Yahoo and everybody else is running this AP story reporting that the high-fat, low-carb Atkins diet actually works.  The real news isn’t that the diet works—we’ve all known that for years—but that the medical establishment and the USDA are finally admitting that their food pyramid (what used to be the four basic food groups) is a bunch of crapola.  My fear now is that people are going to start offering low-carb foods and people will flock to those thinking that doing so will help them lose weight, or stay healthy.  What people seem to miss is the need for a balanced diet, along with moderate daily exercise.  Only the exact nature of the balance and the exact amount of exercise required are in question.

Speaking of low-carb foods, Anheuser-Busch recently release their new Michelob Ultra beer (hey, beer is food!).  The advertising slogan?  “Lose the carbs, not the taste.”  Since I’m trying to keep the ranting to a minimum recently, I’ll let you decide how tasty a beer can be if it has fewer carbohydrates.  Especially an “ultra light” version of an almost tasteless beer.  Consider, though, that the ingredients are water, carbohydrates (sugars and hops), and yeast.  The yeast consume the sugars to produce alcohol.  Any remaining taste is produced by leftover carbohydrates.  Don’t believe the marketing hype.