When I lived alone it was easy. I simply didn't buy any at the grocery store and as such didn't eat any. It's nearly impossible, now living with my wife who adores pasta and everything potato based.
And who can blame her? I suppose you could live without pasta, but would you call that living? :)
This is like telling an alcoholic that life isn't worth living without tequila. You know what? Turns out you can live a meaningful life without it if you have to.
Do note that pasta is delicious, among the best things in life, and not at all comparable to tequila or with being alcoholic. Your comparison is extreme and unfair!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7b5DITgHCQ
They are low carb, quite healthy, and don't make you miss Pasta.
> which is experienced as a feeling of hunger and a need to have the next meal or a snack
Why is this bad or surprising? Isn't this how things work? You don't eat ==> you get hungry. Similarly with water and thirst. I'm not being flippant, I genuinely want to know why someone would think this is surprising.
Personally I don't like feeling of hunger so I don't do that. Getting hungry just a few hours after a meal is surprising when you got more than enough energy to last you several days already and your body has stored several months worth of energy in fat.
If you're limiting your calorie intake and have no weight issues then it is not, of course. You have used up all the energy from the food you have -> you will starve if you won't get more.
Obviously I can only speak about my own case; it seems like there's a lot of variation in how different people's bodies process and respond to carbs in their diet.
The exceptions tend to be expensive and the kind of thing that makes me feel kinda gross after eating more than a few bites of it anyway. Steak, say. Most meat on its own is like this, really. Just cheese. Veggies and cheese. Meat and cheese. Uck. Veggies and meat can work out OK on its own but, again, kinda expensive and still not as good as if you threw in some wheat products.
I have a suspicion that food without carbs being fairly unappealing is part of why many of the people doing keto lose weight so quickly.
Going vegetarian—and probably even vegan—would be far easier for me than a keto diet.
Agreed, especially since you can prepare pretty tasty (and visually appealing!) vegetarian meals. And I'm saying this as a meat eater!
Some other aspects of carbs seem to be not fully investigated, such as the effect of dietary fiber's role in nutrition. While not "essential" (http://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(15)01743-8/abstract) it seems to play a mostly positive role. (If only to prevent constipation...)
At this time, I'd think "fad" of any ketogenic diet advocate that has little vegetable consumption. But as the first link states, "most of the current low-carbohydrate, weight-reducing diets advocate the consumption of low-carbohydrate vegetables". "Eat more veggies" has been a mantra of dietary advice for a while. :)
You can try to counter the point by pointing out that there are ultra-marathoners who are keto. But my two counters against this are:
1) They generally still use some form of carbs during the race, i.e. sugar packets.
2) There is no world class sprinter / 5k / 10k / sprint biker / football player / soccer play that is keto.
So fine, you can make the argument that no carb is a better diet for an office potato with no exercise. But I would argue that bumping your carb intake up 25-40% and doing some exercise is going to lead to a much more healthy body and mind (many studies around on the benefits of exercise).
TLDR: The problem with office potatoes is being an office potato. You are better fixing it via exercise, vs trying to eat a weird diet that lets you stay skinny while an office potato.
When left to her own devices, she will consistently confuse and/or conflate carbs and fats. I think this is because she's from a generation that totally bought into the war on fat, and raised us accordingly. Fat is so evil in her mind that there is a subconscious revulsion to it.
I'm not sure older generations' assembly-level worldviews can be reprogrammed at this point. Carbs will be ubiquitous until younger folks become the predominant consumer power in the economy -- or unless someone actually influences the Boomers somehow, e.g., convinces Dr. Phil or Ellen DeGeneres or Gwyneth Paltrow or Matt Lauer or whoever to come out strongly against carbs.
Modern nutritional science is also showing that the way food is digested and metabolized in the body is strongly influenced by a complex hormonal interchange -- and whether organs like the liver or the gut are predominantly responsible for macronutrient metabolism has a significant effect on, for lack of a better word, "effective calorie counts" in foods. The macronutrient composition of what we eat clearly affects our hormonal reaction, which clearly affects feelings of hunger and satiety. To ignore these feedback loops in favor of strict energy-deficit reductionism is a bit like saying that anyone not programming in binary is wasting his or her time.
Sometimes science literate ppl think these ketoers just don't understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but that's not the point. Its true that the 2nd law determines weight loss, but changing your hormonal response is how you really achieve a healthy lifestyle.
Further, many people would rather not have to track their calories everyday for the rest of their lives in order to maintain a healthy diet. They'd rather condition their body to prefer healthy foods, and to prefer healthy quantities of healthy foods. To do that you have to look at the source of the calories, not just the amount of calories.
You are mostly correct, in terms of effectiveness.
Also good are exercise (building lean muscle mass), reducing carbs (a la keto, paleo), and intermittent fasting (keto).
There are other health benefits to cutting carbs, especially HFCS: reducing obesity, heart disease, diabetes.
Just think of the strategies as complimentary. And do what works for your body (eg consuming too much potassium can worsen some heart conditions).
It's not strictly speaking a rebuttal, but it illustrates a point quite clearly, fat is not the culprit.
Italian people are among the least overweight people in the OECD countries, and have a heavily carb based diet. (I think the same applies to Japanese and Korean, but I think there could be a prevalent genetic factor there.)
That's not to say that fat makes you obese, just that carbs, per se, don't. Eating too much does.
I think it was convenience and her generation always having to be the one to cook for the family.
Try bean / chick pea pasta (or a mix of regular pasta and bean / chick pea pasta).