Low-Carb and Nutrition

I hear it all the time.  "Well you have to eat some carbs."  Really?  Why?  What did people do for the zillion-plus years before agriculture was invented?  What have hunter-gatherer populations done since then, including modern meat-eating tribes?

Is there some specific nutrient we're going to miss out on?  Vitamin C comes up now and then, as it's found only in trace quantities in most foods permissible on this kind of diet, but there are theories to explain the anecdotal evidence of hundreds of thousands of low-carbers that there's no problem there.  Maybe one of you readers can tell me what disease of deficiency I'm going to be afflicted with.  Or maybe both of you!

 
Fact is, a diet consisting entirely of meat, dairy and eggs (not that most low-carb diets look quite like this) is very rich in all essential nutrients except vitamin C, which we've just covered: we meat-eating landlubbers don't get scurvy.  Or any other nutritional deficiencies.  Some of us, just to be on the safe side, take some multivitamins, but I suspect they haven't done their homework.

I think the most well-informed criticism available for the diet is not about what it's missing, but what it has: fat.  I touched on it when I talked about "heart healthy", but it deserves some extra attention so I'll be talking more about it in the near future.  Mean time, what do you want to hear about?