There’s a new diet fad based upon the writings of Michael Pollan. Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules. (Michael Pollan is a smart dude but someday maybe I’ll post why I, as a vegetarian, had some big problems with The Omnivore’s Dilemma.)
The 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet website is here: 100DaysOfRealFood.com
The rules of the diet are pretty straightforward:
Stick to fruit, vegetables, whole grains, dairy products, meat, and “whole foods that are more a product of nature than a product of industry.” Abstain from refined ingredients, artificial sweeteners, processed food, fast food, and fried food.
The three trickiest rules, quoted directly from the 100-Days website, are these:
- No refined grains such as white flour or white rice (items containing wheat must say WHOLE wheat…not just “wheat”)
- No refined sweeteners such as sugar, any form of corn syrup, cane juice, or the artificial stuff like Splenda
- Nothing out of a box, can, bag, bottle or package that has more than 5 ingredients listed on the label
Seems simple enough, right?
Not for me! I decided to give the diet a 5 day trial. It was an abysmal failure. But I learned some interesting lessons. My day-by-day experience and conclusion about the diet are below the fold.
Day #1:
I stuck to the plan closely the entire day.
For breakfast I ate hot cereal, raspberries, and nuts.
For lunch I ate caprese (tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella), raspberries, and drank milk.
And after that… I was still starving.
I happened to have whole wheat flour on hand, so I made a recipe I found on the 100-Days-of-Real-Food website: Pecan Maple Breakfast Cookies. I didn’t have pecans so instead I made the cookies with bananas, blueberries, and raspberries. I decided to name my creation muffin cookies because they were shaped like cookies but they were bready like muffins. These filled me up, so they were a success.
In the evening I bought dinner from Down to Earth. Down to Earth is a health food grocery store, but nevertheless it was difficult to find food I liked that matched the requirements of the diet. I ended up eating miso soup, all-natural lemonade sweetened with honey, and olive oil potato chips.
I later determined that the potato chips didn’t fit the requirements of the diet. There were only three ingredients on the bag: potatoes, olive oil, and sea salt. All the ingredients were natural. But the diet doesn’t permit fried food. Potato chips are fried.
I have a question about that:
Many recipes call for sautéed vegetables. For example, whenever I make soup I start by sautéing onions and mushrooms in olive oil. I don’t think of sautéed onions as fried food. But there really is no significant difference between sautéing onions to make soup and frying potatoes to make potato chips; at the end of the day both are covered in olive oil. So are sautéed vegetables allowed in the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet or not? And if they are allowed then why aren’t potato chips?
And I also have a question about the lemonade:
I know for sure that the lemonade I bought fits with the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet. There were only 3 ingredients on the bottle: freshly squeezed lemons, water, and honey. But that little bottle of lemonade cost me almost $5! And it contained 240 calories! Down to Earth sells brands of soda with all-natural ingredients. Wouldn’t I have been better off with a can of soda that contained cane sugar instead of honey, but cost less and contained fewer calories than the lemonade?
Day #2:
For breakfast I ate scrambled eggs. My breakfast fit fine within the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet.
But later in the day I was downtown with family and we ate out. Here is what I discovered:
It is virtually impossible to find any menu item at any restaurant that fits with this diet! I don’t see how you can ever eat out and still stick to the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet.
This just doesn’t work for me. Enjoying delicious food at novel restaurants is one of the pleasures of life. So I decided not to worry about it and just order whatever I wanted. But this made me feel a little bad, which in turn made me angry at the diet.
If your diet is too restrictive for your lifestyle, the risk is that you’ll rebel against it and then eat even worse than if you weren’t on a diet at all.
Day #3:
I had the same problem on day #3 as day #2. I was out of the house all day until dinner time and I was with people who wanted to eat out. But it was virtually impossible to find food at restaurants that fit the diet. Some of my food choices were relatively healthy but still didn’t obey the strict rules of the diet (e.g. I had a garden burger for lunch but I’m sure the bun wasn’t whole wheat and the burger probably contained processed ingredients).
How do people who succeed with this diet solve this problem? They must have to plan in advance. They make their food and then take it with them wherever they go. This diet therefore is not just a change in what you eat, but how you eat. It requires a fairly major change in lifestyle.
Day #4:
I was back on track this day. For breakfast I had left-over hot cereal and muffin cookies that I made on day #1.
At lunch time, though, I looked in my pantry and my fridge for food that would fit the diet, and I became frustrated. None of my food obeys the rules!
For example, the first thing I noticed in my pantry was Amy’s lentil soup. This soup contains no trans fat, no added MSG, no preservatives, and no GMOs, and it is gluten free. Almost all of the ingredients are organic. The ingredients are, without exception, natural things (e.g. lentils, celery, carrots, onions, sea salt, etc). However, a can of Amy’s lentil soup contains more than five ingredients and therefore fails the diet.
Rosarita vegetarian refried beans, Tastybite Indian food, Bolthouse Farms all natural fruit smoothie, O brand organic vegetable broth, and Eating Right garlic humus are all disqualified from the diet because they commit the crime of containing more than five ingredients.
Why five ingredients? WHY!
Isn’t five ingredients completely arbitrary? Amy’s lentil soup probably undergoes less processing than other foods that are allowed by the diet, like cheese.
The ramen noodles I like only contain two ingredients: organic heirloom wheat flour and sea salt. But the wheat flour is bad because it isn’t whole wheat flour.
The dark chocolate I like is also illegal. It only contains a few ingredients and has no chemical additives, but one of those ingredients is sugar. The 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet only permits natural sweeteners like maple syrup and honey.
Let me digress for a moment on the subject of dark chocolate:
- Dark Chocolate Rant
Yes, refined sugar is highly processed and that is bad. I’m not arguing with that. Sugar = bad. Agreed. But consider this:
According to research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, dark chocolate lowers high blood pressure. Dark chocolate is also a powerful antioxidant. It contains vitamins and minerals, including potassium, copper, magnesium, and iron. It helps control your blood sugar. And unlike other candy, dark chocolate actually fights cavities because it contains theobromine, which hardens tooth enamel.
The 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet permits wine and beer in order “to keep adults sane.” This is mind-boggling to me.
Wine and beer are both processed! They both are high in calories! They both are often made with more than five ingredients! They both contain all sorts of additives! For example, brewers add chemicals like propylene glycol alginate to make the foam on top of beer last longer. But neither wine nor beer manufacturers are required to list their ingredients on their bottles/cans. So what you get when you buy a can of Miller Lite is a complete mystery.
And I personally don’t see wine and beer keeping adults sane, either. These beverages are potentially dangerous intoxicants that are abused by a significant proportion of the population. They can be consumed responsibly, but they often aren’t. When consumed in excess alcohol becomes a potentially deadly poison. And even when wine and beer are consumed in moderation, they’re often utilized to self-medicate anxiety and depression, and therefore they actually are enemies to mental health.
Dark chocolate, on the other hand, literally keeps you sane. It prompts your brain to release endorphins, which can improve your mood and your cognitive health without impairing judgment or creating dependence.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 40% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related. 0% are related to abuse of cocoa. No one has ever caused a head-on collision on a freeway because they were high on dark chocolate.
And as for calories, dark chocolate doesn’t have to be fattening, and in fact can be less fattening than wine and beer. A Chocolove dark chocolate bar has only 160 calories. That’s the exact same number of calories as a 12oz can of Samuel Adams Boston Lager. A single glass of wine contains between 100 and 300 calories. And a single dark chocolate bar is satisfying in itself, whereas many people who drink beer and wine don’t stop at a single serving.
Dark chocolate in moderation is good. If you’re going to have dessert in your diet, it’s a smart idea to make dark chocolate that dessert. However, in order to add good quality dark chocolate to your diet you’ll probably also need to add refined sugar. Overall it’s worth it, but the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet doesn’t permit it, even though it permits wine and beer.
- End of Dark Chocolate Rant
This concludes my rant about dark chocolate. Let me return to the larger point:
My pantry is full of food that I like and that I believe can be part of a healthy diet, but it is not permitted under the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet for reasons that I find to be arbitrary and illogical.
So at lunch time I prowled around my kitchen, starving, denying myself perfectly healthy food, screaming in my head about how stupid this diet is.
Finally I just made popcorn (no seasoning) and ate a truckload of that, and drank orange juice. Popcorn is allowed in the diet.
In the evening I ran into another problem with the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet:
As a vegetarian I’ve become accustomed to meat substitutes like soy protein and seitan. I decided to make seitan for dinner.
Seitan is a vegetarian meat substitute made from vital wheat gluten. It is very high in protein, yet it contains little fat and no cholesterol. It contains none of the PCBs and other contaminants found in seafood.
I don’t eat poultry, pork, beef, or seafood, and I try to shy away from eggs. These are all foods that are encouraged by the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet. But the one source of protein I do enjoy, which I believe is better than meat in every way, is not permitted by the diet. The diet is very strict on only permitting whole wheat flour, and the production of vital wheat gluten involves washing the starch out of wheat flour to leave just the protein.
Later in the evening I ran out for Taco Bell. I don’t have a good excuse for that. I was hungry and sick of popcorn, so I just said screw it.
Day #5:
I stuck to the diet 100% on the last day. I ate popcorn, muffin cookies, and scrambled eggs with spinach, and I drank orange juice.
I was very excited when the diet was finally over and I could get back to eating fake food.
Conclusions:
The 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet is a good thing. It’s better than most other diet fads out there. But it isn’t perfect. Not all of the rules are based on hard science. The rule against processed food is somewhat arbitrary, and the exception to the rule (i.e. wine and beer) is even more arbitrary and is based purely upon the preferences of the people who made the diet. Some of the permitted foods aren’t necessarily healthy. (Bacon, for example, is full of cholesterol and saturated fat even if it came from a local pig.) There are many foods banned by the diet that are healthy and it makes no sense to avoid them. (Nutritional yeast, for example, is wonderful stuff, but good luck to you in finding a brand that contains less than five ingredients.) Nevertheless, the rules of the diet should tend to steer you toward healthy food, particularly if you follow the spirit of the rules as opposed to the letter.
But the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet requires preparation and a significant lifestyle change, and I wasn’t prepared.
Here are my other observations:
• The 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet is well suited for people who like to cook. If you enjoy making big meals at home from scratch and filling your refrigerator with left-overs, you’ll have an easier time meeting the challenge. But even if you enjoy cooking you’ll have to adapt to new (and more expensive) ingredients, new recipes, and new flavors.
• This diet doesn’t just involve eating different food. It requires a lifestyle change. This is especially true if you don’t often cook meals from scratch. You’ll struggle to find restaurants that cater to the diet. Few of the restaurants you currently frequent will pass muster. You might have to prepare meals in advance and carry food with you when you leave the house.
• For most people, very little of the food you already have in your pantry or refrigerator will be acceptable. Therefore you need to do meal planning and grocery shopping before you start the diet. And it will take time to find foods you like that follow the guidelines.
• It’s perfectly possible to follow the rules of the diet and still eat unhealthy food. You can eat popcorn and honey all day, for example. The rules of the diet cannot replace common sense.
• For a vegetarian, the 100-Days-of-Real-Food diet adds so many new rules that your diet can easily become overly restrictive.
• An overly restrictive diet is bad for you mentally because of the mind games you end up playing with yourself whenever you deny yourself food that you want, and bad for you physically because you end up starving or eating food that meets the guidelines but still lacks nutritional value.
Lastly, in my opinion any diet that is based on temporary change – for example, 10 days of eating in a novel way – is inferior to gradually adopting better and better habits that are sustainable permanently. Changing your diet radically all at once is incredibly difficult to sustain. You’ll torture yourself for 5, 10, or 100 days, and then go right back to your old habits. And you’ll beat yourself up for all your failures along the way. So rather than taking the 100-Days-of-Real-Food 10 day pledge, it might be better to look at the rules of the diet and decide upon one or two to try to permanently incorporate into your diet. View them as helpful guidelines rather than strict rules, and decide for yourself upon the allowed exceptions to the rules based upon your personal preferences.
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