Why Lo Carb is High Taste

Some people can eat small portions of complex carbs and to suggest that they do not cook is ridiculous. If you are eating out then ask for more veggies in place of the carbohydrate. If you want ready meals then cook a large batch and freeze some, simples. If you are eating a VLCHF diet and enjoy it then why do you care what others think? Where are these "others"?

I don't understand what you are trying to achieve with this post

The majority of carbs in my meal last night came from ratatouille, (tomatoes, courgettes, aubergine, red pepper, onion), a green salad, small kiwi plus Greek yoghurt. (32g of carbs)
Seasonal full of vitamins and minerals and fibre; home cooked and very tasty.

The starchy carbs in my meal were new potatoes from the garden which added another 16g carb. I might have had small amounts of brown rice or lentils or barley or bulghur or buckwheat pancakes or even some wholegrain pasta.
(more minerals/vitamins and fibre)
I had some chicken and a sprinkle of parmesan, it was the only thing that didn't have any carb (well apart from a wee bit from the garlic and parsley)
. I enjoyed the chicken and it added protein and fat, both necessary but ...............I think that would have been boring by itself

and seriously , as someone with well controlled T1 , what good would I do by restricting myself to Dr Bernstein's 12g carb ?


Just to add I started writing this long before your second post as I took time did the carb calculation properly ,I estimated when I injected last night

forge said:

Somehow people think a lo-carb diet is tasteless and boring?!?!?!

There is not much taste in potato or rice or bread or spaghetti or oats so lo-carb is actually taking the boring bland food out of our diet.

The only problem is, we have to cook it ourselves because - no one caters for us lo-carbers.

Weird eh!

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You're right I never thought of it that way ... that'll help amusing or otherwise.

After a year on low carb, I'm surprised how boring, tasteless and bland I find pasta, bread (even "good" stuff), potato, cereals etc. Enjoyment of them is, so it now seems to me, largely due to what you put on them, be it salt on your chips, sugar or dried fruit on cereals, pesto on pasta etc.. I would, therefore, agree that those of us who restrict this aspect of carbs are removing the bland - funny how upsetting it seems at first.

I'm also broadly in agreement with the lament that we have to (or may feel a need to) cook much of our food for ourselves. I compensate for this by buying ready washed and bagged salad! Lazy and financially wasteful, I know, but after I've made all the casseroles, bakes, soups, sauces and so on, this is one thing that a supermarket can do for me - and I have checked that the lollo rosso lettuce doesn't come with sugar on it!
Sally

If your meter agrees that you can eat a certain amount of complex carbs then you can add taste and flavour and even some vegetables are plain and boring unless you jazz them up a bit. Even good old broccoli tastes better with a few pine nuts/garlic added, carrots with cinnamon/paprika/chilli pieces on them. Sprouts taste lovely with chestnuts. and cabbage flavoured with chopped onions/leeks is great.

Potatoes

Roasted in goose fat and with sage, rosemary and garlic sprinkled over them. New potatoes cooked with mint leaves and butter added when cooked

Bread.

You can make your own and add seeds nuts/ tomatoes onion/rosemary/thyme,the possibilities are endless and there are some shop bought that are suitable

Spaghetti. Don't know about this as I don't eat it.

Oats.

Can make a substantial breakfast with coarse cut oats and adding chopped nuts, seeds and fresh fruit.
Can be used in casseroles, soups and stews

Nothing is boring if you make use of herbs, spices, and nuts.

No food is bland provided you cook and season it correctly.

Potatoes such as Jersey Royals are delicious on their own but with a knob of butter and some fresh mint they are even better, potatoes roasted in the oven with an Oxo Cube sprinkled over the top are divine, as are jacket pots coated in Extra Virgin Olive Oil and sprinkled with some garlic salt and baked. Garlic, egg fried and pilau rice are simple to make and also make for a tasty meal.

As for pasta, with a nice pasta sauce (home-made or shop bought) it's far from bland, and if you buy the steel-cut/rough-cut Scottish oats they have a lovely nutty flavour to it and doesn't really need much added apart from milk and water.

I wouldn't say that low-carb food is boring as it must contain plenty of veg as with a moderate/high carb diet, you can make bland veg taste better by stir-frying with herbs, seasoning and spices or bake in the oven (as with cauliflower/broccoli cheese bake), you just have to be creative and try new ideas.

The tv chefs are always complaining about bland food and say that people don't season there food well, Gordon Ramsay is by far the worst and he always complains about dishes not being seasoned well when presented in his tv series Kitchen Nightmares, although Rick Stein uses too much salt for my liking.

You're all agreeing that these foods need salt spices butters herbs creams sauces like in the original post.

JACKTHELAD said:

You're all agreeing that these foods need salt spices butters herbs creams sauces like in the original post.

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You have to season meat also otherwise it can taste bland, turkey has to be one of the blandest meats but prepared probably it's a tasty meal.

JACKTHELAD said:

You're all agreeing that these foods need salt spices butters herbs creams sauces like in the original post.

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Sausages rely on seasoning, regardless of their meat content. and are popular with LC members as are burgers. Even salads need a dressing.
You need to read some low carb recipes online to see that the majority of them use herbs and spices. If you have no sense of smell or taste then you would be able to eat bland foods.

forge said:

Somehow people think a lo-carb diet is tasteless and boring?!?!?!

There is not much taste in potato or rice or bread or spaghetti or oats so lo-carb is actually taking the boring bland food out of our diet.

The only problem is, we have to cook it ourselves because - no one caters for us lo-carbers.

Weird eh!

Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more except for my burgen sandwich at lunchtime. Coming up to three years since I ditched the starch and don't miss it at all. If you're T2 and want to avoid the strong meds get brilliant bgs, excellent cholesterol and lose weight then a tasty lchf diet is the way to go.

Don't let the naysayers put you off.

One thing I've re-discovered since starting low carbing is how much better most things taste. I've been able to go back to cooking fresh food for myself rather than have to sometimes suffer other people's offerings. I've always preferred to cook for myself and I've also always liked to include herbs and spices in my food and the only things I've removed from my diet now are the high sugar, high starch foods. So for me my low carb diet is really just eating a subset of my previous one.

Robbity

PS Hurray hurray - I no longer need to eat cotton wool flavoured white sliced bread!!