How bad are things getting in this diet-crazed, carb-avoiding world? On the red-soil Maritime island that's inseparable from the humble and now increasingly humiliated spud, the former dietary staple is fast becoming a forgotten food.
"We just want people to rediscover the potato," says Ivan Noonan of the PEI Potato Board, as if all the New World voyages of discovery five centuries ago had been in vain.
But with PEI potato shipments down 23 per cent in Canada and 27 per cent in the United States, it's hard not to think that basic carbohydrates like the starchy tuber are in trouble. The high-protein, high-fat frenzy surrounding diets such as Atkins and South Beach and the Zone have demonized the potato and other members of the beleaguered carb family. Foods that used to be praised almost beyond endurance for their vitamins, minerals and fibre are now blithely ignored in the rush to easy weight loss.
It's not just the good-for-you qualities of carbohydrates that are being sacrificed. Dieters following the straight-and-narrowing path to skinniness are giving up on some of life's most basic and powerful pleasures -- the crisp, nutty crust of a stone-ground, whole-wheat bread; the tickle of a pasta shape as it carries its twists of tomato sauce through the mouth; the creamy taste of an oven-roasted potato scented with rosemary and gently flecked with the time-immemorial taste of sea salt.
In the dieter's devotion to sensory deprivation, all these simple joys are being sacrificed to a seemingly unstoppable force.
"We're not trying to beat the hell out of Atkins," says Mr. Noonan, well aware of the powers he is up against. "We just want to remind people that potatoes are healthy."
That desperate need to catch the attention of distracted diners is now commonplace.
Traditionally, nutritionists have made a clear distinction between more complex good carbs (plain potatoes, whole-wheat bread, lightly processed rice, yellow pasta made with high-protein durum wheat, nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, low-fat milk) and simple bad carbs, encompassing the sweeter end of the junk-food industry -- calories without nutrients, as they're known.
In the middle ground, not-so-good or not-too-bad depending on who you listened to, were fattier foods such as cheese, or more-refined products such as white bread, precooked rice and fruit juice.
But with low-carb-diet mania taking command, the fine distinctions are being lost -- even the nutrients of the good carbs aren't seen to be worth the calories that are an essential part of the package. As Whoppers and Quarter Pounders shed their buns, brewers talk up low-carb beer, and supermarkets such as Loblaws roll out Atkins-endorsed products, producers and manufacturers in the carbohydrates world must now look for ways to fight back.
And so the United States Potato Board recently created its "Get the skinny on America's favourite vegetable" campaign that points out a potato's benefits -- rich in vitamin C, high in fibre, an excellent source of potassium, fat-free and only 100 calories (before you deep-fry it or add the sour cream).
Meanwhile, a consortium of pasta producers sponsored a conference held in Rome last week to confirm the healthy status of pasta as a good carbohydrate. "We've got to stop this low-carb foolishness and get back to traditional patterns of eating," says Dun Gifford, founder of the Boston-based Oldways Preservation Trust, which organized the conference.
At Pusateri's, an upscale supermarket in Toronto, the current bout of anti-carb mania happens to coincide with the store's annual pasta festival. John Mastroianni, Pusateri's general manager, says pasta sales have flattened out after years of 5 to 7 per cent growth. The store's response? A new line of ultra-thin noodles. "We'll get the volume up so they fill a plate with half the carbs," he says.
Following suit, the PEI Potato Board has doubled its marketing budget, so that it can launch a radio and billboard campaign this week in Toronto and Montreal.
But if carb-avoiding city sophisticates can't be persuaded to make room for the simple baked potato, there's a fallback market -- the starving North Koreans. "They know potatoes," Mr. Noonan says. And even better, they've never heard of Atkins.
These are critical times for carbohydrates -- a statement that would sound almost comic were it not for the power of a brand-name diet to turn appetites and industries upside-down. The overthrow of traditional nutritional principles promised in Dr. Robert Atkins's 1972 book The Diet Revolution is set to come true as more and more people embrace a high-fat, low-carb way of eating that many health associations consider hazardous.
"Fat satiates the appetite," Dr. Atkins wrote. "Fat stops carbohydrate craving. And fat, in the absence of carbohydrates, accelerates the burning of stored fat."
