“How do you stay so thin?” is a question chefs and restaurant people hear all the time. In my case “so thin” would be quite an exaggeration, but I understand the question. The truth is that the more I cook and engage with food, the healthier I am. I love food, obviously, and after a couple of misadventures with the rice, grapefruit, and cabbage soup diets in the 80’s, I vowed never to diet again. The very idea of counting food, calculating it, weighing it, treating it as chemistry rather than joy is simply too distressing to contemplate. If I am miserable, bereft of food, how is being thin going to console me? So, over the years I have found that learning to love food and increasing my activity level have been the best strategies for maintaining health and balance. Insistence on eating the best of everything helps too.
Being a chef in America means that I will always have customers who diet, however. I was a big fan of The Sonoma Diet when it came out—it at least advocated pleasure and balance (which is probably why it was never the craze the Atkins diet was). My new favorite book is Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. His advice is pretty simple: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The simple word “food” belies a more complex issue—so much of what is available in our world isn’t really food but edible, manufactured food-like products. Read the book, follow his advice, and order from Dishalicious—you can be sure that everything you get from us will most assuredly be real food. Healthy, very real, very local, not too much & mostly plants.
