I recently had the pleasure to travel to the beautiful city of Chicago to visit friends, dine at a few nice restaurants and escape the generally maddening pace of running my medical practice.
During our visit we decided to go to Gino’s East to enjoy some of their famous deep dish pizza. Now, many of you may be saying to your self at this point, “Dr. N, you of all people shouldn’t be eating pizza. It’s full of carbohydrates!” We as I’ve said many times, carbohydrates in-and-of-themselves are not harmful, it’s the large amounts of carbohydrates that we eat on a daily basis that are the major health problem.
Eating carbohydrates is similar in a certain respect to drinking red wine (of which I am particularly fond). A glass or 2 at dinner is not harmful and may actually be very healthy for us. But if you regularly drink 2 bottles of red wine every night, you will probably end up with damage to your liver.
My family uses the phrase ‘Carb Worthy’ when talking about carbohydrate foods that we believe are worth spending our daily carbohydrate allowance of 150-200 grams on. With that in mind, we decided to have some ‘Carb Worthy’ Pizza at Gino’s East. Our choice, a meaty deep dish masterpiece.
Gino’s is a very colorful place that encourages its customers to write on the walls. So my former nutritionist (and frequent contributor to this blog) Jocelyn took the honor of marking my carbohydrate extravaganza on the walls of this historic establishment.
Needless to say, the pizza was heavenly and I ate it without the slightest bit of guilt or concern for my health. I knew I had 20 other meals in the coming week and I would get my carbohydrate intake back in balance by being extra focused on what I ate.
Gino’s pizza is definitely ‘Carb Worthy’!
And for any of you with Celiac Disease (an allergic reaction to the gluten found in many grains), Gino’s offers a gluten-free pizza! Now I didn’t try it this trip but I plan to the next time I’m in town.
That is excellent information. I tell my patients the same thing day in and out. Many of them think that eating one food with carbs is bad. Some of them will overdo it and feel guilty later on. Keep up the great work with your blog.