"Do you eat carbs?" says person X when asking person Y over for supper. Not so long ago the question used to concern red meat. What seemed bonkers a few years ago, is now mainstream thinking. And why not? For centuries, and up until the 1970s, cutting out refined carbohydrates was the tried and trusted method of weight loss.It's not some new-fangled whim. But low carb is only mainstream within a narrow band of our population. While the Woolies shelves and food magazines are bursting with low-carb and carb-free options, the vast majority of South Africans are in no position to adopt the diet.Low carb is quite fun if your day is filled with berries and cream, Reuben Riffel's "brinjal-bun" burger and xylitol-sweetened cheesecake. Not such fun if the carbs are replaced with a helping of cabbage.And while cheap animal protein is certainly obtainable, as Banting promoters are quick to point out, who the hell can cope with endless offal and sardines? In fact, the protein nit-picks around the Noakes diet are misdirected. His diet is not high-protein, but high-fat - quite a different thing altogether. If everyone adopting the diet replaces refined carbs with a chunk of animal protein at most meals (which, incidentally, many are doing) then yes, the world really is in trouble. But that's not what the diet promotes. High fat is generally far more eco-friendly than high protein. But sadly it's just as heavy - if not heavier - on the wallet.Cheap, good fat? Forget it. If you don't want to render your own beef tallow at home, or don't own an olive plantation, then good luck finding such wonders. If there's one thing that's been even more screwed up by the industrial-food-chain than carbohydrate, it's fats. The massive machine that vomits the stuff onto our supermarket shelves specialises in fats which are dangerously toxic.Someone who increases the amount of cruddy canola oil (that's all of it) and margarine (ditto) they use, is hardly better off than before.Tim Noakes has been roundly criticised for promoting an "elitist" diet, but this is plain silly and absolutely misses the point: the fact that the cheap stuff on our supermarket shelves is mostly crap and the healthy stuff generally pricier, is hardly Noakes's fault.And it doesn't make the diet any less medically correct. So whose fault is it? Why are millions of South Africans (one study found us to be the third-most obese nation on the planet) waddling around with zero energy, or even diabetes, practically disabled by our adipose tissue? Is it because we're a more greedy bunch than most? No. It's because the affordable food we're offered is worthless pabulum.Blame somebody in charge of what gets subsidised and what doesn't; what food information is passed on and what isn't. Yeah, I know, it's a lot of people, starting with Monsanto and Kelloggs and ending with our own government and our own weird history; a history that has caused millions to separate from the foods they grew up with in favour of anything which smacks of the future, of a "factory-fresh" life. We are all too eager to discard our past, and our gastronomic history tends to go into the bin alongside...