Convert Goop’s 3-Day Detox Into a Realistic (and Delicious) Meal Plan
I try to eat right. I am really. But if I hadn’t planned ahead and had healthy food in the fridge, I could have eaten anything. I will not go into details, but I will say that one day I ate a cookie for lunch right before rushing to teach a nutrition lesson. I’m not proud.
So I love it when someone cooks my food for me. Lately, Goop (a Gwyneth Paltrow website that is partly related to health) has been coaxing its audiences into a ” three-day summer reset .” I don’t assume for a moment to get any “detox” benefit from these recipes, but they are delicious and most of them are easy to prepare. Here’s how to turn the Goop Diet into a sensible 3-day meal plan.
Skip arsenic
It’s kind of sad when the detox diet recipe contains a significant amount of something toxic. The Goop Daily Breakfast is a morning matcha smoothie that requires four tablespoons – yes, a quarter cup – of toko with sun potion . It is a vitamin supplement made from rice bran.
Do you know how to eat brown rice and eat white rice? The brown mass has just been sanded from the white rice. This brown stuff is rice bran, and it does contain a lot of vitamins. So far, so good. But rice bran can be very high in arsenic , as noted longtime Goop critic Dr. Jen Gunter . Smoothie alone won’t kill you, but it seems a little odd to include it in a diet that is supposed to represent healthier-than-normal options. I left that out and saved $ 35 in the process.
Double the protein
One thing I didn’t notice until I finished half of the first recipe: Everything here is for two servings. This means you are sharing an 8 ounce salmon fillet or one chicken breast between two people. Okay, if you want to cut calories, maybe, but the small portions left me hungry and I didn’t want to sabotage my results in the gym due to a lack of protein.
So I doubled it: I would eat a whole chicken breast. Woo! Look at me, come! Or sometimes I would cook a meal in two portions and eat both halves. Adjust this according to your appetite.
Oh, and this matcha smoothie is delicious with a scoop of whey powder.
Season to taste
One thing that struck me early: these dishes are aromatic. Really fragrant. I don’t know why I expected the detox food to be tasteless, but after every meal on the first day, my stomach felt like it was on fire. There was a ton of ginger in everything, and on the second day, the ginger was replaced with large doses of cayenne pepper.
I love ginger, so I’m not complaining too much. But a three-day shopping list that requires half a pound of ginger is a little too much, even for me. My guess is that ginger is included for treating anxiety, food sensitivities, and abnormal Pap smear results (Goop’s note: ginger doesn’t actually do these things), so I felt safe going down a bit. Do the same with cayenne pepper if you don’t like hot dishes.
Make it convenient (and cheaper)
Lunch on the first day, fennel-covered salmon served with a simple salad , was quick cooked and tasted delicious. Even complex recipes were faster than your typical blue apron. But some of them have creative elements that I didn’t like.
I didn’t buy large lettuce to wrap my turkey burger (what’s wrong with eating a burger without a bun with a fork?) And I definitely didn’t chop the butternut squash into the tacos . Instead, I bought a diced zucchini from Trader Joe’s and roasted it in the oven while I cooked dinner yesterday.
And while we tweak the recipes, we can substitute some of the ingredients as well. I never add spirulina in popcorn with spirulina , because I could not find a store that would sell it at a reasonable price. (Plus, its purported benefits have to do with its amino acids. You know what can deliver more amino acids than a small serving of spirulina? Literally any protein source. Just a little more chicken at dinner, and you can skip the spirulina with your snack.)
I also dropped the olive oil from the basil guac in the turkey burger (why was it there at all ??) and loosely substituted lemons and limes for each other because I’m a rebel. Oh, and instead of mixing my own turkey meatballs, I took frozen chili lime chicken burgers instead. Come on, Gwyneth.