House guests who ‘don’t eat carbohydrate’

[Littlemessymiss]

The second time a particular house guest has brought a girlfriend who does not to eat ‘carbohydrates’ in the form of starch/ gluten. There is no chrohns/ coeliac. There is a limit to how many roasted cauliflowers and sweet potatos I can stomach.
We would not have evolved as a species if there was an absence of carb!
WIBU to educate these Americans of the joy of a nice rib of beef with roasties and Yorkshire’s?

There is carbs in eggs and there's carbs in most green veg too. You can google food information if you're unsure.

Butter doesn't as it's just fat.

I don't have a microwave, but I don't steam, just pop in boiling water for a couple of minutes.

The assumption seems to be that a big piece of meat is the centrepiece of all meals. Not everyone can afford that or likes it.

But OP literally said in her opening post that is what she wanted to do. That’s why everyone is saying just serve the meat, potatoes and veg and the guest can serve herself.

Chicken and veg, job done.
Most things contain a wee bit of carbs, but they probably mean high carb items.

I should have added to my earlier comments, I don’t have an issue with people who say they prefer to eat ‘less’ carbs, fats, etc. It’s those that claim to eat NO carbs, etc, then munch on something later, that contains that ingredient. My Sil is gluten intolerant and my mil was diabetic and I always catered for them. When my husband and I had big barbecues, we catered for veggies/vegans and those on diets. It’s the pretenders I take issue with.

We would not have evolved as a species if there was an absence of carb!

You lost me at that laughable line sorry @littlemessymiss

Although I think YANBU to be annoyed. I am sick of the faddy eating habits of millennials. A number of people I know end up cooking 4 or 5 different things for their young precious snowflakes.

When I was a child/teen, (1970's and 80's...) I had 2 options at meal times... EAT or STARVE.

ekto because bread is our only source of carbs.

Lots of posters saying variations on this, but it rules out a lot of everyday meals like spag bol, anything centred on pasta or rice.

I eat normal meals like spag bol (just without the spag), curry/chilli/stir fry but without the rice etc. It's doable.

I've cut back on carbs dramatically, in order to lose weight, but I don't usually mention it to people I'm visiting/having a meal with as it's not a health condition more a deliberate choice. I will avoid really carby/sweet stuff as far as possible but try not to be a pain in doing so. So, I'll pass the biscuit tin round, but not make a big fuss about not taking one, I'll only take one small potato when they're being served and so on. I'd certainly eat the fresh gnocchi mentioned earlier, but I'd probably have a slightly smaller portion than average, eat more sauce and fill up with veg and salad if provided.

Lots of posters saying variations on this, but it rules out a lot of everyday meals like spag bol, anything centred on pasta or rice.

Not really. I don't often eat pasta, rice or potatoes, but I will happily make pot of chilli, say, and have it with a large pile of grilled veg instead of the pasta. It's really not hard.

I thought that's why people had stunt pineapples to show off for guests, offer her one of those: she'll have a snack and you'll look mega classy. Win win.

@Junkmail

I don’t eat sugar, carbs, animal milks, meat, the list goes on.

Oh please, do let the list go on. I am all aquiver with wonder. What do you eat?

We very rarely eat carbs in the evening... there is now lentil pasta! which is delish

we usually have a salad, or fish/quorn and veg.. and we exercise a lot. yes bodies need carbs but it dosent need a big bowl of pasta at 8pm to go to sleep on, eat them during the day.

Comeonrain
Oops I said guy. That must have been a brain fart. I’ve got the book, read it and everything. .

Our ancestors didn't eat bread? Really?

Charred crumbs of a flatbread made by proto-Natufian hunter-gatherers from wild wheat, wild barley and plant roots between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago have been found at the Shubayqa 1 archaeological site in the Black Desert in Jordan, predating the earliest known making of bread from cultivated wheat by thousands of years

@MsHomeSlice it maybe amongst the weirdos you know but I definitely wasn't eating those items that n my sugar free diet last November.

LittleMissMarker
I realise that butter, eggs and cheese contain only very small amounts of carb. My point is most foods contain carb. And yes, I know the difference between starchy vegetables low carb ones.

“We would not have evolved as a species if there was an absence of carb!”

Where did you read this nonsense, back of a cereal box? We survived and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years as a species before we figured out how to make bread.

Speaking of nonsense...

Bread is not the only food that contains carbohydrates.

Even meat, fish and lettuce contain carbohydrates.

To completely avoid carbs, you'd have to drink only water. Unsweetened.
OP, that's what I'd "feed" any guests who told me they didn't eat carbs.

But then, I'm a biologist with a sense of humour and an inclination to take things literally for the fun of it.

OK, maybe water with a very pure form of fat.

But some lipids carry carbohydrates attached.

Also.... gluten is a protein, NOT a carb.

"" For some reason you’re not recognising that eggs, butter, vegetables etc all contain carb. We don’t need large quantities bread, pasta and potatoes.""

There is also the lack of recognition that Bread, Pasta and Potatoes have changed.

We don't grow the same grains that we used to and stick to the same recipe of Bread. I switched to Hovis when I was Vegan because it was the only supermarket vegan Bread. Whereas in my Grandmothers time, most Bread was Vegan. Likewise Pasta. Gino always said the egg was added by people who couldn't cook very well, adding egg makes it easier.

Potatoes, like all of our Veg has lost nutritional value, some only being 10% of what our Great-Grandparents ate.

White Bread contains virtually no Fibre, which is what we need. Likewise white wraps etc.

Someone mentioned the 70's/80's. I can remember many of my peer group, Dads, dying, before they were sixty. It wasn't just smoking that gave and still gives people Coronary Heart Disease. It's the biggest killer of Women. It's what we eat.

No Sugar crew are existing on honey and dried fruits

Don't know why I'm replying to this nonsense given the gluten ignorance in the second half of the sentence. But. There appears to be no upper limit to the amount of fruit that it's healthy to eat. Fruit contains fructose but (healthwise) it's not at all comparable to refined sugar. Eating whole fruits means you are consuming numerous vitamins, minerals and fibre so the way your body absorbs the fructose is utterly different to refined sugar.

Yes, fruit still has calories, so can contribute to weight gain or prohibit desired weightloss. You don't want to substitute fruit for veg as many vegetables have different nutritional value. And you are going to need to brush your teeth in the same way you would after a can of coke. But eating a meal sweetened with dates and/or berries is a whole order of magnitude healthier than using sugar.

As for the carbs. I've recently been limiting my intake of refined sugar and flour based carbs in favour of increased fruit and protein and I feel wonderful for it. The weight is falling off me and I'm dealing with a lot less constipation and pain in my inguinal hernia. I'm not convinced that flour is bad in itself (except that we eat too much of it) but in recent years there has been a real increase in 'flour improvers' and preservatives in bread products and they cause me day to day digestive problems which in turn irritate my hernia.

Just cook what you normally do, just serve meat with veggies, or if your making a lasagna, do the bolognaise sauce with veg. If she does not like it, she can source her own food. I would not cook a separate menu.

Hmm I'm on the fence here as I find this a very difficult subject to broach if i stay with people and more often than not end up in pain/bloated/feeling sick because I don't want to be seen as the kind of faddy person you seem to think anyone without celiacs but not wanting to eat gluten must be.

I am not coeliac or have crohns or anything. What I do have is terrible IBS caused by FODMAPS (sugars) in food that I can't digest properly. This causes them to ferment in my tummy and I bloat up like I'm 10 months pregnant, feel sick and then, erm, the bloat has to escape...(accompanied by a runny tummy, nice).

I hate having to go through this explanation when trying to explain why certain foods are tricky for me. Unfortunately this problem is caused by a wide range of foods including wheat, onions, garlic, milk, yoghurt (cheese is higher fat so is generally OK), most legumes (luckily not lentils), apples, pears, citrus fruits, too many vegetables in one go...

In short, it's a nightmare and sometimes I will have a small amount of problem causing food as I feel like such a pain giving this awful list of foods to avoid, that then I probably make people feel like I'm picking and choosing when I am/am not able to eat things.

In reality, I'm just suffering the consequences later in silence.

So if anyone said to me they didn't want to eat a certain food, I'd try to accommodate as much as possible.