Atkins Diet

"Crafting Mom" wrote in message
...
Yes, that's conditionning. The mind is a very powerful thing.

It also can convince people that cultural traditions are more important
than well-being. Some people, believe it or not, are not on a "weird
diet" for the sake of simply getting their number on a scale and losing
weight, some people actually do have biological issues with certain
types of ingredients.

That would be true if people actually *needed* to be on that weird diet.
However, I believe many people are more ready to get convinced that they
have some "biological issue" than to admit they were just eating way too
much. I mean, our cultural way of eating has remained the same for decades,
yet mass obesity is a very recent phenomenon. The only change to our way of
eating has been that a) people have been listening to what dietetian have
told them about the proper way of eating b) we eat more and more American
style food. And the "logical" conclusion of all this is that our way of
eating is getting us that and that we should listen to dietitian and eat
what they tell us to eat or that we should follow some diet imported from
the USA. Doesn't that sound slightly insane to you?
Even in the case of the USA, your traditionnal way of eating hasn't caused
mass obesity until recently. Yet, dietitians and diet pros alike seem
convinced your traditionnal cuisine is evil and that you should move further
from it.
To me, it seems the more we listen to dietitians and diet experts, the
fatter we get. Maybe it's not the food that is wrong, it's how we eat it and
how much of it we eat.

If one wants to limit their friends to "only those whose bodies can
tolerate the same things I can", well, then that's their loss.

I don't think we made some evolutionnary leap in the past 20 years (start of
mass obesity here) that caused one fourth of the population to suddenly
become intolerrant to some food that the whole population used to be able to
eat.

I have
friends who eat all kinds of stuff, and I have eaten *with* them, and
abstained from food around them, as they have around me (sometimes they
are simply NOT HUNGRY .. what am I going to do? say, "I don't care if
you're about to barf if you eat another bite, show me some cultural
savvy and EAT IT!?")

Not being hungry is already covered for Most people will eat lightly
before a meeting in order to actually be hungry. And if you're still not
hungry, all that is required of you is to *taste* the food, you're not asked
to eat ten pounds of it.

I happen to have friends who are on diets with everything from vegan to
indian, to kosher to swine on a spit, to low-carb, to high-carb, and
yet, we all manage to co-exist at the same get-togethers where food is
served. Go figure.

Same here, except proper manners call for the guest to adapt, not for the
host. So, I eat vegan when I visit vegans, I eat kosher when I visit Jews
and if there were any low carb people in this country, I would eat low carb
too. But, when I have Jew friends at home, I'm not expected to cook kosher
for them - I will just make my regular food and avoid bathing the whole meal
in pork fat. Same with vegans, I will cook whatever I cook, and they will
eat whatever they can eat; I will usually cook fish if they eat fish,
otherwise they will just look at us carnivores eating our meat. I might go
as far as cooking tofu if they're really some special guests, like they
travelled half the world to visit. But for them to bring them own meal would
be extremelly rude.
If you can't tolerate some food, you just don't eat it and eat more of
something else. If your tolerance to food is so low that you can't eat
anything from a normal meal, either you have a diet designed to keep you
away from normal people, or you have a rare medical condition that would not
make it safe for you to eat with normal people anyway for fear of food
contamination...

Lictor wrote:
hungry, all that is required of you is to *taste* the food, you're not asked
to eat ten pounds of it.

Again, why is it "required"?

Same here, except proper manners call for the guest to adapt, not for the
host.

Again, that's silly. Why would it be proper manners for someone to eat
something they had an objection to, and having the guest POLITELY
decline not be? I know someone who simply cannot have sugar. Not even
a bite or a taste. It would be rude of ME to expect her, for the sake
of Miss Manners, to take a bite. If she said "No thank you" and smiled
politely, I'd take that as ALSO as polite as if she ate 5 of them and
said "gee that's yummy!"

It is also fashionably polite to say "no thank you" as well.

If you can't tolerate some food, you just don't eat it and eat more of
something else.

Well, wow, that's only the point I've been trying to convey all along,
yet you seem to say that to avoid being called rude, you MUST at least
take a "little taste".

If your tolerance to food is so low that you can't eat
anything from a normal meal,

WHERE did I ever say that I can't eat ANYTHING from a so-called "normal"
meal? Newsflash here. Many people's idea of "normal meal" differs. In
all my years of being around other people who are different from myself,
Ive NEVER been to a function where there isn't ONE thing, that for the
sake of convention I can't stick on my plate and eat some.

There's often times where for the sake of convention, I *will* allow
something to be put on my plate, not wanting to draw visible attention
to not eating something, then, pretend to eat it.

But most of the time, I can find at least ONE Thing that I can eat.
There are more ingredients in the world than sugar and flour. Those are
just TWO ingredients out of MILLIONS of types of food.

I try to explain certain ideas to you in explicit detail, and you still
don't seem to understand where I am coming from. Whether you believe it
or not, there is plenty of room for diversity even in the same culture!
I thought you, who live in France, would know this. I know people who
have visited from France, and guess what, each person that I've met has
had a different type of diet... Same culture, different set of foods.

away from normal people,

What is "normal"?

Lictor wrote:
hungry, all that is required of you is to *taste* the food, you're not asked
to eat ten pounds of it.

Again, why is it "required"?

Same here, except proper manners call for the guest to adapt, not for the
host.

Again, that's silly. Why would it be proper manners for someone to eat
something they had an objection to, and having the guest POLITELY
decline not be? I know someone who simply cannot have sugar. Not even
a bite or a taste. It would be rude of ME to expect her, for the sake
of Miss Manners, to take a bite. If she said "No thank you" and smiled
politely, I'd take that as ALSO as polite as if she ate 5 of them and
said "gee that's yummy!"

It is also fashionably polite to say "no thank you" as well.

If you can't tolerate some food, you just don't eat it and eat more of
something else.

Well, wow, that's only the point I've been trying to convey all along,
yet you seem to say that to avoid being called rude, you MUST at least
take a "little taste".

If your tolerance to food is so low that you can't eat
anything from a normal meal,

WHERE did I ever say that I can't eat ANYTHING from a so-called "normal"
meal? Newsflash here. Many people's idea of "normal meal" differs. In
all my years of being around other people who are different from myself,
Ive NEVER been to a function where there isn't ONE thing, that for the
sake of convention I can't stick on my plate and eat some.

There's often times where for the sake of convention, I *will* allow
something to be put on my plate, not wanting to draw visible attention
to not eating something, then, pretend to eat it.

But most of the time, I can find at least ONE Thing that I can eat.
There are more ingredients in the world than sugar and flour. Those are
just TWO ingredients out of MILLIONS of types of food.

I try to explain certain ideas to you in explicit detail, and you still
don't seem to understand where I am coming from. Whether you believe it
or not, there is plenty of room for diversity even in the same culture!
I thought you, who live in France, would know this. I know people who
have visited from France, and guess what, each person that I've met has
had a different type of diet... Same culture, different set of foods.

away from normal people,

What is "normal"?

"Ignoramus24206" wrote in message
...
I am greatly interested in that. I have not found a way to stay slim
that would allow me to eat all I want, whenever I want.

Because you can't... You can eat whatever you want and whenever you want,
but not all you want Weirdly enough, it's pretty common for many diets to
try to convince you that you can eat all you want, but not whenever you want
or whatever food you want.
But if you look at normal slim people, they do eat whatever, whenever and
all they want. Except, all they want just fits exactly what they need. Every
single time. Isn't that impressive? And if social presure force them to
over-eat, they will *want* less food at their next meal...
That should be the goal of any approach to obesity : to turn you into that
kind of person.

Why? What's so special in a former fat person vs a normal person?
The normal person will not need to be on a diet for the rest of her
life, she's not eating anything special to maintain her
weight.

That strategy (not dieting) did not work for that formerly fat person
though, since that is the way he or she got fat, in the normal
case. So, it is hard to expect it to work the second time.

That strategy was never tried in that formely fat person. A good deal of the
fat people have been on a diet most of their life, often since early
childhood. To some of them, their normal way of eating is either to be on a
diet or to be bingeing between diets. Diets are often how they managed to
get so fat in the first place. Super-obesity is mostly achieved through
yo-yo dieting, regular over-eaters tend to stop at the obese mark. We have
to accept that for some people, being slightly overweight *is* their body
type, and that there is no point in forcing them on a diet - being
overweight is *not* an health risk, obesity is.
Even if they have never been on a diet (which is a real exception nowadays),
obese people have never eaten like a normal person. Normal people don't
over-eat, per definition. And to become obese, one *has* to over-eat. Yet,
there is no attempt to try to re-educate them. And I don't mean the
so-called "balanced" diet, which is just another diet. I mean, real
re-education.

Actually, most are able to maintain their weight on whatever
cooking style they feel like - including eat potato chips all day
long. So, in essence, you're assuming that there is something
special in that former obese person that prevents her from being
"normal".

That would be a correct summary of my belief.

How do you explain that the obese population has increased tenfold in very
recent years? How do you explain it was so prevalent in the USA? Do you
think it's some kind of virus that is causing it and that it is spreading?
Or maybe some kind of evolutionnary leap that is turning us into hommo
obesus? The spread of obesity is indeed viral. Unless we discover a real
obesity virus, it might be a social virus.

The diet has not turned that fat obese person into a slim person, it
has merely turned her into a slim obese.

That is very well stated.

Then, the diet is a failure.

If you believe that, you're believing that either obesity is a 100%
genetic disease or that it is somehow acquired and uncurable.

Well, yes, it is incurable unless one sticks to some way of eating
(I call it diet) that actually works.

How do you explain that?
And how do you explain that diet have such a high failure rate. I mean, it's
a cure that fails 85% of the time (at the five years mark) and that causes
the illness to go worse in many people (yo-yo syndrom). Yet, it is being
prescribed to people that have a benign version of the illness (overweight),
despite the fact that the cure is likely to cause that illness to escalate
to the non-benign state (obesity). It would be like trying to cure very
slight myopy with something that has 85% of chances to cause blindness! If
it was anything but weight, would you take such kind of risk? Actually,
would the FDA approve of such a cure? Errr... Forget that one, it seems
statins are planned to become over the counter drugs (is it in UK or
USA?)...

It is a great point, but so far, I have not seen anything that would
cure obesity in the sense that you are describing, if we are not
considering stomach surgery.

Stomach surgery is not a cure, it's just a way to enforce a diet. Stomach
fullfillness has nothing to do with satiety, and it's not involved in the
calorie regulation of normal people. Besides, stomach surgery still fails on
some people. And we don't know long term effects on it either. I don't know
how people on their 70s are going to live with a bypass (which is impossible
to reverse).
Well, curing obesity is not very interresting economically. That would mean
losing profits from thousands of diet products, gym programs, drugs...
Besides, a diet that works short term is *very* easy to design. Once
explained the basics, I'm sure any teenager would be able to become rich by
writing yet another diet book. Trying to solve a multi-factorial condition
is a bit more involved. However, there *are* some attempts. After all,
psychiatrists manage to *cure* bulimia and anorexia. Over-eating being a
mild form of these, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to cure them.

Well, what you are saying is that to switch from low carb to low fat,
one would have to go through re-learning and it is hard for some
people. Fair enough. But, for somebody who could re-learn, would there
be some serious physical health related issues involved in the switch?

You mean, beyond mere weight gain and the possibility of dropping off the
diet and bingeing? No idea, I guess not, going from one diet to another is
something normal people do on a daily basis after all...

You know, Jews can easily low carb, I see no problem with Jews
lowcarbing, as far as kashrut goes.

You have a good point about Indians.

I was speaking of general dieting. Jews would have problem with a milk and
meat diet for instance. Some diets are going to be easier on some ethnic
groups and unmanageable on others. Come to think of it, religion was the
first diet. In a way, the Torah is the first diet book. Same with Indians,
their cooking is based on religious principles that are supposed to bring
good health.

"Ignoramus24206" wrote in message
...
I am greatly interested in that. I have not found a way to stay slim
that would allow me to eat all I want, whenever I want.

Because you can't... You can eat whatever you want and whenever you want,
but not all you want Weirdly enough, it's pretty common for many diets to
try to convince you that you can eat all you want, but not whenever you want
or whatever food you want.
But if you look at normal slim people, they do eat whatever, whenever and
all they want. Except, all they want just fits exactly what they need. Every
single time. Isn't that impressive? And if social presure force them to
over-eat, they will *want* less food at their next meal...
That should be the goal of any approach to obesity : to turn you into that
kind of person.

Why? What's so special in a former fat person vs a normal person?
The normal person will not need to be on a diet for the rest of her
life, she's not eating anything special to maintain her
weight.

That strategy (not dieting) did not work for that formerly fat person
though, since that is the way he or she got fat, in the normal
case. So, it is hard to expect it to work the second time.

That strategy was never tried in that formely fat person. A good deal of the
fat people have been on a diet most of their life, often since early
childhood. To some of them, their normal way of eating is either to be on a
diet or to be bingeing between diets. Diets are often how they managed to
get so fat in the first place. Super-obesity is mostly achieved through
yo-yo dieting, regular over-eaters tend to stop at the obese mark. We have
to accept that for some people, being slightly overweight *is* their body
type, and that there is no point in forcing them on a diet - being
overweight is *not* an health risk, obesity is.
Even if they have never been on a diet (which is a real exception nowadays),
obese people have never eaten like a normal person. Normal people don't
over-eat, per definition. And to become obese, one *has* to over-eat. Yet,
there is no attempt to try to re-educate them. And I don't mean the
so-called "balanced" diet, which is just another diet. I mean, real
re-education.

Actually, most are able to maintain their weight on whatever
cooking style they feel like - including eat potato chips all day
long. So, in essence, you're assuming that there is something
special in that former obese person that prevents her from being
"normal".

That would be a correct summary of my belief.

How do you explain that the obese population has increased tenfold in very
recent years? How do you explain it was so prevalent in the USA? Do you
think it's some kind of virus that is causing it and that it is spreading?
Or maybe some kind of evolutionnary leap that is turning us into hommo
obesus? The spread of obesity is indeed viral. Unless we discover a real
obesity virus, it might be a social virus.

The diet has not turned that fat obese person into a slim person, it
has merely turned her into a slim obese.

That is very well stated.

Then, the diet is a failure.

If you believe that, you're believing that either obesity is a 100%
genetic disease or that it is somehow acquired and uncurable.

Well, yes, it is incurable unless one sticks to some way of eating
(I call it diet) that actually works.

How do you explain that?
And how do you explain that diet have such a high failure rate. I mean, it's
a cure that fails 85% of the time (at the five years mark) and that causes
the illness to go worse in many people (yo-yo syndrom). Yet, it is being
prescribed to people that have a benign version of the illness (overweight),
despite the fact that the cure is likely to cause that illness to escalate
to the non-benign state (obesity). It would be like trying to cure very
slight myopy with something that has 85% of chances to cause blindness! If
it was anything but weight, would you take such kind of risk? Actually,
would the FDA approve of such a cure? Errr... Forget that one, it seems
statins are planned to become over the counter drugs (is it in UK or
USA?)...

It is a great point, but so far, I have not seen anything that would
cure obesity in the sense that you are describing, if we are not
considering stomach surgery.

Stomach surgery is not a cure, it's just a way to enforce a diet. Stomach
fullfillness has nothing to do with satiety, and it's not involved in the
calorie regulation of normal people. Besides, stomach surgery still fails on
some people. And we don't know long term effects on it either. I don't know
how people on their 70s are going to live with a bypass (which is impossible
to reverse).
Well, curing obesity is not very interresting economically. That would mean
losing profits from thousands of diet products, gym programs, drugs...
Besides, a diet that works short term is *very* easy to design. Once
explained the basics, I'm sure any teenager would be able to become rich by
writing yet another diet book. Trying to solve a multi-factorial condition
is a bit more involved. However, there *are* some attempts. After all,
psychiatrists manage to *cure* bulimia and anorexia. Over-eating being a
mild form of these, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to cure them.

Well, what you are saying is that to switch from low carb to low fat,
one would have to go through re-learning and it is hard for some
people. Fair enough. But, for somebody who could re-learn, would there
be some serious physical health related issues involved in the switch?

You mean, beyond mere weight gain and the possibility of dropping off the
diet and bingeing? No idea, I guess not, going from one diet to another is
something normal people do on a daily basis after all...

You know, Jews can easily low carb, I see no problem with Jews
lowcarbing, as far as kashrut goes.

You have a good point about Indians.

I was speaking of general dieting. Jews would have problem with a milk and
meat diet for instance. Some diets are going to be easier on some ethnic
groups and unmanageable on others. Come to think of it, religion was the
first diet. In a way, the Torah is the first diet book. Same with Indians,
their cooking is based on religious principles that are supposed to bring
good health.

"Ignoramus24206" wrote in message
...
I am greatly interested in that. I have not found a way to stay slim
that would allow me to eat all I want, whenever I want.

Because you can't... You can eat whatever you want and whenever you want,
but not all you want Weirdly enough, it's pretty common for many diets to
try to convince you that you can eat all you want, but not whenever you want
or whatever food you want.
But if you look at normal slim people, they do eat whatever, whenever and
all they want. Except, all they want just fits exactly what they need. Every
single time. Isn't that impressive? And if social presure force them to
over-eat, they will *want* less food at their next meal...
That should be the goal of any approach to obesity : to turn you into that
kind of person.

Why? What's so special in a former fat person vs a normal person?
The normal person will not need to be on a diet for the rest of her
life, she's not eating anything special to maintain her
weight.

That strategy (not dieting) did not work for that formerly fat person
though, since that is the way he or she got fat, in the normal
case. So, it is hard to expect it to work the second time.

That strategy was never tried in that formely fat person. A good deal of the
fat people have been on a diet most of their life, often since early
childhood. To some of them, their normal way of eating is either to be on a
diet or to be bingeing between diets. Diets are often how they managed to
get so fat in the first place. Super-obesity is mostly achieved through
yo-yo dieting, regular over-eaters tend to stop at the obese mark. We have
to accept that for some people, being slightly overweight *is* their body
type, and that there is no point in forcing them on a diet - being
overweight is *not* an health risk, obesity is.
Even if they have never been on a diet (which is a real exception nowadays),
obese people have never eaten like a normal person. Normal people don't
over-eat, per definition. And to become obese, one *has* to over-eat. Yet,
there is no attempt to try to re-educate them. And I don't mean the
so-called "balanced" diet, which is just another diet. I mean, real
re-education.

Actually, most are able to maintain their weight on whatever
cooking style they feel like - including eat potato chips all day
long. So, in essence, you're assuming that there is something
special in that former obese person that prevents her from being
"normal".

That would be a correct summary of my belief.

How do you explain that the obese population has increased tenfold in very
recent years? How do you explain it was so prevalent in the USA? Do you
think it's some kind of virus that is causing it and that it is spreading?
Or maybe some kind of evolutionnary leap that is turning us into hommo
obesus? The spread of obesity is indeed viral. Unless we discover a real
obesity virus, it might be a social virus.

The diet has not turned that fat obese person into a slim person, it
has merely turned her into a slim obese.

That is very well stated.

Then, the diet is a failure.

If you believe that, you're believing that either obesity is a 100%
genetic disease or that it is somehow acquired and uncurable.

Well, yes, it is incurable unless one sticks to some way of eating
(I call it diet) that actually works.

How do you explain that?
And how do you explain that diet have such a high failure rate. I mean, it's
a cure that fails 85% of the time (at the five years mark) and that causes
the illness to go worse in many people (yo-yo syndrom). Yet, it is being
prescribed to people that have a benign version of the illness (overweight),
despite the fact that the cure is likely to cause that illness to escalate
to the non-benign state (obesity). It would be like trying to cure very
slight myopy with something that has 85% of chances to cause blindness! If
it was anything but weight, would you take such kind of risk? Actually,
would the FDA approve of such a cure? Errr... Forget that one, it seems
statins are planned to become over the counter drugs (is it in UK or
USA?)...

It is a great point, but so far, I have not seen anything that would
cure obesity in the sense that you are describing, if we are not
considering stomach surgery.

Stomach surgery is not a cure, it's just a way to enforce a diet. Stomach
fullfillness has nothing to do with satiety, and it's not involved in the
calorie regulation of normal people. Besides, stomach surgery still fails on
some people. And we don't know long term effects on it either. I don't know
how people on their 70s are going to live with a bypass (which is impossible
to reverse).
Well, curing obesity is not very interresting economically. That would mean
losing profits from thousands of diet products, gym programs, drugs...
Besides, a diet that works short term is *very* easy to design. Once
explained the basics, I'm sure any teenager would be able to become rich by
writing yet another diet book. Trying to solve a multi-factorial condition
is a bit more involved. However, there *are* some attempts. After all,
psychiatrists manage to *cure* bulimia and anorexia. Over-eating being a
mild form of these, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to cure them.

Well, what you are saying is that to switch from low carb to low fat,
one would have to go through re-learning and it is hard for some
people. Fair enough. But, for somebody who could re-learn, would there
be some serious physical health related issues involved in the switch?

You mean, beyond mere weight gain and the possibility of dropping off the
diet and bingeing? No idea, I guess not, going from one diet to another is
something normal people do on a daily basis after all...

You know, Jews can easily low carb, I see no problem with Jews
lowcarbing, as far as kashrut goes.

You have a good point about Indians.

I was speaking of general dieting. Jews would have problem with a milk and
meat diet for instance. Some diets are going to be easier on some ethnic
groups and unmanageable on others. Come to think of it, religion was the
first diet. In a way, the Torah is the first diet book. Same with Indians,
their cooking is based on religious principles that are supposed to bring
good health.

Forgot to respond to this one point...

Lictor wrote:
I don't think we made some evolutionnary leap in the past 20 years (start of
mass obesity here) that caused one fourth of the population to suddenly
become intolerrant to some food that the whole population used to be able to
eat.

Well, a lot has happened in 20 years. It's called "progress". Actually
it's only in the past 20 years or so that people have WOKEN UP to the
idea that not all bodies are the same, and person A can eat the same
food as person B and have a different reaction.

An extreme example:
20 years ago I never heard of widespread "peanut allergy" either, yet
more and more public schools are explicit about NO PEANUTS due to
anaphylactic reactions in students. Amazing how I can eat peanuts, and
yet some people can't, due to mild or severe reactions.

That wasn't even thought of or taken into consideration 20 years ago.

Sure, I can eat a small portion (note, small portion, not the ten you
seem to be imagining I am objecting to ) of Aunt Ida's cousin's friend's
music teacher's dog's recipe for torte a la mode for the sake of being
polite and get raging diarrhea and cramps for the next two days, but it
will all have been worth it for the sake of not offending all the
generations of Aunt Ida's distant friend's family, right?

Chuckle,
(waiting for the classic response of "Oh you know, nowadays they have
pills for that sort of thing") LOL

"Ignoramus24206" wrote in message
...
CM, the reality is that a low carber is not eating in an odd way. He
or she just eats less to none flour and sugar. I have not yet had a
single socially awkward situation. If someone insists on trying their
baked food or whatnot, I try a little bite, say it is delicious and
then say that I ate so much already that I am stuffed, and decline.

Well, that's actually all that is asked of you. This is all about symbolic
stuff. There must be some deep rooted stuff in there (like, trusting people
not to poison you or making a symbolic exchange of something important).,
symbolic distribution of food is something you find even in social animals
(like apes who will share meat - the rarest food - from a dead animals). The
bite, and appreciation, shows that you appreciate what you have been offered
and that you find it appropriate.
The problem is that some people have such a manicheist view of their diet
that even a single bite is too much.

Ignoramus24206 wrote:

CM, the reality is that a low carber is not eating in an odd way. He
or she just eats less to none flour and sugar. I have not yet had a
single socially awkward situation. If someone insists on trying their
baked food or whatnot, I try a little bite, say it is delicious and
then say that I ate so much already that I am stuffed, and decline.

It is not at all hard to stick to simple and common sense diet
rules. A few little tricks help a lot.

Well, there's the trick you used above, and here are two more that I
use.

A) The old tried and true, "Your offer means so much to me, but No
thanks", said with a smile.

b) Taking some on my plate anyway, cut it up with the fork to give the
*appearance* of having taken at least a bite, but don't eat it.

The two methods mentioned above are both valid and legitimate ways to
get out of eating something you don't want to eat, and still be
culturally "savvy".

I've never in my life heard of a culture where "No thank you" or other
methods of polite decline were unacceptable and rude. This line of
thinking is completely new to me, and I'll have to think for a while to
get my head around it.

Ignoramus24206 wrote:

CM, the reality is that a low carber is not eating in an odd way. He
or she just eats less to none flour and sugar. I have not yet had a
single socially awkward situation. If someone insists on trying their
baked food or whatnot, I try a little bite, say it is delicious and
then say that I ate so much already that I am stuffed, and decline.

It is not at all hard to stick to simple and common sense diet
rules. A few little tricks help a lot.

Well, there's the trick you used above, and here are two more that I
use.

A) The old tried and true, "Your offer means so much to me, but No
thanks", said with a smile.

b) Taking some on my plate anyway, cut it up with the fork to give the
*appearance* of having taken at least a bite, but don't eat it.

The two methods mentioned above are both valid and legitimate ways to
get out of eating something you don't want to eat, and still be
culturally "savvy".

I've never in my life heard of a culture where "No thank you" or other
methods of polite decline were unacceptable and rude. This line of
thinking is completely new to me, and I'll have to think for a while to
get my head around it.