low carb wine

Salut/Hi George,

le/on 30 May 2004 06:26:35 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Whatever are you talking about?

Where is the wine from? What is meant by low carb?

Have a heart, George, we don't ALL live next door to you.

"Low carbohydrates" - just another kind of diet foolishness apparently très à la mode in God's Own Country.

M.

Hey, don't knock it. It works. People can lose weight long term on low carb. First you eat nothing but lo carb, high protein, high fat foods. You lose some weight, you cloths fit better. Then your veins clog, kidneys and liver fail, you are now in keytosis. When you die...you continue to decompose...even more weight loss :-)

Don't knock it. It works :-)

You hit the nail on the head. My French is not that good, but I think the phrase translates (probably very) roughly as "current fad". And I assume that GOC refers to the good old USA. It's amazing how many of my countrymen fall for media hype. And all of it started by someone (Atkins) who was very much overweight and unfortunately died from an accidental fall before the long term results of his diet on himself would have become apparent.

In an earlier reply to your posting, "dick" also hit the nail on the head. Someone is now suing someone because of clogged arteries resulting from following the Atkins diet, the most famous of the "lo-carb" diets. So goes life on this side of the pond.

Vino To reply, add "x" between letters and numbers of e-mail address.

Funny thing is I do a low carb diet due to health issues. But its also balanced and lower in fats other then my 2x annual foie gras crave :-)

The diet works but you have to be sensible.

"Michael Pronay" in news: snipped-for-privacy@pronay.com...

Come ON, Herr Prónay, that was disappointing. Yes, diet fads are part of the foolishness of the month in the Estados Unidos. Yes, this one is chic at the moment, inducing opportunistic product advertisements and EPIC chatter by people who know variously something, a little, or (especially) nothing about it. No, it is not nonsense, it is based on a bit of biochemistry called the insulin response. Taking foods inducing lower levels of blood sugar (sometimes called foods of lower "glycemic index") leads to lower insulin levels and this in turn triggers metabolism of stored body fat -- a mechanism (here I'm guessing) evolved by mammals to allow running on stored energy when they didn't have fresh sources. Some animals do rely strongly on this.

The principles and empirical evidence of its therapeutic utility have been publicized patiently, in accessible form, for decades. Rather than assimilating this, the public and its pundits have tended to either ignore it or oversubscribe (or to mistake it for yet another diet-book fad -- the association of a particular diet-book-author physician's name supports this misapprehension.) That in turn caused endless argument on certain newsgroups (including a local one closer to home for me) between one set of people who come across like recent religious converts and another who come across like ignorant skeptics -- none of them discussing the essence of the matter. (Just as it is possible to find people recording strong opinions about "corked" wines who clearly lack experience or information on the TCA issue.)

On the other hand, regarding "low-carb wines," God help us all.

Max Hauser

Sorry about that I didn't know the low carbohydrate diets were a USA thing. So many patrons in the restaurant where I work are on these types of diets. I have had vendors even try to sell me zero carbohydrate vodka. Anyway here is a news clip from Brown Forman on the product I had mentioned.

Louisville-based Brown-Forman Corp. (NYSE: Bfa, Bfb) soon will begin marketing two products for consumers concerned about carbohydrates.

Next week, the company plans to unveil the low-carb wines: One.6 Chardonnay and One.9 Merlot.

The wines, which will sell for $9.99 for a 750 ml bottle, have about half the carbs of regular wines, according to a news release, and are aimed at the estimated 59 million Americans counting carbs.

The company said in the release that it already has sold more than 100,000 cases to retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Rite-Aid.

As part of the product launch, Brown-Forman will launch a $5 million advertising campaign build around the message "Life is full of compromises. This isn't one of them." The advertisements will appear in national newspapers, magazines and other periodicals, the release said. © 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.

Salut/Hi Max Hauser,

le/on Sun, 30 May 2004 13:12:34 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

I followed the Atkins initiation diet rigorously for two weeks. At the end of it I had gained about 2 pounds. So it doesn't work for everyone. A fairly recent broadcast in the Uk showed that (grossly oversimplifying) in fact the scientific basis of the Atkins diet is so much hocus. It isn't true. What actually happens when it works for people is that going into ketolysis depresses the appetite, and so you eat less. That's all.

Grin!

Salut/Hi Michael Pronay,

le/on 30 May 2004 17:00:57 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Obviously. Even I could work that out. I'm an ex-chemist, and as such, words have precise meanings. As I understand it, a carbohydrate is a compound whose chemical composition consists of carbon, with hydrogen and oxygen only in the proportion of two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen (as in water, hence carbo- hydrate). They can be presented by the general formula CnH2mOm In the case of sucrose it is C12H22O11 for example. (C stands for Carbon atoms, H for hydrogen atoms and O oxygen). By that definition, fructose, glucose etc are carbohydrates and alcohols aren't. Ethanol (the alcohol we all know and love has the formula C2H6O so there are not twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen.

There are plenty of wines with sugar contents of less than whatever George was quoting. Consider the German "Diabetiker" wines. Don't they have almost zero residual sugar? So what's with the "reduced" carbohydrates? All you've got to do is to have a bone dry wine, whether Chardonnay or Merlot or any other damn grape.

Or is alcohol now to be considered a carbohydrate by dieters?

I can't express any opinoin about the low-carb wine (haven't tried, probably won't) but my personal experience is that the low-carb diet *does* work. I was up to 250 lbs, obese for my height (75") and trending up with no end in sight, when I started Atkins last September. Over the course of the next

Bart

Ian Hoare wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Well, Ian, considering that CGgeorgecox posted that "...the company said in the release that it already has sold more than 100,000 cases to retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Rite-Aid."

The kind of people who buy their wine from Walmart, deserve what they get (IMHO). ;) heh.

So - what will they call this "wine"? Anyone? Bill? We can have some fun with this...

Can you point me in the direction of these "Diabetiker" wines, s'il vous plait? One of my dining buddies is diabetic, and I'm trying (desperately) to wean her from "Chardonnay, only", danke...

"Those people"?

d:D

"Ian Hoare" in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

To clarify, in my comments I was not referring specifically to "Atkins" or his diets. One exponent of a low-carb-related regimen was named "Atkins." I have not read his work. He (and those who have turned his name into a buzzword) represent a particular (fashionable) interpretation of a broader set of principles and practices. These practices do enjoy serious, informed professional medical support. (Should existing theory and data prove mistaken, we will understand more. This is not the same thing as the people I'm seeing, who argue back and forth in mutual unawareness of even existing theory.)

I don't assume that my individual experiences apply to all mankind (another current fashion), but here they are. Some years before the current US fad, my personal physician, reasonably senior and respected in his field (he has US board certifications in internal medicine and cardiology), recommended restricting carbo intake to shed moderate unneeded body fat. He handed me a list of glycemic weights (not phrased as such) for common foods, and suggested keeping the total of my intake, weighted according to the list, below a certain limit. (Not zero.) I did so and steadily lost, in a few weeks, some 10 kg. I occasionally resume the regimen if necessary. I also read a bit on the general subject; for background. One friend, seriously obese, shed some 50 kg (110 pounds) this way in the middle 1990s. Every co-worker and friend I know of who has tried a sensible, usually medically-supervised carbohydrate restriction has been able to lose body fat steadily.

(Most of them, by the way, did not confuse restricting carbos, or glycemic index, with "eating a lot of fats," another distracting irrelevance by which some current talk clouds the picture.)

My serious condolences. Your regimen may not have been mine. And obviously we are individuals. This issue is keen among people attentive to food and cooking. (In the US I'd be glad to introduce you to my physician if you wish. He also happens to be a collector of fine wines.)

On the matter of the "low-carb wine" I see disagreement! Salut ! -- Max

Typo error correcion.

"Max Hauser" in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Should have been "no disagreement." WAS in fact "no disagreement" shortly before sending. How it got garbled, I don't know.

By the way, on a related subject -- someone asked about alcohol itself as a calorie source. I can't speak to its insulin effect, but:

According to Goodman and Gilman, along with familiar effects on the central nervous system (CNS), ethyl (wine) alcohol as a food is "a ready, albeit expensive, source of energy that is utilized more rapidly than most foods because it is quickly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and requires no preliminary digestion," and it can end up as fat. The average human will metabolize about 10-15 ml per hour, and it is intake above this rate that causes alcohol in the blood and the consequent familiar CNS effects.

(Goodman and Gilman is a standard general medical pharmacology text in the US and Canada; I recommend it to everyone for their reference libraries if they lack it; past editions sell cheaply on the used market as it is a common textbook.)

Salut/Hi Cggeorgecox,

le/on 30 May 2004 21:19:25 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

They aren't as you may have read from subsequent posts. But you may also have read in this thread, that the concept of a "low carb wine" is only slightly less misleading than a "low carbohydrate cooking oil" or a "low fat jelly". Dry wines don't have much significant carbohydrate content anyway.

They DO have alcohol, of course, and the alcohol burns in the body to give calories which have to be added to the total calorie count of a meal. But only sweet wines contain carbohydrates in significant amounts. To give an example, A Brut champagne may contain up to (iirc) 7.5g/l sugar. For a 5 oz (150 mls) "serving" that works out to about 1.2 gms - but this is the MAXIMUM dose of added sugar in a Brut. many have less, and a Brut absolut has none.

Isn't all vodka zero sugar?

Humph I agree, it's not a comproimise, it's a total con.

The "Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution" was the first such diet manual I'd ever read (much less purchased), and I was particularly interested in the diet's view of alcohol consumption. That book describes the effect as follows:

"The body burns alcohol for fuel when alcohol is available. So when it is burning alcohol, your body will not burn fat. This does not stop weight loss; it simply postpones it." (pg. 181)

I consumed no alcohol during the initial two-week "induction" phase of the Atkins diet -- but then promptly restored a daily glass or two (or three...) of wine!

Again regarding the new "low-carb" wines -- the book also contains a table of carb contents (pg. 492), which indicates that a 4-ounce glass of red wine contains 2.0 grams total carbohydrate; white wine has only 0.9 grams (!)

Best Regards,

Bart

Not quite (and not that it really makes a difference for your reasoning). Here are the brackets as defined by EU for all sparklers:

Brut absolu, pas/non dosé, Dosage zéro: 0 - 3g/l*) Extra Brut: 0 - 6g/l Brut: 0 - 15g/l

A typical grande marque standard brut would be from 10 to 13 g/l.

M.

That is a good point.

Expanding on Ians point advertising Low Carb Beef is redundant since beef is low carb. So let advertise low carb broiled seafood. Oops, that already is too.

So when someone buy a dry wine it is already mostly low carb.

Redundancy is meant to educate in these cases.

I am a 10 year low carb person. Why? 10 years diabetes. But one needs to limit fat, eat in moderation, don't drink to much alcohol---the all you can eat prophecy is not the new atkins...that was the original atkins diet.

Last week on a show medical dieticians followed two separate control groups over 3 years. The people that watched what they ate, ate in moderation a balanced meat at the end of 1 year lost the same as the low carb Atkins, Sugarbusters and South Beach dieters. However at 3 years the Atkins had a very high % of persons that gained back vs those that learned to modify behaviour.

compromises.

I wouldn't be quite that dismissive, Ian. The object of these "low carb" diets is to suppress blood sugar levels such that ketosis must be induced and one begins to metabolize fat to produce blood sugar (glucose) through the tricarboxlic acid cycle. That's solid, if somewhat extreme, biochemistry -- the sort of thing that's more common in camels than in humans [digression: did you know that that's how camels get their water? They metabolize the fat in their hump to produce water]. There's also a growing body of science regarding satiation: the signals that suppress appetite do seem to be derived from certain fats, so a diet high in simple carbohydrates may not trigger those signals. However, the Atkins diet in particular is on shaky biochemical ground when not placing limits on fat intake. There's a very solid body of data that shows that diets high in complex carbohydrates and low in animal fats result in lower body mass indices than other diets. Additionally, there's little data on the long term effects of being in constant ketosis. The production of glucose from fat is far from perfect (that's why you can smell acetone on the breath of people in ketosis) and the various byproducts may have adverse long-term health effects. Humans were not designed to live off stored fat for long periods of time. Additionally, the brain is very sensitive to blood sugar levels and people on those "low carb" diets report some rather disturbing cognitive problems early on in the diets.

HTH Mark Lipton

Alas, there's a long tradition of that sort of misleading dietary information here. Many food products have for years boasted of "no cholesterol" long after it was firmly established that serum cholesterol levels have little to nothing to do with dietary intake of cholesterol (that's why eggs and lobster are no longer verboten). Many foods touted as "low fat" are almost entirely sugar! The list goes on and on.

"No one ever went broke underestimating the dietary wisdom of the American public"

Mark Lipton