Elizabeth Miller wrote:

> Can you summarize this diet plan.  What do you get to eat and how much?


Yes.  You'll find it in the archives, but it's simple enough to describe.

Two or three meals a day, according to your appetite.  At each meal, eat
as much as you want of any meat (beef, poultry, pork, fish, seafood,
lean or fatty, and so on), as long as it's just meat, with no sugar
smuggled in.  Eat til not hungry.  With your meat, you may have "one
normal serving" of *one* of these ten non-meat foods:  grapes,
watermelon, pear, grapefruit, raspberries, blueberries, potato, sweet
potato, rice, banana.  Anchell is a little vague about what counts as an
"ordinary serving, but he does say a half grapefruit is a serving; a
small to medium potato or sweet potato; a medium banana; a slice of
watermelon about the size of his book (not huge); about 3/4 cup of rice
or berries.  Black coffee or tea are allowed, and condiments such as
mustard, if they don't contain sugar.  No cream, no cheese, no eggs.  If
you like an alcoholic beverage, drink unsweetened spirits, such as
vodka, whiskey, gin, etc.  No wine or beer.  And that's it.

Why these foods?  I don't know; it's voodoo.  The diet is in fact the
diet used by Pennington in the 1950s to help DuPont execs lose weight.
It was written up in NEJM and other periodicals back then.  I think
Atkins refers to it in his books too.  At the time, Pennington believed
that the problem was that obese people have an excess of pyruvate, which
inhibits fat metabolism, so the key is to eat foods that don't cause the
production of pyruvate.  The problem, however, is that *all* pyruvate is
a metabolite of glucose, so as far as that goes there's nothing special
about these foods.  But supposedly Pennington did tests and discovered
that these foods, in moderation, don't cause pyruvate to become
elevated, but others do.  So you're not allowed to substitute
*anything*--no honeydew melon instead of watermelon; no strawberries
instead of raspberries, etc.  If you left off the potatoes and rice, the
rest would be paleo (except the coffee and booze, of course), but even
more restricted.

I've used this diet a few times when my weight has crept up and I want
to push it back down fast.  Although Anchell doesn't promise fast fat
loss, I've found it to be pretty effective.  Maybe it's just the
discipline of eating these particular foods...I really have no idea.  I
did exchange a few letters with Anchell a couple of years ago.  He's 85
now and has been following this diet for over 40 years, and says his
health is quite good.  But Dr. Anchell concedes that he really doesn't
understand why the diet works.  Nutrition is not his specialty.
Although retired now, he practiced general medicine and psychiatry, and
is in fact much better known for his criticisms of sex education for
young children.  He simply claims that in his medical practice he often
encountered patients suffering with weight problems, and he would
prescribe this diet, which he learned about from reading Pennington's
articles and then following it himself.

So, call it "voodoo semi-paleo".

Todd Moody
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