People often ask me which diet I follow. Vegetarian? Paleo? Raw? Gluten-free? Pescatarian? Omnivore? Vegan?
I don’t actually adhere to any specific diet. I simply eat food. I do stick to some strict rules when choosing the food I eat, however. I buy:
- Local
- Seasonal
- Organic
- Pastured (eggs, dairy and the small amount of meat we eat)
- Unprocessed
- Unpackaged
Judging by my most popular posts on Instagram for 2015, people prefer this type of food (or at least enjoy looking at pictures of it). On social media, I generally get more likes for pics of my farmer’s market hauls than anything else I post.
So what do I eat?
- Fresh fruit and vegetables
- Beans and legumes (never canned)
- Sourdough bread (20 percent white flour or less)
- Pastured milk, yogurt and butter
- Pastured eggs (I have a subscription)
- A small amount of pastured meat, usually poultry, rarely red meat
- Lots of fermented foods to feed my gut:
- Krautchi (a cross between sauerkraut and kimchi)
- Yogurt (not the sugary stuff)
- Homemade buttermilk, sour cream and crème fraîche
- Beet kvass
- Dill pickles
- Fermented salsa
- Kombucha and ginger beer in small amounts as a treat
- Mead and fermented Bloody Marys in small amounts for obvious reasons 😉
- Black tea (because I really like tea)
If you really feel the need to pigeonhole my diet, you could call it one of the following:
- The eat-whatever-you-want-as-long-as-you-cook-it-yourself diet
- The real-food diet
- The food diet
- The unpackaged diet
- The unprocessed diet
- The Michael Pollan diet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
- Dinner
Speaking of Michael Pollan, if you missed In Defense of Food on PBS Wednesday night, you can watch it online here. It’s fabulous of course. I’ve lifted the synopsis from the PBS website:
‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ With that seven-word maxim, US-based journalist Michael Pollan distills a career’s worth of reporting into a prescription for reversing the damage being done to people’s health by today’s industrially driven Western diet. Pollan offers an answer to one of the most urgent questions of our time: What should I eat to be healthy?
One Food Resolution for 2016
If you want to improve your diet and health—and lose weight in 2016—stick to this one resolution:
Cut out processed food
This simple guideline forced me to eat better. When I went plastic-free in 2011, I merely wanted to cut my consumption of plastic and my contribution to the five plastic gyres wreaking havoc on our oceans. I hadn’t intended to change my diet.
By going plastic-free, I cut all processed food (what processed food doesn’t come in a plastic package?). I stopped buying cereal. I stopped buying snacks. I stopped buying juice. (In other words, I stopped buying all the bad stuff.) I started eating more fruits and vegetables, less meat—and more fermented food. Since 2011, I have suffered one short-lived cold. I used to catch everything! My younger daughter who won’t touch my “weird” fermented food still does get sick but I never do. I basically have a super gut. I can’t guarantee you will never catch a cold or come down with the flu again if you eat as I do, but I can tell you my un-diet works for me.
Here’s to a happy and healthy 2016!