Dangers of No/Low-carb Diet

 It is now almost impossible to find anyone who is unaware of the “benefits” of low-carb diet.  Rapid loss of 40, 60 and why, even 200 lbs is not entirely unheard of.  This is the story of my experiment with that novel idea.  It all started last year when a sudden realization that desi cuisine is dangerously high in carb forced it upon me.

 I avoided starchy Indian dishes like the plague; ate food items from just three food groups: vegetables, fruits and meat.  Carb intake was limited to fruits exclusively.  I ate often and in small quantities, and took a bag full of fruits to work daily.  And, in just a few months, was quite proud of my otherwise meager 10 lbs drop.

 In an attempt to spare my co-workers of having to watch me devour fruits with a spectacular display of primitive gestures day after day, I decided to carry a fruit knife and adopt a pretense of sophistication.  Since such class act is an innate contradiction to my very being, it was only natural that, within a couple of months, I lost the knife.  Like any other self-respecting father of a teenage kid, I promptly blamed it on my son’s friends and reverted back to primal displays of days before the knife.  Heck with co-workers!

 About three months later came a need to travel to the land of free-walking cows to attend a conference.  Being quite inexperienced in international travel in the post-9/11 era and because I’m the only idiot in this state who comes to a full and complete halt at “every” stop sign (you could check with the auto body guy down the street, who has made a decent living just fixing my rear bumper), I made sure that I fully understood “the list of prohibited items” as outlined by the Transportation Security Administration, lighters, scissors et al.

 On that fateful day, I drove to the airport with supreme confidence in my ability to breeze past security.  After all, how difficult can things be when you’re traveling alone with no check-in baggage for a five day non-pilgrimage trip to the Hindu holy land?  As luck (or lack thereof) would have it, a lot.

 As I walked through security check with everything impeccably organized in a way that would make even the toughest security detail smile, I managed to elicit a friendly “Nice Sox Hat” from that tough looking TSA employee.  But then, something was not quite right.

 The scanner operator gestured to his co-worker with vehement shaking of his head from side to side while pointing to my laptop backpack.  Ha-ha suckers, I thought, wait till you make a big fool of yourselves.  The lady in TSA uniform told me that she needed to search my bag manually.  Hey, be my guest.

 One by one, she pulled everything out of the bag: 6’ of shielded cable neatly coiled, several power supplies, batteries, a PDA, a digital voice recorder, camera etc.  She then went on to rescan the empty bag and once again the scanner operator started to shake his head.  The lady, pointing to the bag, said, “Is there a concealed compartment in this bag?”  In spite of my “Of course not”, with almost a tinge of disgust, she went on to persevere.

 After another 15 minutes of careful pinching and squeezing, from the crevices of that bag that was beyond human reach, she pulled out, to my amazement, fear and a warped sense of engineer’s pride in the ability of scanners, my long lost fruit knife!  Well, what do you think happened next?  What do you think happens when you find yourself facing potentially “criminal” charges for violating federal law?

 State troopers were called in; forms were filled out in triplicate; copies of all forms of identification were made, filed, distributed and verified against national roster of “people of interest”.  While the local officials, who never once treated me with anything but utmost respect, seemed eager to want to believe my story, my profile - balding forty-something male traveling alone with no check-in baggage - was, what the TSA computers were longing for, for a very long time.

 Long story short, even though I willingly parted with my $4.99 knife and walked free to board my flight to Mumbai, I now have a case history with the Department of Homeland Security.  This episode, though a lot less painful than “extraordinary rendition,” is, probably, still not a good thing.  All because of a desire to lose weight and live longer?  Well, not any more people!  I’m going back to indulging in carbs like there’s no tomorrow.  Who knows, protectors of our nation’s security may get me long before that wretched inherited susceptibility to heart disease does!

|