Woman who sells a bread book lashes out at low carb diets. She managed
to write a whole article without saying anything substantial.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/07/16/the_carb_of_life?mode=PF
The 'carb' of life
By Susan V. Seligson | July 16, 2004
THE EFFORT is overdue, but I was relieved to learn recently that the
American Bakers' Association and the North American Millers'
Association are planning a vigorous defense against the Atkins
revolution. The Atkins-fueled "low-carb" crusade has grown so out of
control that its logo -- that ubiquitous scarlet letter -- now lurks
in every supermarket aisle except pet foods, as well as in television
and print advertising. There's no escaping it. It's even turning up,
heaven help us, on restaurant menus. A "low-carb" lunch menu? Get
outta my face.
The latest manifestation of Atkins madness is an avalanche of
newfangled, oxymoronic foodstuffs that somehow manage to be both
"carb" and not "carb." Low-carb breakfast cereals, muffins, mashed
potatoes? When they sucked out the carbohydrate what exactly did they
put in? Bones? I'm reminded of a popular brand of powdered lemonade
mix, the label of which assures us that "This product contains no
lemon."
It doesn't particularly hit a nerve with me when anticarbohydrate
zealots malign Cheese Doodles. But I'm sure there are at least a few
people who won't accuse me of being a lunatic for asserting that when
you demonize bread, you demean life itself. The bread industry's
planned public relations blitz carries the still-tentative slogan,
"Bread. It's Essential." I couldn't agree more. I would not want to
live in a world without bread, and you shouldn't either.
Bread captivates me for many reasons. But most of all I love bread
because I never tire of traveling to new places to learn how people
nourish their bodies and spirits, how they rejoice, mourn, and manage
in the face of adversity. The native bread teaches us these things and
more. Visit a village bakery or a matron tending a clay hearth to feed
her family. Watch, listen, inhale -- the bread tells the most
essential human stories.
Whose memories are not leavened by the smell, taste, and feel of
bread? Bread is deeply personal. Most cultures don't just prefer their
signature bread, they require it. Visit immigrant enclaves in cities
across America and you'll observe that at the very least, here are the
trappings of a community: the church, mosque, or temple, and the
bakery.
Were I asked to distill the culture and spirit of a faraway place into
one tangible object, it would be a hunk of bread. I never tire of its
incarnations. A crusty baguette, a dense slab of black bread, a round
of pita, chapati, country biscuits, matzo, lavasch -- these are a few
of my favorite things. Whether I'm slogging up a mountain or snuggling
against the cool leather of a long-distance train compartment, I've
taken to keeping my pockets full of the local bread. And when I open
my mind, heart, and palate to another culture, its bread is as
resonant as the national tongue or currency.
Bread is a form of currency. What other food approaches its variety
and endurance? Consider the pleasure, pain, and general havoc
attributable to the result of a simple union of flour, water, and
salt. Throughout its 8,000-year history, bread's value has been
measured in hope and despair, power and subjugation.
Clerics sermonize on it, poets rhapsodize over it, beggars pine for
it, and the masses agitate for it. Saints have been beatified in its
name. Ever since the people of ancient Jericho baked crude cakes of
wheat and barley in the desert sun, bread has been man's most
persistent entitlement. People will suffer any number of indignities,
but triple the price of bread and whether it's contemporary Jordan or
18th-century France, they take to the streets in angry hordes.
What food packs as much spiritual might as bread? Hindus visit temples
with offerings of bread for their gods, Native Americans adorn
themselves with ceremonial breads for harvest dances, Jews say a
Sabbath blessing over the bread, Greek Orthodox break bread for Holy
Communion. Both Muslims and Hindus consider it blasphemous to take a
knife to bread. In Uzbekistan, when a family member ventures on a long
journey or joins the army, he takes a bite out of a fresh "non" bread,
hung on a hook and left untouched until his safe return, which he
celebrates by sharing the bread with friends.
My sweetest travel memories are of gathering with new friends for tea
and bread fresh from wood-stoked hearths, clay ovens, a pit full of
smooth hot stones, or once, among desert Bedouin, from the embers
nestled in a patch of dry earth.
And now bread is being relegated to the growing, if mercifully fickle,
list of so-called "bad" foods. This is a terrible shame, and a notion
that would be met by stunned disbelief in most parts of the world. The
indispensability of bread is best expressed in Arabic -- "aysh." For
in that language the words "bread" and "life" are the same.
Susan V. Seligson is the author of "Going with the Grain: A Wandering
Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life."