Diets work in the short term only. If you have a specific issue that requires a targeted approach, you might want to go on the GAPS or keto diet. Eating fruit only for a week-end could be beneficial. Once you reach a healthy state again, you want to keep it through a way of eating which is balanced and consistently achievable, which means easy and practical enough for you to stick to it, 80% of the time.
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Many diets tell you to stop eating this or that. They focus on elimination, making the range of choice smaller. It is a negative way to see food, targeting the supposedly “bad”, rather than proposing nourishing healthy choices. I don’t subscribe to this way of doing nutrition, definitely not for the long run.
People that follow a diet for religious adherence or intellectual/ethical reasons have my sympathy, for sure. When I read fads and restrictive regimes being covered in tabloid newspapers and mass-market media though, I see a bigger issue. Creating confusion, polarisation, and making the simple matter of nutrition complex and unapproachable is their vested goal. This is very damaging for a certain segment of the population, the audience this sort of press speaks to.
Media outlets that benefit hugely from junk food manufacturers, which command billions of dollars of advertising. And when you sell low quality, ultra processed food, confusion is your best strategy, as anyone with a clear mind and a shred of food culture, would not eat the utter c*ap they produce.
These corporations have had decades of practice targeting children, mothers and the most vulnerable segments of society. Through market research and customer behaviour analysis, they know a lot about me and you. They can run very persuasive campaigns and clever marketing initiatives and they are often recognised and loved in popular culture as household brands.
The result of their “sophisticated” Research & Development is lab like chemical engineering. Not convinced yet? Let’s play a game, I give you the ingredients and you tell me the product:
Whole Corn, Corn Oil, Salt, Whey, Spices, Cheddar Cheese (Cultured Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Whey Protein Concentrate, Wheat Flour, Tomato Powder, Monosodium Glutamate, Sodium Caseinate, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Romano Cheese From Cow’s Milk (Cultured Pasteurized Part Skim Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Dextrose, Onion Powder, Sugar, Natural Flavor, Butter (Cream, Salt), Disodium Phosphate, Buttermilk Solids, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Artificial Colors, Lactic Acid, Disodium Inosinate, and Disodium Guanylate.
What is it? Fritos Original Corn Chips, a very popular snack in the USA is made up of some 30 ingredients. Why do people eat this? It’s half a mystery, half the result of clever marketing and careful dosage of ingredients that make the product strangely enticing. The result is obesity and disease. And huge profits for the companies involved, of course.
And diets are part of the problem, there is no shying away from it. Dieters will often concentrate on not eating this or that and when something fits the diet, they’ll gladly consume it even if the quality is low and the balance non existent. One only needs to read through some vegan Facebook groups and how, exultantly, people support Burger King’s latest vegan burger. “12 Conveniently Vegan Finds at 7-Eleven” makes for a fun read too. The message is clear. If there’s no animal product in it, it can be eaten and implicitly or explicitly needs to be supported. On the other side of the pond the same logic works too. Bacon is low carb, so let’s eat bacon.
What is the solution? A non dogmatic, not hyped, simple and sensible way of eating. Difficult? It shouldn’t be.
When I was looking to make my own menu for the Smiley Retreat, at first I thought of proposing what many detox and wellness centres propose: 100% plant based with a lot of raw food.
Then I thought, do I eat raw vegan food? Sure, I love my salads and I eat a lot of fresh fruit and lots of plants indeed. But raw vegan is not a balanced way of feeding anyone. At the Smiley Retreat you detox through Fasting. Once this is done, I want you to experience my version of balanced, sensible, healthy nutrition. Something you can have as pre and post cleanse, or on an Intermittent Fasting or Wholefood program, and take home with you and implement in your day to day life. This is my sort of good nutritional therapy.
The first version of the Smiley Meal was born, a first version because it needed to be adapted to an established restaurant kitchen in Thailand with some limitations. Based as much as possible on food sourced locally, and of high quality, so no chicken as it’s really hard to find good quality meat here. But fish and duck eggs are wonderful on the island! Beans and pulses can be found easily and I picked small digestible types for people who are not used to eating pulses. Thai red rice is amazing, so bring on the rice. Soba noodles (buckwheat) and quinoa are not native and I considered using job’s tears, which take a fair bit to cook and are virtually unknown to the average guest. Maybe something to add later.
So here it is, the Smiley Meal. Pick sensibly from each category, add only high quality healthy fat and start with a small home-made kombucha drink. Half raw, half cooked. Wholefood ingredients and a simple approach, not a diet.
Is this perfect? Perfection doesn’t exist and everyone is different. This means everyone should have a way of eating which is tailored as much as possible to their genetic predispositions, age, culture, environment and lifestyle.
Simplicity and whole food quality is the essence of good nutrition. The Smiley Meal proposes a balanced and effective way of eating incorporating all the elements one needs to support a healthy organism.