PORTLAND (AP) – A baker who lost nearly half of his customers to the low-carb craze has tapped Dan Brown’s best-selling novel for an Atkins alternative called the “Da Vinci Diet” that he hopes will bring people back to bread.

A little math theory kneaded with biblical lore from “The Da Vinci Code” has transformed Stephen Lanzalotta into a dietary sage, answering the “carbohydrate question” with a series of lectures propounding a diet he has followed for decades to maintain a muscular 160 pounds into middle age.

Admittedly, he is neither a nutritionist nor a scholar – his background is in biology and biochemistry – but Lanzalotta argues you don’t have to look far to see a worldwide problem with obesity, and people have been eating bread for too long for it to suddenly be what is making everyone fat.

“Human civilization and grain have ties that go way back. No municipal society evolved without grain, no matter what it was,” said Lanzalotta, who kneads his dough by hand like ancient breadmakers. “Not that I believe bread is one of the most sacred foods, but it is one of the most important things we can eat.”

Bread forms the building blocks of the body and, in moderation, can lead people to more stable moods, clearer thoughts, and a rock hard body, right down to the washboard stomach of a Renaissance statue, Lanzalotta said.

The Da Vinci Diet he created consists mostly of Mediterranean foods – the foods ancient thinkers and artists ate. Fish, cheese, vegetables, meat, nuts and wine, in addition to bread – none are taboo at Da Vinci’s table.

Based on mathematic values used to build the pyramids – a value called Phi that scientists have since found existing everywhere in nature – the Da Vinci diet doesn’t seek to change biochemistry the way the Atkins diet does.

Instead, a person can use the ratio and tailor the principles to a diet fitted perfectly to the body you want, Lanzalotta said.

The math formula at the heart of the diet works like this.

Take two numbers. Add them to get a third. Add the second and third to get a fourth. Continue until you have a string of about 10. The ratio of the last number to the second to last number is 1.618. Always.

The value known as the Golden Ratio, or Phi, featured in Brown’s book has long fascinated artists, philosophers and mathematicians.

Lanzalotta believes it can be used to calculate what a person should eat in terms of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. The complicated formula he devised can help people choose the right foods without turning a finicky eye toward the bread humans have consumed through the ages.

It typically breaks down to a diet made up of 52 percent carbohydrates, 20 percent protein, and 28 percent fat, which is fewer carbohydrates and more protein than current federal guidelines.

A little suspect? Maybe.

In his book “The Golden Ratio,” Mario Livio, an astrophysicist and senior scientist on the Hubble Telescope, discusses the history of the number. But Livio questions whether a diet based on it is better for the body.

“I’m not surprised in the sense that the golden ratio has been incorporated into many things,” Livio said. “But to claim that we are tuned precisely to the number, I don’t think there is particularly strong evidence.”

But Lanzalotta is not alone in looking for a carbohydrate considerate way to eat, said Dave Grotto, a spokesman for the American Dietetic Association.

Grotto agrees with Lanzalotta’s claim that most “Atkins friendly” foods on a grocery store shelf are mostly nonnutritive filler – low-carbohydrate cookies and snacks that critics describe as tasting like cardboard.

“The bakery industry has been in essence turned on its head,” Grotto said. “But the truth of the matter, we eat because we enjoy the taste of food. And some of that gets lost in translation in low carb foods. Some of it is god awful.”

When low-carbohydrate diets took off amid a burgeoning population, Lanzalotta was spending hours researching food, exploring radical dietary regimens, and finding ways to incorporate bread to make it healthy.

He actually understands why low-carb diets work and appreciates the discipline involved. The diet has its strong points, he said.

“I’m not suggesting that we eat more bread,” Lanzalotta said. “I’m just trying to look at the problems with eating only meat.”

AP-ES-05-28-04 1048EDT