A Radical Introduction to Low Carbohydrate Diets

Who is that strange man?

The year was 2009. The setting a conference hotel in Tuscon, Arizona.

The audience for the conference presentations was a bit… unusual.

No one was obese or even overweight. Some were extremely thin, but they looked very well. Some had muscles that would make a personal trainer proud.

In the front row sat two redheads, a tall man and a petite woman. Both thin, though the man was thinner. The woman looked like she might have been a yoga teacher. The man? He was soon to be mistaken for the star reporter at the college newspaper, but he was actually about forty years old.

And the presenter?

An argumentative man from Brooklyn (is that redundant?), nearing seventy at the time and drinking a Diet Coke.

Though a Jew, he was preaching the gospel like a revival preacher. The gospel, however, was not one of Jesus Christ. It was the gospel of low carb.

Dr. Richard Feinman, professor of biochemistry at SUNY Downstate since approximately the dawn of time, had been invited to the Calorie Restriction Society Conference to present on his work on low carbohydrate diets for diabetes, obesity, and what is commonly called metabolic syndrome.

With all the fire and brimstone of an evangelist, Feinman (who calls himself Feinman the other, not to be confused with Richard Feynman, the dead physicist) spoke of the evils of the high carbohydrate, fat-fearing, public health establishment at the time.

Feinman is the least doctrinaire of the low carb scientists, he would tell you. To which I reply, “You should meet the other guys.”

I had read the Atkins book a few years before I met Dr. Feinman, and tried the Atkins diet. It was a long, long way from my twenties, when I was an extremely low fat vegan. As I tell the story to Casey Ruff in his Boundless Body podcast, nutrition had long been a passion of mine. That’s how I wound up at the Calorie Restriction Society Conference, as a well known CR blogger and the partner of perhaps the most well known CR practitioner of all.

My former partner and I were profiled in this article in New York Magazine, and did a ton of media about calorie restriction with optimal nutrition back in those days. We are still best friends though we split up at the end of 2013, and opposite coasts seem to make good neighbors!

Feinman’s approach to nutrition had more to do with medicating American pathology than extending lifespan, but it was relevant to Calorie Restriction Society members, who were always debating what was the best way to spend our calorie budgets.

For Feinman, the answer was: no grains, plenty of meat, cheese and eggs, and non-startchy vegetables like spinach and asparagus. And if you want to know the quality of the restaurant, when they bring the bread and butter, leave the bread but try the butter. The better the butter, the better the restaurant.

In the days when I came along, the lowfat madness of the nineties, saturated fat was the biggest buggabo. We were taught to believe that if we ate more than seven eggs a week, we would die. I spent years as a fatphobe, and had the dry skin, dry hair, and constant food cravings to prove it. On Calorie Restriction I had actually increased my intake of both fat and protein, upping my protein to about ninety grams a day from a much smaller amount as a vegan.

While my quotidien diet was pretty well settled at that point, I still looked for information on what was better. Unlike my partner, whose primary interest was in longevity, I was interested in nutrition as a public health problem. The obesity rates were rising, even among squirrels in the US (Did you know that there is an obesity epidemic among squirrels? Think of the one chomping on leftover pizza outside your local pizza shop’s dumpster.)

Could we talk about your ancestral diet? This sweet girl was a gift from my ex. Her name is Squirrel Girl.

Meeting Dr. Feinman was the first step for me in a new direction: eventually we started to work together, I helped organize a conference for his nonprofit dedicated to education about the health benefits of low carb diets, and he encouraged my interest in going to graduate school for my Masters in Public Health. He even wrote my recommendations.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been sixteen years since that conference where we met. We still work on projects together, and I’ve been writing for his Substack. Check out my most recent article, Escape from the Carb Castle.

I reached out to Dr. Feinman when my blood work confirmed that my A1C was a little high. My primary care doctor, a nice guy who is great at filling out forms but useless when it comes to perimenopausal weight gain, just said, “Eat lowfat and exercise more.” That was when I was training at the gym three days a week, walking miles and miles a day, and lowfat eating turns me into a monster. Feinman has been much more helpful, and more entertaining as well.

[In addition to being a scientist, he can quote Shakespeare at length and knows a ton of military history. Never fails to cheer me up.]

We’ve been documenting some of our conversations to share with his readers, my readers and anyone else who is interested. An article on the new food guidelines is coming out tomorrow in Splice Today and we will be posting some other things.

At a time when people are freaking out about everything they can’t do anything about, I choose to put my focus on that which I can change. So no hot takes from me on the news of the day - others have done that perfectly well, and I really hate to say what has already been said like these rabbis did, as chronicled by Jill.

I can teach kids. I can improve my own health and maybe help some others do the same. I can pet and feed cats. I’m pretty good at the litter too though Lora is the one who medicates them.

What I can not do is get out my door. The steps are covered in snow, but a nice young lady is on her way to shovel them for a small fee, a Diet Coke, some water and a few protein bars.

We are grateful to be safe, that the power is still on, and that I had time to clean my kitchen and catch up on a few things, plus extra daytime petting. Being grateful is a lot better, for me anyway, than being hysterical.

But to each their own. I’ll stick with hard boiled eggs.

Dr. Feinman bought me this egg cooker as a birthday gift a few years ago. If you like eggs, this little device is a must have!