The Dinner Plate is Gone by Joan Breibart

Thanks to Gary Taubes and his friends Kennedy & Huberman and all the Wellness Bitches no one even knows what is a meal!

By any reasonable culinary standard—French, Italian, or even old-school American—Gary Taubes’ dietary vision is an attack on everything we once called a “meal.”

This well-known science journalist and low-carb crazy has made a career out of hating carbohydrates, particularly fruit. To Taubes, the noble dinner plate—once a triptych of protein, vegetable, and starch—is now just a protein placemat. Slab of meat, maybe an egg, possibly some butter. Hold the potatoes, skip the rice, definitely no bread. Dessert? That’s how you got fat in the first place according to these uptight Ivy League degreed men. Why would anyone waste an education at obsessing about nutrition!

To the health establishment, eating only PROTEIN and NO fruits or vegetables might raise “health” issues. But to chefs, restaurateurs, and anyone who’s ever studied French cuisine, the real offense is aesthetic. Taste. Class. Enjoyment. SEX!!

There is an Escoffier logic to meals that Taubes ignores completely. Foods go together for cultural, sensory, and social reasons. Meatloaf comes with mashed potatoes and green beans not because of insulin spikes, but because that trio makes sense. A warm baguette belongs on a table because it transforms butter into something divine. In French cuisine—arguably the gold standard of culinary intelligence—every dish is a negotiation of textures, temperatures, and tastes. Taubes ignores that high level of favor and bliss because he only loves ketosis.

To be blunt: his approach to eating is tacky. It reeks of nutritional manipulations and rejects centuries of culinary refinement. It’s not just that meat-only meals are boring—it’s that they suggest a worldview where food is stripped of joy, symbolism, and sequence. Where’s the contrast? The palate cleanser? The architecture of the plate?

This is not just about taste—it’s about signaling your virtues. Yes I know this is usually reserved for Vegetarians, but the low-carb zealotry that Taubes represents brings to mind what our Neanderthal ancestors supposedly ate. If they did, so what!! A 16-ounce ribeye with butter on top is costly and tacky too. Gold plated faucets are expensive, but no one with taste has them.

Ironically, the traditional cuisines Taubes dismisses are precisely the ones where obesity was rare and satisfaction abundant. The French eat bread, pasta, wine, and fruit—but in portions, with company, and with reverence. Twenty -five years ago Americans said RICE & BREAD were EVIL!! That is when we were sizing up to obese—70% of us are now OBESE-- and we told the world—Asia & Europe-- not to eat what has always been central to their cuisine. NOT diet—cuisine. Taubes’ grim meat-and-fat diet doesn’t feel upscale—it feels anti-social and lower class.

There’s a reason no Michelin-starred restaurant runs a Gary Taubes tasting menu.

Because no one wants to live in a world where dinner is a scientific experiment—and the plate is a protein-only parking lot. But today because of his pronouncements and Kennedy’s endorsement—VEGAN restaurants in NYC are closing down!! I guess I have to thank them a bit since veganism is so tacky and wrong and pretentious and awful.