The only "diet" that I recommend.

I do mean "diet" in quotes because it's not really a diet. It's not meant to achieve anything related to weight or health. It's not meant to last forever. In fact, it has a defined duration of 1 month. It is simply an exercise, and one that completely changed my relationship to food. So no, it's not a diet. In someways, it's an experience.

Also, diets are the wrong approach to nutrition in general. When people say they need to go on a diet, what they typically mean (and they sometimes aren't aware of it) is they are looking for a different dietary lifestyle. Diets are inherently unsustainable, at best for achieving short term goals like losing some weight before a wedding and at worst causing real harms to our bodies. One of my favorite podcast is Maintenance Phase, which discusses in depth the myths we have surrounding diet, nutrition, and health. The name of the podcast is a reflection that most diets fail because they lack the understanding of this maintenance phase, the needed for any lifestyle change to be sustainable over the long term.

In Public Health in Retrograde: Seed Oils I mentioned this exercise briefly. I don't know where I got this idea from, besides a vague memory of a documentary I watched in college. The rule of this exercise is as follow: For one month, you can eat whatever you want, however much, whenever you want. However, you must make everything you consume from scratch using basic appliances. If the item has a recipe, you cannot eat it unless you yourself make it from its component ingredients. If the appliance does multiple complex steps, it cannot be used.

Things considered as ingredients and therefore permitted: Flour, starches, eggs, rice, soy sauce, wine, spices, herbs, vinegar, cream, milk, salt, sugar, chocolate, olive oil, most cheeses, whole vegetables, whole fruits, meats, fish, shellfish, etc.

Things considered as "technically having a recipe" and therefore prohibited unless made from scratch:
Orange juice (must squeeze from oranges)
Mayonnaise (must make from eggs, oil, acid, etc.)
Jam (must make from fruits and sugar)
Peanut butter (must make from peanuts)
Yogurt (must make from milk and live culture)
Pasta (must make from flour and eggs)
Pasta sauce (must make from tomatoes, onions, garlic, etc.)
Chips (must make from potatoes)
Bread, tortilla, etc. (must make from scratch)
Sausages, lunch meat, deli meats (must make from scratch)
Any pickles (must pickle from scratch)
Candy, chocolate, pastries, cookies (must make from scratch)
Most condiments (must make from scratch)
Salad dressing (must make from scratch)
Sodas and soft drinks (must make using carbonation machines)
etc.

Appliances that does more than one step in the culinary process are also prohibited:
Ice cream machines
Bread machines
Noodle machines (the one that makes noodles from loose ingredients, not the pasta cutting machine)

On top of this, there's no eating at restaurants, take outs, or any food prepared by someone else. Again, there is no restriction on the consumption of food as long as I make it from scratch. The restriction is purely on the process.

As someone who enjoys cooking, I thought this wouldn't be difficult. I was wrong. Turns out, most food we eat are prepared already. All the meals that previously were considered staples for a lazy college students looking for fast calories like pasta and pizza are now annoyingly time consuming. Even something as nonchalant as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is now out of the questions (who has time to make peanut butter? And bread?). I made fried chicken once during this month because of a cravings for crunchy food but the clean up alone made me regret my decision.

A reminder that this exercise is not a diet. In its full form it is neither reasonable nor sustainable. It has a predetermined end date and is not really meant to be repeated. This is a difficult challenge that can hopefully change someone's understanding of food. For me, it certainly did.

Did I eat "healthier" during this exercise? Maybe? Rice and pan-seared protein and stir-fried vegetables became the stable meal. The things that I did eat I often ate an excess of, almost out of spite to make up for my lack of options. For instance, I have a sweet tooth, and the lack of dessert meant I ate fruits to satisfy that craving. A lot of fruits, often with honey on top. It also meant I baked the occasional tray of cookies that I almost always finish within a day or two. Whatever health benefit I got from eating more fruit was surely offset by the two times that month when I gorged on homemade cookies. This could be due to my body not adjusting to this new regiment. Perhaps if this exercised lasted longer my body may eventually adapt to this lifestyle and not crave sugar as much. I did, by definition, cut out all ultra-processed food which is undoubtedly a healthy choice.

While this exercise did not make me healthier per se, it did fundamentally change how I think about food. It's a dietary mindfulness exercise. I start viewing food not in terms of calories but in terms of hours. How long would that have taken me to make from beginning to end, including clean up? This shift in mindset made me realize why the modern diet tends to be unhealthy. We are consuming calories at a pace previously unimaginable because of how convenient everything is. Forget comparing ourselves to hunter-gatherers, merely a century ago eating a sugary and buttery cake was a whole event. Today, almost all groceries stores are stocked with rows and rows of candy bars, pastry, ice cream, microwavable food, and frozen food. The calories are too easy. Of course, this is coming from a position of privilege. There are many people who don't have access to any calories.

In addition, since this exercise forces one to cook, it forces a reckoning of what food is made of. Mash potatoes? Full of butter and cream. Cookies? Mostly sugar. Unfortunately, many good tasting food achieves their deliciously through sugar and fat.

Another perspective shift is how I view my time. The capitalist machine demands that we sacrifice nearly all of our waking hour working for a paycheck to survive. We don't have much time in our day, especially if you're not the top 10% of the income pyramid. Given most people are time poor, convenient calories are just that, convenient. Unfortunately, the easier the calories the less nutritious the food tends to be. The statement "it's expensive to eat healthy" is slightly misleading because eating healthy doesn't mean eating those over-priced supplements and "super foods" and powder and gels and all that nonsense. Healthy eating can be affordable. However, if time cost is taken into consideration, then it is expensive to eat healthy. Healthy food are either affordable but time consuming (buying raw ingredients and cooking yourself) or convenient and expensive (those fancy "healthy" meal kits shipped to your door). Given most people are trapped the capital machine and our built environment/contextual factors do not foster healthy outcomes, no wonder our diets are so poor. The claim that our diet and health is being negatively impacted by capitalism is perfectly reasonable.

Give this exercise (not a diet) a try. I hope it changes your perspective on food as it changed mine.

Stay tuned.

MJ