"Carbo-Calories"

Odd historical sidenote: There appears to have been a little trend 1960s and 1970s for counting "carbo-calories" or "carbo-cals." I have a couple of old low carb diet books, The Carbo-Calorie Diet (and the Carbo-Calorie Diet Cookbook), from 1973 and 1976, respectively, and further back, the wonderfully titled "Martinis and Whipped Cream: The New Carbo-Cal Way to Lose Weight and Stay Slim," from 1966.

Both of these books -- and, for all I know, others from their general era, which is to say, my childhood, wanted you to count the calories you took in from carbohydrate, rather than the number of grams of carb. Same approach, just a different metric.

I confess I'm unsure as to the point; there's absolutely no difference between telling people to get no more than, say, 60 grams of carbohydrate per day, and telling them to get no more than 240 "carbo-cals." I can only think that people then -- as now -- were so fixated on the whole "calories in/calories out" concept that working the word "calories" into the title and the instructions was meant to lull the reader into a sense of familiarity.

My, goodness. A glance at The Carbo-Calorie Diet reveals a rather daunting equation for working out one's carbo-calorie allotment. Ghastly, really. I'm too tired to make sense of it right now. I'll puzzle it out tomorrow, and let you know. But why, oh, why, not just tell people "Don't eat more than X grams of carbohydrate per day?" or perhaps "Don't eat starches and separated sugars?"

People love making stuff too hard.