Low-carb experts, I need your opinions

I drop by the Your Good Health (hmmm…no Web site) store on Queen Street West quite often. It’s only a couple of blocks from my house, it’s on the way to the gym, and since the summer, I’ve made friends with the staff, especially Char.

Although it’s called a “health food store”, for the longest time, they didn’t actually stock much actual food, save for the protein bars. They carried a wide range of protein powders, vitamins and other supplements, diet aids, muscle-building pills and powders, some cosmetics and shampoos, but nothing that looked as if it belonged on your dinner table. I remember that once this summer, a guy from South Asia came in and was immediately confused because:

• A place billing itself as a health food store didn’t have any recognizable food in it
• Coming from a place where you see starving people every day, it’s mind-blowing to come to one of the best-fed nations in the world and find out that they still need food supplements.

That state of affairs has changed since the management embarked on a program to increase the sales at that particular branch. It was decided to make the place more grocery-like and they started stocking health food. Now you can purchase rice cakes, soups made with free-range chicken and organic vegetables, pasta made with spelt and a whole rack full of those mostly-twigs-and-bark cereals that my housemate Paul got brainwashed into eating by a couple of hippie chicks.

The problem for me is that I’m on a low–carb diet (which is working quite nicely — between that and a lot of working out, I’m approaching the fifteen-pounds-lost point) and most of the stuff in the store is low-fat. Low-fat often means high-carb. In fact, when some food item — say, soup — comes in both a regular and low-fat or “light” version, the low-fat version is almost always higher in carbohydrates. A number of customers at Your Good Health, myself included, pointed this out and they’ve been pretty good about stocking some low-carb items.

This brings me to the title of this entry. One kind of low-carb item they carry is low-carb baking mix. It’s made of soy flour instead of wheat flour, which is not only low in carbohydrates, but pretty high in protein. It’s also incredibly expensive. One can of Keto Quick Bread Mix, which contains enough to make one loaf of bread, is selling for 8 dollars Canadian (that’s $5.25 American). On a per-weight basis, the Atkins Bake Mix sells for the same price; it comes in a bigger canister that sells for $18 Canadian. That’s a lot of bread for very little bread, so it had better be tasty.

(Is soy flour really that expensive? They give away holy communion bread for free, and they tell me it’s high in Jesus.)

My question goes out to you low-carbers out there who’ve tried the stuff: which tastes better? Or should I just make like Jared and just have regular bread (he had a 6″ sub for lunch and a 12″ sub for dinner every day for at least a year)? Put your opinions down in the comments or e-mail me.