB TO "VOTE WITH THEIR DOLLARS".

And lo and behold, suddenly the orange juice execs who once said of the possibility that low carb diets were hurting sales (real quote here) "We hadn't considered that," are now moaning and whining that low carb diets are their downfall and they need to band together to prepare a counter offensive.

Ditto for the bread bakers and the wheat growers and the potato farmers.

No dear fellow lunatics, we are not crazy. We voted with our dollars for the products we wanted, and by golly, we got them to sit up and take notice! THEY may call it a craze, because that helps to justify why they didn't pay it mind soon enough. THEY may call it a craze, because many of them are desparately hoping (for the sake of their pocketbooks and their jobs) that it IS a craze, that it will go away.

(Preachy sidebar: we need to continue to vote with our dollars - now for TRULY low carb products that are made without refined flour, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, and trans-fats. The job is NOT done yet! End preachy sidebar.)

Will the "low carb craze" go away? Oh, some of it will. There are SOME people who jumped on the bandwagon 'just because'. But the last figures I saw said that the number of American consumers on a low carb diet has remained VERY stable over the last six months.

And I think that's just the beginning.

Of course, don't listen to me.

I'm just a low carb lunatic.