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Praise the lard
The 'Polish Atkins diet' recommends eating prodigious amounts of
animal fat. Can this possibly be good for you?
By Monica Eng
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 9, 2004
Vinka Peschak starts each day by knocking back a full cup of heavy
whipping cream.
That's at 8 a.m.
"At around 11 o'clock I take three or four egg yolks and make some
kind of omelet with lard for breakfast," the Portage Park resident
explains. Peschak, a native of Poland, eats her omelet with a cup of
buttery boiled vegetables and a slender piece of almond toast
slathered in more butter or lard.
Dinner is usually a fatty piece of pork or some kind of organ meat
with lard-cooked french fries and more butter-soaked vegetables.
In the middle of the day she might have a cup of coffee, "but only
with a lot of heavy whipping cream in it."
Peschak has been eating like this for more than five years. She is
slim, energetic, and says, "I feel wonderful, never tired and never
hungry."
She is not on Atkins. She is not on South Beach. Peschak, along with
an estimated 2,000 Polish Chicagoans -- and 2 million folks worldwide
-- is on the Optimal Diet, a Polish eating plan that requires the
consumption of prodigious amounts of animal fat -- preferably lard.
The diet was hatched in Poland some 40 years ago by Dr. Jan
Kwasniewski, who started developing it while working as a dietician
for a military sanitarium in Ciechocinek, Poland. There he observed
that many of his patients were sick, "not because of any pathogenic
factors . . . but the result of one underlying cause -- bad
nutrition," according to his English language "Optimal Nutrition"
book. After experimenting on his family and himself, Kwasniewski
concluded that the ideal nutritional combo came from eating three
grams of fat for every one gram of protein and half a gram of
carbohydrates.
After a couple of decades of refining this theory, Kwasniewski
published his first book in Poland in 1990. But it wasn't until
converts came forward with their stories of weight loss and recovery
from disease in the mid-'90s that the diet really took off it its
native land and Kwasniewski's books went into wide circulation. Today
there are at least two magazines devoted to the Optimal lifestyle and
Kwasniewski writes a twice weekly column for the regional Polish
newspaper Dziennik Zachodni.
It was one of these books that made it into Peschak's hands in late
1998, when she was having lunch with other Polish women at a Chicago
factory. "One lady who just came back from vacation in Poland showed
me this book she got there and it made a lot of sense to me." A few
weeks later, Peschak started the diet.
It wasn't until more than three years later, though, that Chicago
would become the North American capital for this eating plan. That's
when Tomasz Zielinski bought a little storefront on Milwaukee Avenue
and opened Calma Optimal Foods. The first and only one of its kind in
the nation, it operates as a deli, meeting center and, as of this
spring, a restaurant for those on the lard-laden plan. Peschak serves
as its manager.
Sometimes called the Polish Atkins, the Optimal Diet severely
restricts the intake of carbohydrates and sugars, but differs from
Atkins by de-emphasizing protein and beefing up, or more accurately
porking up, the fat to a level that would have even made the late
Robert Atkins reach for his heart.
250 grams of fat per day
On average, the diet recommends a whopping 250 grams of fat per day,
about four times what the FDA recommended for the average person to
maintain his/her weight and about 10 times the amount of saturated fat
allowed.
So despite its popularity in Poland -- Lech Walesa is reported to have
lost 44 pounds and cured his diabetes on it recently -- the mainstream
medical establishment there and here is skeptical.
"I am very against diets like this," says Jadwiga Roguska, a
practicing internist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at
Northwestern University. "All high-fat diets are unhealthy in the long
term and there is absolutely no benefit to weight reduction of this
sort because it is threatening to health. . . . Of course, high-fat
diets will give you the benefits of energy and weight loss, but they
are just not good for you."
Roguska based her comments on a brief overview of its principles, but
Chicago physician Mark Sobor has seen it up close and has watched an
increasing number of his patients in the Polish community embrace it.
"Kwasniewski is pure fat," says Sobor who practices in Jefferson Park
and is also a licensed acupuncturist. "Eat fat non-stop. Everything is
pure fat. The more fat you can take in the better and these people are
fanatics about it. But the thing is they're all skinny."
On a recent Sunday morning at the Optimal deli/center in Portage Park,
about 30 followers of the Kwasniewski plan gathered for a weekly
meeting and shared their stories.
There was the ginger-haired firecracker Irena Kozlowicz, 78, of Niles,
who went on the diet five years ago after Kwasniewski came to speak at
the Copernicus Center in 1999. At the time she was suffering from
chronic eye problems, asthma and pain in her knees.
"Now I can walk better than a young person," she chirps. "I can run up
six floors of stairs and my grandson can't catch me. He's 17 years
old. I meet young ladies and they are always tired and sweating, but I
never am. I didn't need to lose weight, but I lost 8 pounds. I am 78,
but I feel like I am 50. I thank God for the diet."
Then there is Jozef Michael Ostrowski, 71, who says he has been on a
variation of the diet his whole life.
"Since the occupation of Poland my parents could only afford pork meat
and liver and blood sausage and lard," Ostrowski says through an
interpreter. "It is not like I was following this diet precisely but
generally. At that time I didn't know this kind of natural food was
good for me. I just knew that I could eat scrambled eggs with a thin
piece of bread and lard and I would be full all day. I started eating
regular food like McDonald's and I could not handle the pain and so I
went back to the diet and have felt better and better every day."
Chicago physician Christopher Kubik wasn't at the meeting, but in a
phone interview he said that 4 1/2 years ago he was overweight and
suffering from fatigue and stones in the bladder. But within a couple
of months of embarking on this high-fat journey he saw results.
No more problems
"I was losing weigh gradually [he lost about 25 pounds in six weeks]
but I felt fine. Since then, I didn't have any more problems with
stones, my skin complexion improved and I am still feeling a lot of
energy," says Kubik, 57, who reports that he breakfasts on fried eggs,
bacon and string cheese seven days a week. "While I was losing the
weight I could feel the ketones as a metallic tasted on the mouth, but
after I reached my optimal weight, [the ketosis] stopped. Now my
weight has remained steady at about 185, which is in the upper limit
of normal for my height."
Kubik, who also has degrees in public health and health law, says he
does not actively promote the diet, "because it is not considered a
standard of care and the medical community still recommends low-fat
diets and it is not something I could support if I were sued." But if
patients ask, "I tell them that I am on it and have seen positive
results."
Sobor has also seen a growing number of Kwasniewski converts who claim
weight loss is only one of the benefits they've reaped.
Chester Matuszewski, 46, for instance says that four years ago he was
diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was told there was no way he
could be totally cured.
"Every single joint imaginable in my hips, elbows, knees and hands
hurt," the Jefferson Park resident recalled. Remembering something he
had read in a Polish newspaper about the Optimal diet, he decided to
check it out even though it seemed unappetizing.
"For years I thought that pork is not good for you and I didn't like
the smell, but I forced myself. . . . After two months I started to
feel better and I didn't want to attribute it to the diet. But my
friends also saw a difference in me and I had so much energy. Today
after four years, I have no pain and no swelling and I am totally
cured."
Sobor hears these stories all the time, but still has his
reservations.
"I'm sure you've heard their claims that their joint pain is gone and
diabetes is gone," he says. "And they say it because it's true. You
can apparently get a lot of benefits if you decrease your carbohydrate
intake, and stop taking in all the white flour and stop taking in all
the refined foods because you are not stressing your body out all the
time with all of the insulin spikes and becoming hyperglycemic and
hypoglycemic."
"But do I recommend the diet? I don't know," he says. "I don't think
Kwasniewski is as good as Atkins or that it is something you should go
on for a long time. Now the South Beach Diet that is a nice diet with
more flexibility. But this Optimal diet is the most radical of the
low-carb diets."
No position from the AMA
In the U.S. the Optimal Diet hasn't yet caught the attention of the
medical establishment. The American Medical Association doesn't have a
position on Atkins, much less Optimal. And Lisa Dorfman, spokeswoman
for the American Dietetic Association, had not heard of it either.
Still, based on a quick description of the diet, she didn't condemn it
outright.
"I can see how this would be a very attractive program, certainly in
the senior citizen community because these are nutrient dense foods
and seniors don't need to eat a lot of food," says Dorfman, a licensed
nutritionist.
"But for the general public I see where there could be potential
problems. We just know that long-term high-fat diets leave one with a
heightened risk of heart disease, stroke and hypertension. This is
certainly not for children, teenagers or pregnant women.
"But for this group of Polish seniors I think it's adorable,
especially if it was developed by someone from the old country. As a
psychotherapist, I can see where they must feel like you've got to be
healthy eating this because there is a psychological connection to
eating these foods. It's old country eating."
Mmmmm ... headcheese
Here's a sample daily menu from the Optimal Diet Web site
homodiet.netfirms.com
BREAKFAST
Two slices of homemade headcheese loaf* with mustard
One soft-boiled egg
Two cheese-lard pancakes with butter
Tea with lemon (no sugar)
LUNCH
Two slices of baked blood sausage fried in bacon fat
Tea with lemon (no sugar)
DINNER
Broth with two egg yolks
Hash browns
One strip of bacon
DAILY TOTAL: 254 grams of fat and 2,923 calories
*This Optimal daily menu comes with a recipe for home-made headcheese,
which requires the following ingredients: half-skinned and de-eyed
pig's head with ears chopped into pieces, one bay leaf, a couple of
kernels of allspice and salt and pepper to taste.
Larding it on
Here's what you'll find in the deli cases, coolers and shelves of
Calma Optimal Foods:
Polish specialties: flaczki (tripe soup), bigos (hunter's stew),
borscht, Polish sausages, blintzes, even pierogi and paczki.
Organ delights: pork liver pate, brain croquettes, blood sausage,
headcheese, brain with vegetable soup and liver and tongue stew.
Desserts: Jell-O-whipped cream slices; low-sugar, high-fat ice creams;
poppy seed cakes; and low-sugar cheesecake.
Dairy products, miscellaneous: heavy whipping cream, jumbo Amish eggs,
Amish butter, nut-based breads, collagen soups, tubs of house-rendered
lard, lard with bacon and beef tallow.
In a nod to the diet's arrival in the States, there's even Optimal
pizza, larded up with extra bacon, butter-fried mushrooms and a butter
crust.