20 January 2010

Carbs Getting Mention On Room Service Menu

Staying at a Marriott and I've noticed the room service menu is flagging various items as meeting some dietary criteria or other. The designations include "low carb", "high protein", "carb conscious", "low fat", and "low cholesterol", plus various combinations of those. It's actually good to see indications that low-carb is going mainstream. I'm not fully clear what these designations are supposed to mean. I like the sound of "carb conscious", but I can't figure out how it's different than "low carb". Grilled fish gets the "carb conscious" label, while grilled steak gets upgraded to "high protein - carb conscious". Steak & eggs gets only "high protein", not sure why it doesn't also qualify either for low carbness or carb consciousness, and I feel a bit bad for it, whereas a shrimp cocktail gets "low carb, low fat", which means it must also be high protein (unless it pulls off the trick usually reserved only for acaloric items of being low-everything). And some things -- e.g. some of the salads -- have no labels, despite surely being carb contentious or low protein or something.

I wish they'd define the terms then apply them to everything that fits each term, but it's still good to see.


P.S. The only term I find objectionable is "low cholesterol". It's been about 25 years since even one of the most fervent anti-cholesterol crusaders admitted that dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with serum cholesterol. Even if you believe that high serum cholesterol is bad for you, you should know that dietary cholesterol has SFA to do with serum cholesterol. Why do egg beaters still exist? Why are egg-white omelets legal? It seems to me the anti-fat brigade who have known that the cholesterol you eat has nothing to do with anything have not done anything to correct the common belief that it does matter, because they secretly wish it really did.

P.P.S. I had the steak & eggs for breakfast, and it was surprisingly good. It came with mushrooms cooked with tomatoes & bacon. After that, I went 12 hours without eating. The only objection to it was that I found the canary-yellow egg yolks a bit shocking & disconcerting.

1 comment:

JustJoeP said...

why do egg beaters and "low cholesterol" foods exist? Well, Americans are stupid, they elected a tea bagger ex-center-fold in the most liberal state in the union today.