Jelly Bean’s signature “disapproving” face – made even better by the fact that she is wearing her underpants on her head. This is what happens when you keep little kids in the car too long…
There was a time when this would have been my ultimate health-nut-on-a-mission dream. Ladies and Gents, meet Nutricate:
Why yes I did blur out the calorie totals! Don’t even think about comparing. It ends nowhere good. Trust me.
It’s a restaurant receipt (in this case from an amazingly awesome eatery called ModMarket). But not only does it tell you how much money it will be deducting from your overworn Visa (holy CRAP moving is expensive!), it also breaks down everything you order telling you grams of fat, carbs and protein along with total calories and percentages of your daily allowance. Even more, it offers healthy bon mots and little bits of advice. The whole 16-inch receipt was packed with interesting info. Nutrition + Educate = Nutricate… Get it?
I got it, all right. In fact, I got it so well that I couldn’t stop thinking about it through my entire meal. I don’t know if these are common in other places but I had never seen one in print before. I’d heard of this technology but this was my first time watching it in action. It gave me very mixed feelings. (Unlike my dinner which was perfectly delicious and made me feel awesome.)
Several years ago this really would have fulfilled my fondest dieting dream. I dreamed of just being able to walk into a restaurant and order healthy food, knowing exactly what I was getting.
So why wasn’t I jumping up and down with joy? Because it was a dream that I actually spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about because that was back in my calorie-counting days – which quickly spiraled into macronutrient accounting, activity graphing and road-tripping to OCD land, first stop EDville days. I remember spending a crazy amount of time looking up each menu item on a restaurant’s online menu, trying to guess the likely ingredients, looking them all up online, totaling them, breaking them out by macro and finally deciding – based purely on mathematics and nothing on taste – what I would eat at said restaurant. Heaven help you if you tried to surprise me (commence mental calculations!) or switched up the menu on me. Daily specials were the bane of my existence.
That was not a great time in my life for gustatory pleasure. Actually that was not a great time in my life period. I’m embarrassed to admit now how much time I spent every day counting my calories. A lot. Too much. And yet maybe if it had been easier information to get, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to waste so much time? (Honesty check: Probably not. That deep into my eating disorder not even unicorn rides on rainbows could drag me out.)
I didn’t want the receipt. I didn’t want to know. I’m finally at a point in my life where not only do I not food journal but I rarely tally the calories in my head! I’m finally at the point where I order based more on what I want to eat and less about what I think I “should” eat. (Although I still do think a lot about what’s healthiest because healthy food makes my body feel its best and with 4 little kids I simply do not have time for a sugar-crash.) I’m finally eating when I’m hungry and stopping when I’m full. (Usually. Not always. I’m not perfect.)
The other thing that bothered me about Nutricate is that it wasn’t my choice. You kind of have to take your receipt when they hand it to you or you look like end-stage Howard Hughes. I can choose whether or not to look up calorie counts posted on a menu online or in print. But I can’t choose whether or not I want that information when it’s printed on my receipt.
But I’m also a numbers girl. Once I had the information I had to read it. My one concession to sanity was that I hid the receipt until after eating my meal so that I wouldn’t feel that need to restrict if the number ended up being “too high.” When I did finally look at it, I felt strangely detached from it. The numbers didn’t reflect at all how delicious and filling my meal was. They had nothing to do with my satisfaction in eating it. In fact, the only thing that really stuck out to me was that I’d gotten a good amount of protein even though my meal was vegetarian and that made me happy.
It was with this on my mind that I came home (i.e. to the hotel that Jelly Bean constantly reminds me is “NOT HOME”) to find this e-mail from sweet Reader S:
Hi Charlotte
Love reading your blog. But l was wanting to know what you eat and don’t eat. I know you don’t eat dairy, but was wondering do you eat carbs and if so what kind? Also, do you still eat loads of fats?
Do you eat fats and protein with each meal? Are beans, legumes, and quinoa part of your daily eating plan.
I just get so confused when l read new research and it sais we should eliminate grains and eating mostly fat, protein and vegetable and then you get another study that sais we should mostly whole grains and with some fat and protein. Whas your take on this?
This is actually an e-mail I get a lot. A lot a lot. At first I was confused as to why anyone would want to know the particulars of what I do and don’t eat, especially when I have a known history of being a really weird eater. I generally don’t answer this question because I’m afraid of inadvertently feeding into someone else’s ED and making them sicker. (Holy balls of tempeh, I love you guys and only want you to be healthy and happy!) But I didn’t get the feeling that that was Reader S’s motivation. Rather I think it was more because of things like this: News service Rodale’s list of 14 Things You Should Never Eat.
Cue scary music. Eat tomatoes because they’re produce and produce is the best! But don’t eat tomatoes because they’re nightshades and nightshades are poison! But do eat them canned because you need the lycopene (especially if you have a prostate!). But don’t eat the canned kind because the cans are lined with BPA and the acid in the tomatoes leaches it out! It’s enough to make you want to bludgeon yourself with the can opener.
I feel for Reader S because I share her confusion. The research is so contradictory and it turns out that the more educated I get on this subject (and believe me I read everything that comes out) the less confident I feel in making recommendations. In fact, knowing the fickle nature of research, the more someone tells me they know the perfect way to eat, the less I trust them.
The only thing that has ever worked for me is to trust my gut. Literally. I’ve spent the last several years paying attention to how I feel before, during and after nearly everything I eat. (True story: I recently tried out a different breakfast every day for 14 days to see which ones gave me the best energy for my workouts. Winner: Eggs and amaranth. Loser (big time): Boxed “healthy” cereal.) It’s good to get educated on the basics of nutrition. Whole foods are best. Veggies are amazing. Everyone needs enough protein. Sugar does terrible things to your cells. That type of thing. Education is fabulous and everyone should seek it their entire lives. But once you get into the fine print, things can get murky fast. At best you’re a walking fountain of useless trivia. At worst you become orthorexic, like I did.
It then occurred to me, reading Reader S’s e-mail, that when I was at that confused point in my life, I would have found it helpful to know what a relatively sane person ate. So don’t take this as a prescription of what you should do. Don’t compare my food to yours. Don’t count my calories. But if you want to know what I eat and feel good about? Here you go:
On that above receipt? The mint fava bean salad and green chili were my meal. The “extra light dressing” referred to how much dressing they put on the salad, not that it was low fat. I just happen to not like my greens soaked and slimy. (The other food was for my husband and kiddos.)
And to answer your questions Reader S:
– I don’t eat dairy. Not because I think it’s bad but because I’m apparently lactose intolerant and it makes me awful when I eat it. I vomit. I get diarrhea. I have panic attacks. Not pretty.
– I love carbs. I eat a lot of them. Fruit is my favorite. I adore carb-o-riffic root vegetables and squash. I even delight in grains. That said, I tend to prefer my grains in their most whole form (i.e. not ground into flour.) I don’t eat much bread but I do love cooked grains like quinoa (which is technically a seed), amaranth, buckwheat (technically a grass), millet, oats and wheat berries. I eat some of the above every day. I don’t consciously avoid gluten.
– I do eat a lot of fat. I’m not sure what proportion of my food it is but I’m guessing it’s around 30%. Again, I like my fat as unprocessed as possible and enjoy coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, grass-fed butter (no lactose!), and all kinds of nuts on a daily basis.
– Yes, I try to eat fat and protein with each meal. It helps me stay full. A carb heavy meal makes me sleepy and irritable, especially if it’s a lot of simple carbs. I also try to eat a veggie with every meal, including breakfast.
– I do eat beans, legumes and grains. I know they’ve gotten a lot of bad press lately. I’ve read all of it and, admittedly, it is quite convincing. I believe people when they tell me that they feel better not eating them. That said, I’ve taken them out of my diet quite a few times now and can definitively say that it does not make me feel better. I don’t know if that means I’m more evolutionarily evolved or that I’m oblivious to my internal inflammation. But whichever, I eat them and enjoy them.
– To answer your last question – and one that MANY people are asking these days, including me – all I can say is that you need to eat what makes you feel at your best. What makes you feel happy, satisfied, alert, energetic and strong? I firmly believe that there is not one “right” prescription for the whole of the human race. I think different people thrive on different types of diets. So try different styles of eating until you find what sticks:)
What do you think about the Nutricate receipts – dieting Godsend or eating disorder nightmare? Do you have any advice for Reader S?
Wow, such a timely post. I can so relate to Reader S, and I want to thank her for e-mailing you so that we all can get this answer.
It’s gardening season at its most boring and time-consuming, so I’ve listened to several weight-related audio-books lately. The one that made me mow for hours and hours just to get to the end of that book was “Why we get fat and what to do about it” by Gary Taubes, which is “Good Calories, Bad Calories” condensed. G.Taubes makes a rather convincing if not disturbing point that we can eat thousands of calories a day of fat and protein but as long as we have no “fattening carbs” at all, we will most definitely lose weight.
I love research and Cronbach-Alphas, Pearson’s correlations and all things statistics, so I HAD to believe the book, but it made me quite nervous. I absolutely do not wish to live on fat and protein. I love carbs, that’s the reason I’ve put on a lot of weight, and I know I must get rid of simple carbs, of sugars basically. But cutting out all bread, rice and potatoes for ever seems impossible. After listening to this book I tried to implement changes, but found no-carb diet to be incredibly boring. Like you’re a kid who can only eat the main course, but never any sweets, not even fruit. Kids often dislike meat and eggs, and this is all you ever get. You’re punished for life.
So I don’t know. I took two courses on nutrition on Coursera, and I loved those courses. Again, filled with numbers and percentage – that much fat, that many carbs, that much protein. But just like you wrote, Charlotte – it’s a one-way street to OCD and ED. You just count and estimate everything you eat and you cannot eat food that you haven’t weighed. I don’t see how one can keep that up for any given time if “me time” is very limited.
And then you read of ketosis, ketoacidosis, of sugar coma and diabetes, and where do you find yourself? Lost.
So it helps to have a sane person to ask what they eat and hear that they eat intuitively. Once you get your sleeping hours in order and are sick both of sugar comas and meat constipation, perhaps it is possible that the body will whisper just what it would thrive on for a change.
Charlotte, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I adore you, and thanks again.
Yes, I loved both of those books by Taubes! Very thought provoking and the guy has really done his research. There is a lot of critical critique about the research Taubes’ cites as well – while I am not accusing him of cherry picking (at least no more than what most meta-analysts do), I do think his interpretation of the facts warrants further investigation by other minds as well. So yeah, just more evidence that nothing is simple… sigh.
P.S. I LOOOOOVE your idea for getting through boring gardening chores! I will have to try this.
I as a parent of, along with many other people living with Type 1 diabetes, would LOVE all restaurants to at least print the carbohydrates on the receipts. Most of the time, IF the place has a nutrition list, the staff makes you feel like some weirdo if you ask for it. We need that info to be able to calculate the necessary insulin dosage. The rest of the post….agree food choices are getting too confusing! The closer it is to its original state the better. I try to chose stuff with shorter ingredient lists and the lesser amount of chemical/processing, but I don’t go out of my way to shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s….its limited to my choices at Cub or Rainbow, which in my community are much smaller. and.limited than most. Luckily, we do have a local butcher/meat market.
Ooh such a good point about medical conditions that need this type of info! I hadn’t even considered that aspect. Thank you!
My dr’s office insists on giving me a print-out every appointment with all my vitals, including weight, even when I come in for something like a cough. I’ve given up refusing the page that has my weight printed on it since that triggers the “are you in therapy?” question and just throw it away without looking instead. I feel like it’s kind of the same thing. This stuff should totally be freely available but I feel like we should be offered a choice as to whether or not we want it. Like Colleen, my Type 1 diabetic husband would love the carbohydrate info but the calorie info would send me to ED land. I went to Panera a couple weeks ago and they had the calorie counts posted up on the menu. I definitely ordered by calories then, not what I wanted.
Ay yi yi. Doesn’t your doc know your history? That would make me nuts too. I’ve also had that same experience at Panera. When the calories are posted right on the menu it’s impossible for me to not read them…
I have, at best, mixed feelings about the Nutricates. Information is great, disclosure is great, but what are we to do with this information now that we have it? It seems that the more we learn about nutrition and health, the more we realize how much we DON’T know, and reducing foods to caloric and macronutrient values might not be useful or very relevant. I can definitely see that it might lead people to actually make BAD nutritional choices because of some sort of pressure to conform to calorie counts or whatever. On the other hand, we are supposed to be adults capable of making our own choices.
My advice to S is that there is no one answer, there is no single perfect diet. It depends on what your goals are, to start with. Are you trying to lose weight? Are you trying to run your fastest 10K ever? Are you trying to improve your bone density or hopefully ward off cancer? Those are not all the same diet. And, while there seems to be some debate about whether losing weight actually improves an individual’s health (I’m of the opinion that it probably does) I firmly believe that the *process* of losing weight is very far from healthy, quite the opposite. So you have to consider incorporating other beneficial lifestyle changes to help your body endure the stress during a weight-loss diet; it’s not just about food.
I think you have to try a diet and see how it makes you feel and what results you get, rather than adhere to someone else’s plan. Do you feel good? Do you have energy? Do you sleep well? Does any part of your body hurt? Are you depressed or happy? Those are the measurements to use in choosing a diet. Unfortunately it takes time and patience 🙂
I love your advice to S! Well said!! And good point about how you can’t just give people the info but also the knowledge of how to use the info.
Why can’t the info be optional? For those who need or want the info, it’s right there on the receipt. For those if us who find it triggering, we can stick with a plain old, regular-sized, tree-saving (ok, not really) receipt.
Jelly Bean has THE best disapproval face!!!!!!
Doesn’t she though? That kids cracks me up!! She was born with that expression, lol.
Hooray for mindful eating!! I’m totally with you, Charlotte. Although I think those receipts might help a lot of people, it is kind of in your face if you are trying a different path. And I also have found the mindful eating path very helpful. I lost 100 pounds while unintentionally using mindful eating…then finally discovered the name and theory and am now challenged to get healthier in whole new ways (e.g., it made a huge difference to only eat when I was hungry and pay attention to what foods felt good in mind body…it’s a whole different story to always stop when I’m full!). I really like in this that you advocate finding what works for each of us; I’m with you on doing experiments to see how things actually feel in our body. Love it!!!
Yay for experimenters! You are awesome and I am so glad you’ve found what works for you!!
I have no idea what it is about me, or if I’m weird, but everyone else says sugar makes them feel like crap, and it doesn’t do that to me. If I’m craving chocolate cake so much I would shank a small puppy for it, I go eat a big piece of cake, and I actually feel better. Not sugar crash-y, not tired and lame, but actually calm and pleased. I’m happy I got cake; I feel satisfied and just fine. I go about my day and my body doesn’t seem to mind that I just had a big piece of cake. (I don’t do this often, though.)
I kind of wonder if there is some horrible thing going on here that is masked by a Stockholm-esque covering where my brain is so thrilled to have sugar that it forces me to ignore the real consequences or something.
Maybe you’re more evolutionarily evolved too!! I think the important part is to do what makes you feel best and don’t let anyone talk you out of that. Your body knows what it needs, even if that is chocolate.
Also? This: ” If I’m craving chocolate cake so much I would shank a small puppy for it,” is hilarious. Laughed so hard!
Oh, Charlotte. I have been reading your blogs for years and although I am much older than you, I have always felt we have HAD the same issues.
Now, I am so sad. I just picked up my 17 year old son in Kansas, where he has spent an exchange year as a senior in high school.
Apart from straight A:s, of course, he has also picked up an ED!
It is the worst I have ever encountered, so much worse than my own old ED ever was. I would much rather have my own ED back than to see my son suffer!
Oh, please make sure your kids don’t ever get it!!!
Apparently, my son got really scared when he came to Kansas. The food served at school was a complete shock to him. In Sweden, you are not allowed to serve unhealthy food to kids, but in Kansas there were pizza, fries, cookies, candies, and soda in the school cafeteria. Further, his host family would have food from fast food chains like Pizza Hut and KFC seven days a week – and he just panicked. He thought he would gain tons of weight, so he started exercising excessively.
And soon he also started counting calories and weighing himself every day.Today, he knows every single calorie count for all meals at different food chains. It is just crazy. I cry when I hear him!
My most beloved son has developed ED!
He graduated May 19 and now we are back in Sweden. He has lost 25 pounds and looks like he has spent a year in concentration camp rather than in Kansas. (And yes, I will probably try to sue the exchange organization and start a fund for his future therapy.)
The good news is that he admits having developed an ED – and that he now tries his best to eat again. We are seeing the family doctor next week and he has also accepted to go a ED clinic, if necessary. I think that is a very good sign.
And I am quite impressed with his own analysis. He sounds exactly like you! As if he had been reading your blog for years as well, which I doubt he has. Tonight we were talking for an hour before dinner, and he said he was really skeptical of the showing of calories at all fast food chains in America. It made him sick, he thinks. He became obsessed with the numbers.
Now, he has decided to never again look at calories and he has also asked me to throw out the scale. He sits down and eats everything (still slowly and with some difficulties) and says that from now and on he will only care about taste and hunger. He will never again look at or follow any numbers or have any restrictions when it comes to what to eat.
So I could not agree more with you – I think it is a really dangerous development!
And I would be really interested in, some day, read about your thoughts how to handle ED as a parent. What did your parents do? Did it help? How do you handle having had ED yourself and being a mother?
I am thinking and thinking and thinking. (And crying a lot.) I wish, of course, that I had not let him spend a year in Kansas. Or that I had listened to my own intuition, because I knew that something was wrong. Perhaps I could also have been very different as a mother. I had ED for a long time when he was young, and I am sure that it has affected him. But I also think it might help today, since I can relate to what he is feeling and how he is acting.
That is so scary. Please know we are all pulling for your son to get better and it is probably good that you have been through it yourself. It sounds like he is already starting recovery slowly but surely. Best of luck to you and your precious son.
At first I agreed with you when you said you didn’t want to see nutritional information printed on your receipt – I mean, really! Don’t we have enough information to process in a day? But then I started thinking about it, and I cam to the conclusion for myself that I actually do need that information – as it can be time consuming to research, and I more often than not forget to look it up later when I have a free moment. I haven’t actually seen that up where I live, but I really do hope that it’s a trend that is forthcoming.
Hi Charlotte
Thanks so much for sharing what you eat. I think this is a very balanced approach. It’s about being healthy that is the most imprortant to me and feeling good within myself to have enough energy to get thought the day. The more l read the more l get confused. Ear carbs, don’t eat carbs, high fat, low fat, vegetarian, blah, blah blah. Then when you just think you are eating the right foods, then comes out a new study. Ahhhh. Reading what you eat charlotte has put it all in perspective for me. I trust you have enough knowledge on nutrition through all your experience and reading up on research to know what would be considered a healthy balanced diet. You eat intuitively but like you said you eat what your body needs and not necessarily what it wants. So you tend to stick with what you consider is a healthy eating plan. For me l do feel better when l eat carbs, but was starting to feel guilty each time l was eating them. Thought they were going to damage my health in some way, and then l thought to myself this is crazy, it’s only food in the end, why am l stressing so much over this? Like you said everyone is an individual and different foods effect each of us in different ways. Thanks Charlotte so much for sharing what you eat, this has helped me in my journey to good long term health.
I had a similar experience (unwanted ‘health’ information being forced upon me) recently. I was staying in a hotel and decided to use the gym. I hopped on the elliptical and the first thing it did was show me how much I weighed!
Now I have been avoiding knowing how much I weigh for at least the last five years. Last time I tracked it, it got me nowhere good pretty quickly so I have since been very deliberate about not weighing myself or thinking about myself in terms of weight. Even when I go to the Dr’s and need to be weighed, I ask not to be told and don’t look and they have always respected my requests (although I think if I were not in the ‘normal’ weight range they might not be so good about it).
I was therefore pretty upset at being weighed without my consent. Thankfully, the machine did it in pounds. Although I can do the conversion in my head, the numbers don’t really mean anything to me – I don’t have a visceral ‘that much!’ feeling as I do in kilograms. But I hated hated it and it actually upset me for quite some time. That number is now stuck in my head, and I sit around, dividing it by 2.2 and thinking ‘is that what I actually weigh?’ and whether that number makes me ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Not a good place to be, and why I avoid being weighed in the first place.
Just having re-read the posts.i agree with Aurora. I too feel fantastic when l eat ice- cream and a nice big bowl of pasta. I sleep so well and have so much energy. But as soon as l eat less carbs and just stick to protein, and fats and veggie, l lose weight but feel terrible.( Not that l have mich weight to lose, maybe just a few kilos.) l feel depressed as l don’t sleep well, yeah my jeans fit better but l feel terrible, to the point l was having brain fog and forgetfulness. For the past week l have had hubby home and been eating what ever l want, this morning l had croissant for breakfast, yesterday l had risotto and polenta and l feel great today. Had the best sleep this week. So l just don’t understand when people say they feel great eating low carb. I love all food, but when l cut back on whole food groups I always get side effects.
Cake, pasta, beans, vegetable, ice-cream, rice and fruit and my kind of diet. Not necessarily In that order, oh and l love sushi, yum yum.
You Americans have everything! I’m talking about the Nutricate…
I consciously avoid reading nutrition information these days because it does my head in (sometimes I do succumb though..). I think it’s of no use to “digest” nutrition information (esp research results ) if you don’t have solid background in nutrition science (and doing research) so you can put the results in perspective.
And I’m especially wary of reading “nutrition” blogs written by zealots of any kind. 🙂 And I’m pretty sure grains get bad rap mostly in Paleo or low carb circles.
Love Jelly Bean with underpants on her head. She looks like mini you. 🙂
Firstly holy crap when did Jelly Bean get so big?
Secondly yes as a fitness and health professional I’d love to at LEAST see calorie counts available everywhere. We know that people grossly underestimate the calories of the foods they eat, but like another commenter mentioned on receipts etc it should be OPTIONAL (for those with triggers). I personally love the macro breakdown though!
Pingback:Another Mom Called Jelly Bean Fat – She’s Fine But I’m Not [Plus: 5 Things I Do To Help My Kids' Self Esteem in a World That Constantly Wants to Destroy It]