Low-Carb Mania

I've just been reading about low-carb foods in Consumer Reports, and I think I'm finally starting to get a handle on how the diet's supposed to work. Most of it I already knew, but this explained the obsession with blood sugar. It's not changing metabolism or any of that mumbo-jumbo the books might say. It's just that when your blood sugar isn't rocketing and dropping all the time (like, say, when you knock back some Cokes), your appetite decreases. High sugar foods leave you wanting more; foods without sugar don't. And when you eat less food, you consume fewer calories and thus lose weight.

Of course, I already knew foods that skew toward the fatty and not sugary end of the scale make you feel fuller longer. And it's natural to think that if you're limited in your selection of what to eat you'll get bored and eat less for that reason, too.

But the part I always find it hard to wrap my mind around is "low-carb" processed foods. How can cake with fewer carbs but just as many calories make you lose weight? They can't in themselves. Calories in minus calories out is always how it works. So then do they fit with the idea that sticking to low-carb foods will make your appetite decrease? Maybe, but if you're choosing high-calorie but low-carb foods to eat when you are hungry, you can't possibly lose weight without something magical happening. So it might be interesting to see if the low-carb phenomenon dies out now that the food industry has jumped on the bandwagon. I mean, if the diets stop working, people will likely give them up.

But I can't say I completely understand still. If it's a proven fact that calories are what affect weight, what's the point of counting carbs if in doing so you're not eliminating high-calorie options? Now, steak can be pretty high calorie. Will steak fill you up more than low-carb cake, though? Even with the articles help, I'm not sure if I can figure out the effect of processed foods.

Processed foods are just bad in general, though. Many have trans fats, which is what I worry about most anyway.