By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 27, 2003; Page C01 

Eaten yet? 

Good.

The following assertion is highly unappetizing, especially today, our national feast day of gluttony. 

"The Masai in Africa, all they eat is raw beef and drink raw beef blood and drink milk," says reproductive endocrinologist Gil Wilshire. They are lean and healthy and free from obesity and diabetes. They also, out of necessity, spend their lives obsessed with killing cattle and they certainly never get to sit on the couch watching football and chomping Chex Mix, but hey, you just can't have it all. 

The way Wilshire sees it, the Masai are still the hunter-gatherers we all were for 4 million or 5 million years. Then, 10,000 years ago, the rest of us started planting grains and gorging on them, until we arrive at this Thanksgiving -- civilized, yes, but still pushing away from the table, sleepy, stupid and fat with carbo-loading. As the fattest nation on Earth, we are not particularly well evolved. So the doctor and his wife, Regina Schumann, have launched a special-interest group, the Carbohydrate Awareness Council, right here in the world capital of special-interest groups. 

This council of two people is facing off against the National Bread Leadership Council, the American Bakers Association, the Independent Bakers Association, the North American Millers' Association and the Wheat Foods Council in fighting for the hearts, minds and digestive tracts of Americans. This is National Bread Month, but despite that proclamation from our disciplined, Republican-controlled Congress, we are not doing our part. At the National Bread Summit last week in Providence, R.I., the news was ominous: There is a crisis in the breadbasket.

Sales volume for bread is flat, and cookie and cracker sales are slightly down. Some industry experts estimate that 40 percent of Americans are eating less bread than they were a year ago, mostly because of the stubborn popularity of low-carbohydrate diets such as Atkins, South Beach and Zone. The diet trends are the worst thing to happen in the business since Samuel G. Feldman went on a squeezing spree three years ago in a Pennsylvania grocery store and fondled to death nearly $8,000 in baked goods. (Far from being a carb foe, Feldman pleaded in court that he was merely looking for a soft loaf. He got a fine and probation.) 

"Here we have the most healthy thing in the diet," Josh Sosland, executive editor of Milling and Baking News, complained recently, "and it's being treated like poison." After all, the food pyramid still rests on a foundation of several servings of grain a day. 

"It's a rough business these days," says Ray Scannell, who tried to help by eating a sandwich for lunch Tuesday. "I haven't seen it this bad since 20 years ago, when there was the Twinkie defense." Scannell is the research director of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, or, since that's a mouthful, he helpfully adds, "We're the buns, butts and bonbons." He says there's growth in tortillas, even though they aren't a low-carb food, but grain-food falloff is leading to plant closings and job losses. In part, "it's because two-thirds of the population is overweight, and there's only so much food you can put in people," Scannell says. "They're maxed out." 

"There is no mistaking it," says Paul Abenante, president of the American Bakers Association. "The Atkins anti-carb movement has happened at a crescendo, and we have been beaten over the head. We have not put our message out there about what an extremely terrific-value food we have of the highest nutritional value." 

The grain guys look wistfully to other once-beleaguered foodstuffs and wonder how they can regain their market. They think of "the incredible edible egg" and "pork, the other white meat" and "beef -- it's what's for dinner." 

They need a slogan. What can it be? 

Bread: Ever Wonder? Too brand-specific. 

Half a loaf is better than none? Too tired. 

It's the yeast you can do? Too silly. 

Flour power? Too yesterday. 

America loves to loaf? Too lazy. 

Eat this, or it's croutons for you? Too ominous. 

Perhaps something with patriotic overtones, such as "Let's roll!" 

Let's not. 

"We are now on the brink of deploying and implementing an extremely comprehensive consumer research project," says Abenante, which likely will lead to much industry money flowing to Madison Avenue marketing experts. 

That is exactly what Wilshire is worried about. He sees the forces rallying against low-carbohydrate diets, which he insists are healthy ways to lose weight and keep it off. Bread is the enemy: White flour, for instance, "is pharmaceutical-level carbohydrates. To make it legal, they have to add vitamins back in. Wonder Bread? It's an insult! It's not a food. It's a synthetic lump of paste," he says. 

The press release announcing the formation of the Carbohydrate Awareness Council says, "We must have a mechanism to counteract the baseless but well-funded smear campaigns being waged by those interested in preserving the status quo." The doctor envisions bringing together all the players in the low-carb industry, first at a January summit and then at a trade show. The plan, says Wilshire, who lost 100 pounds over 20 months on a low-carb, high-fat diet, is for the council to use rigorous scientific evidence to establish industry standards for low-carb products, issue a carb seal of approval and lobby the government to turn the food pyramid upside down, getting rid of those blood-sugar-soaked grain servings. 

To do that, the council needs a budget and benefactors (it currently has neither) like the pork producers, the cattlemen and the manufacturers of low-carb products. At the summit, he plans to bring together venture capitalists and patent attorneys. "I expect it will be standing-room-only -- chicken, lobster, salad with hunks of blue cheese and blue cheese dressing, asparagus with hollandaise sauce. It will be a scrumptious feast," Wilshire says, "and everyone will be full and satisfied." 

But for today, there is tradition. Instead of Masai raw meat, there is cooked turkey. And even the founders of the Carbohydrate Awareness Council will have gravy with flour, and stuffing made with cornbread and wild rice. The pumpkin pie, made with heavy cream and condensed milk, will have a crust. 

Says the doctor, "It's Thanksgiving, for crying out loud."