Rum and chicken wings are health foods with the new Pirate Diet.
A Blacktip Island nutritionist is promoting a new eating regimen, dubbed the Pirate Diet, that promotes healthy weight loss by replicating the eating habits of 16th– and 17th-Century buccaneers.
“This is no fad. The diet’s rooted in science and historical fact,” said nutritionist Leah Shore, the diet’s creator. “It incorporates everyday, modern foods that mimic the foods our pre-industrialized forebears thrived on.
“Our ancestors were raised on this stuff,” Shore said. “It’s in our DNA. We’re simply not hardwired for salad and soy and light beer.”
Shore maintains the diet causes the body to catalyze stored fat into lean muscle due to meals high in protein, fat and rum.
“Rum’s the key,” Shore said. “It gives a net alkaline load that balances dietary acid. High rum intake also ensures you burn through any carbohydrate-induced statins and free radicals.”
Local pirate dieters rave about the results.
“I’ve been eating pirate style for months now, and I feel fantastic,” divemaster Marina DeLow said. “Plus, there’s no calorie counting. I eat what I want, drink as much as I want and pass out before I can overeat.”
A strict exercise regimen accompanies the diet.
“Piraters engage in alternating days of cutlass fighting, ship boarding and planking,” Shore said. “Walking on planks, that is. Long rest periods are essential, too, preferably in a hammock.”
Local health professionals, however, are critical of the diet’s historical basis.
“It is impossible to know what 17th-Century buccaneers ate,” said Dr. Azul Tang of Tiperon University-Blacktip. “We do know they had notoriously-short lifespans, though, and there is zero evidence of anyone in the 1650s living on hot wings and Flor de Caña.”
Tang also questioned the diet’s safety.
“This sort of fad diet can wreak havoc on the human body,” Tang said. “Take a look at any of this island’s divemasters.
“And none of the diet’s proponents have addressed its associated memory loss and verbal aphasia,” Tang added.
Shore was quick to defend the diet.
“After a few months you might catch yourself slipping into odd speech patterns,” Shore said. “And you may notice a heightened fondness for parrots. But the health benefits far outweigh a few minor side effects.”
Pirate dieters echoed that sentiment.
“When first I heard of this diet I thought to meself, ‘Ar, that be a pile o’ guano,’” DeLow said. “But here I be, fit as any two seafaring men with wooden legs.”
The Blacktip Times 