In Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow and Her New Cookbook

Whenever Gwyneth Paltrow does something, there’s always a lot of hate thrown her way (see: here and here), and with the launch of her new cookbook, It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look and Feel Great, the headlines are no different.

"The book reads like the manifesto to some sort of creepy healthy-girl sorority with members who use beet juice rather than permanent marker to circle the 'problem areas' on each other’s bodies," writes one critic. “"It's All Good seems to take laughable Hollywood neuroticism about eating to the next level," writes another.

Why all the hate? Because in this 304-page cookbook, released this week, Paltrow advocates an elimination diet, in which one avoids coffee, alcohol, dairy, eggs, sugar, shellfish, deepwater fish, potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, corn, wheat, meat and soy—not just for a period of time, but for the rest of one’s life.

Recommended by her doctor Dr. Alejandro Junger (of Clean diet fame) even Paltrow admits the idea was a bit overwhelming at first, and a blow for the self-professed foodie. Still, she says, the end result was life changing, and spawned the idea for this cookbook, which she co-wrote with Julia Turshen, a food writer and private chef based in New York.

Now, as an admitted fan of hers, I don’t quite get all the hate for someone simply encouraging living a healthy lifestyle, but even more so, I feel the need to remind people not to knock something until they’ve tried it. Over the course of my 30-some-odd years, I’ve eliminated whole food groups from my diet at different times and for various reasons—some were health-related, others just out of curiosity—and it always amazed me how differently, and often better, my body operated in the absence of certain foods. Some I’ve added back in and never looked back (like meat) and others (like cheese) I consider a treat food because of the effects, good and bad, their absence has had on my body. What worked for me didn’t work for all my friends, or even always align with Paltrow’s advice in this book. The point is, every body is different, and every body will have different needs, but you can’t blast someone for a certain way of life until you’ve given it a go yourself.

The lifestyle Paltrow advocates in this book isn’t always easy, and she readily admits that. “The rest of my life? Without Parmesan cheese and fried zucchini and pasta and baguettes and Pinor Noir?” she writes. “That was not going to happen, let’s face it. However, could it become my baseline?...Could I lean toward it more? I decided I could.” Without saying so, it sounds like Paltrow is following the old 80/20 rule when it comes to food: eating healthy 80 percent of the time so you can indulge the other 20 percent.

That certainly doesn’t sound like a “neurotic” and “creepy healthy-girl” way of living to me, but a balanced, healthy and realistic approach to eating for the rest of one’s life.

And let’s face it: If any diet can help us all look as good as Paltrow does at age 40, why not try it? 

Photo: Amazon

I wonder: Have you ever tried an elimination diet? How did it go?