FitTV: Blaine's Low-carb yet artery clogging kitchen

Yesterday, I upgraded my Comcast selection so that I could get the On Demand Fitness classes. The upgrade also included the FitTV channel which is part of the Discovery Channel network, a line I consider to be high quality programming. The very first show I watched on FitTV is "Blaine's Low Carb Kitchen." The show apparently isn't made any more, but they like to show re-runs.

The premise of the show sounds really cool. Blaine Jelus is like the Kevin James character on King of Queens. He's your typical suburban "happy-go-lucky-guy" next door neighbor with 3 kids, a thin pretty wife named Debbie, and a huge waistline from his love of cooking which ballooned him over 300 pounds. Blaine decided to loose weight and basically follows an Atkins type diet where he eats no carbs. However, he wanted to show people that you could still eat tasty food even though you aren't eating any flour, sugar, or starches like potatoes.

Sounds like a cool creative idea, which is why I watched. But what I saw shocked the beejeebies out of me.

I watched two episodes which are 1/2 hour each and basically set in Blaine's home kitchen. Again, the appeal of the show is this guy looks like he could be your uncle Bob or funny next door neighbor who has the same obesity issues that most of America has. We're all tired of eating boiled chicken breast and broccoli.

In the first episode called "Say Cheese", Blaine made 3 dishes: a Buffalo chicken salad, fried Trout on top of Bok Choy with a Zucchini hair topping,  and a Key Lime pie dessert.  Sounds delicious, but the ingredients he used in these dishes made me feel my arteries start clogging.

...Holy fat fried carnation of my Dr. Oz gut building Omentum fat! ...

For the buffalo chicken he made a "breaded" coating which consisted of soy flour and ground up pork rinds. Yeah, not kidding, pork rinds which is basically fried fat. He coated the chicken pieces with the pork rind nightmare and then smothered it to death with Pam non-stick "spray on some fake oil like a pesticide" as I call it. He then baked the chicken.

Next came the dressing which consisted of full fat sour cream, half & half, mayonnaise, and chunks off a slab of blue cheese. Can you feel your heart valves clinching? The net carbs for this buffalo chicken salad dish was 7g, but I thought to myself, "Yeah it's low carbs, but what the hell total is the fat content and calories from all that fat?" Some fat is fine, but holey moley this creation was a healthy heart massacre. What fit person eats pork rinds let alone using it as a bread crumb replacement.

The next dish made my blood cholesterol shoot to the roof just watching. He cut the trout into pieces and again breaded it with a soy flour covering. No pork rinds this time thank goodness, however, he threw the trout into a vat of bubbling oil, and deep fat fried that poor fish like a sack of fries at In & Out Burger. Ugh! Next came the zucchini hair topping where he shred fresh zucchini into long thin strips and then threw them into the same vat of bubbling oil to deep fat fry those suckers like crispy onion stringers at TGIFs. Lastly, he took the Bok Choy and then pan fried those in olive oil. The net carbs for this dish was 10g, but again I'm like, "Geez! he deep fat fried virtually all the healthy enzymes and nutrients out of that food, and made it like 10x more fatty. Holy fat fried carnation of my Dr. Oz gut building Omentum fat!"

The second episode was all about dessert where he made low carb yet fat ginormous fried donuts, peanut butter & chocolate candies, and a chocolate rum cake. This episode was like Fred Flinstone in the kitchen cooking his favorite delights. There was not a fruit in sight people.

At the end of each episode, Blaine steps on a scale so we can see what he weighs, and how much weight he has lost. So far, he's dropped 68 pounds by eating his low carb yet fat wielding recipes. Now, I'm all happy for Blaine that he's getting thinner, but I wouldn't say that he is getting healthier by eating all this deep fat fried, fatty, creamy, cheesy foods. Just because he had vegetables doesn't mean that the veggie is nutritionally rich because he's basically killed it with all that deep fat frying. What happened to some light steaming?

Honestly, I was shocked and slightly disappointed to see this show on FitTV. Just because something is low carb doesn't mean it's "fit food." The bummer is that Blaine really is a nice guy.  I enjoyed his on screen personality, and I liked seeing his family. He's just trying to lose weight and help others do the same. Can't fault a guy for that, but come on Blaine and FitTV, I saw so much deep frying that my living room smells like fried food. I know the show is canceled, so maybe you should cancel the re-runs too, or bring back Blaine and have him cook "fitter" low carb dishes.