Yesterday I ranted and raved about Melissa Hartwig and her crazy diet (that’s made her a very, very rich celebrity), but I went on and on without ever getting to the central question, which is:
Exactly what is this whole hoop-de-doo supposed to do for you?
Let’s get to that now. Remember, the idea for “going clean” for 30 days was an impulsive idea from Hartwig’s then-boyfriend, now-divorced-husband, Dallas:
Dallas suggested a challenge. They would go 30 days only eating “squeaky clean” foods.
And that was the germ of the whole Whole30. Melissa got so involved in writing and speaking about this new way of eating that eventually she quit her job and went into the Whole30 business full time. Her first book, It Starts With Food, was published in 2012, with a whole series of books following that one, mostly cookbooks, with a new one due out this year on making Whole30-compliant food for social occasions.
If you have a logical/skeptical mind, you might be asking, “Wait, what? This is only supposed to be a 30-day ‘cleanse.’ So why do we need all these cookbooks? Can’t we sort of muddle through for that short amount of time?” In reality, though, if you belong to a social/family group that’s all gaga about this diet, chances are that at any point in time somebody in your group is going to be in the midst of it. Remember from yesterday that there are no gimmes included; you break one little Whole30 rule and you have to start all over again. What a pain! You’d be very likely to say that you can’t come to the birthday party at all if you have to stand there and stare longingly at forbidden foods.
But I’m straying from the question I’m supposed to be answering: What is all this deprivation and rule following supposed to do for you? In essence, as her ideas evolved, Hartwig came up with the idea that following the rules would eliminate inflammation-causing foods from your diet, making you feel better. (What her original “squeaky clean” definition was isn’t spelled out.) And indeed you certainly will have some positive results, because you’ll be cutting out refined/processed/junk/snack foods. Great, right? Well . . . not necessarily. You’re actually following what a real nutritionist/dietician/allergist would call an “elimination diet.” That is, you’re stripping your eating down to include only foods that probably won’t cause some type of reaction. After 30 days, supposedly, your body is now a clean, blank slate, and you can start adding foods back in to see what does and does not cause you problems. Medical professionals point out that true elimination diets used to diagnose specific medical conditions take much longer, as much as three months, to clear systemic inflammation before adding back suspect foods—and then doing so under medical supervision so that the reactions can be carefully monitored.
But once you start adding foods back in after your heroic 30-day cleansing, you’re on your own. Think about it: let’s say that you decide that your first add-back-in food will be cheese. So you have some on your scrambled eggs and watch for reactions. Well, maybe you wake up the next morning feeling kind of blah. Was it the cheese? Was it the fact that you stayed up too late watching TV? Was it the argument you had with your sister on the phone? It’s very hard to tell. True allergic reactions tend to be pretty clear cut and quick, but here we’re in a different territory. What should you do next? Add in another formerly-forbidden food, or cut the cheese back out and see if you feel better? This issue of what to do at the end of the specified time period comprises one of the biggest weaknesses of the Whole30 program. A quotation from an excellent article in TIME Magazine sums up this problem:
The biggest reservation experts have about Whole30 is that the program is murky when it comes to how you should eat once those first 30 days are up. If you feel good, it’s unclear how or when you should start eating some of the foods you cut out. And if you continue to avoid those foods beyond the 30 days, there’s little guidance on how to structure your diet to avoid harmful nutritional shortfalls.
Instead, what seems to happen with hard-core Whole30 advocates is that they try to stay on the diet, or to go onto the diet multiple times. Here’s part of a question from a 16-year-old girl on the Whole30’s website in the “Ask Melissa” section:
I did the Whole30 once and I fell in love with it. I am wanting to continue it, but I would like some advice from you on how I should eat on my birthday. I don’t want to go down the wrong path and mess up my Whole30.
Do you get the needy tone here, the binary-choice language? This girl is “wanting to continue it,” but that’s not what the diet tells you to do. I’m also quite troubled by her talking about “the wrong path” and her desire not to “mess up.” Very much the language of guilt and shame. The idea is supposed to be that you’ll just “reset” your body once and then go on from there to make good food choices. Clearly that’s not how this girl is thinking, and she’s a very typical Whole30 follower. She wants Melissa Hartwig to tell her what to do! And Hartwig complies. I’d have to say that much of her advice is very good, with ideas for non-junky food and for centering the party around activities. All perfectly fine. But at no point does she encourage this girl to think for herself. Instead, she encourages her to have a “fun, totally compliant birthday celebration.” Compliant? I don’t like that word at all. Here’s a quotation from another excellent article:
The guilt/permission is the big problem with any sort of restrictive diet, Whole30 or otherwise, that is being done without medical necessity.
It’s restriction for the sake of restriction, deprivation for the sake of deprivation, with no sense that people should make thoughtful choices based on good understanding. In the end, for most people, those 30 days vanish into the haze and they go back to their old unhealthy diets instead of making any kind of lasting and valuable changes. For some, though, this month can balloon into a continued obsession on eating “compliantly.” As has been pointed out many times, following a restrictive diet can become a kind of virtue signaling. As our society becomes more and more secular, the human need for religion and spirituality does not abate. It sounds completely weird to call something like Whole30 a religion, but that’s what it can truly become for some people.
In the end, you have to learn to make solid choices for yourself. Here’s a needlepoint-worthy motto for you to keep in mind:
If you don’t know how to make mindful choices, you’re toast.