Gwyneth Paltrow has decided to ditch her restrictive caveman diet and re-join the rest of us in the 21st century.
A few years back, the Goop mogul, 52, committed to a life of eating what our Palaeolithic ancestors did, cutting out ingredients like refined sugar, processed oils and dairy—opting instead for lean meats and nuts.
On Tuesday, however, Paltrow admitted on her Goop podcast that she has “started eating bread, cheese and pasta again.”
In the episode titled ‘For the Love of Food,’ she said: “I went into hardcore macrobiotic for a certain time, that was an interesting chapter where I got obsessed with eating very very healthily.”
Despite “deepen[ing] her connection with food,” she admitted that she got “didactical about it.”
Paltrow said that while she is still “intoxicated” by the idea of eating well, she is a bit “sick” of the strict regimen of the diet.
The actress, who recently said she is “very fascinated” by RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, added that health issues complicate the matter.
“Things have gotten a little more complicated with me and longer term with inflammation and stuff,” she explained.
“It’s the reason Brad and I became Paleo a few years ago now. Although I’m a little bit sick of it, if I’m honest,” she added, referring to her TV producer husband Brad Falchuk, 54.
“I’m getting back into eating sourdough bread, cheese–there I said it. A little pasta after being strict with it for so long.
“But again I think it’s a good template, eating foods that are as whole and fresh as possible. I don’t think there is any doctor or nutritionist that would refute that.”
Paltrow infamously said in 2023 that her meals for the day usually consists of coffee for breakfast, bone broth for lunch and “according to paleo,” lots of vegetables for dinner.
“I eat dinner early in the evening. I do a nice intermittent fast,” she said on the Art Of Being Well podcast, while hooked up to an IV drip of vitamins. Yes, really.
“I usually eat something about 12 and in the morning. I have things that won’t spike my blood sugar so that’s why I have coffee.
“But I really like soup for lunch. I have bone broth for lunch a lot of the days. I try to do one hour of movement, so I’ll either take a walk or I’ll do Pilates or I’ll do my Tracy Anderson.”
“It’s really important for me to support my detox,” she added, with her comments sparking a backlash.
The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi said the routine showed that “wellness can become a sickness.”
Body positivity influencer Alex Light said the diet showed “hugely disordered eating.”
“Wellness is about being physically and mentally well. Starving yourself isn’t it,“ she said.
Actress and activist Jameela Jamil said it’s dangerous to take nutrition advice from a “bunch of traumatized women who are mocked and scrutinized over their appearance daily.”
Paltrow, who has released five cook books, added later that this is not what she always eats, and the routine was colored by the fact that she was suffering from high levels of inflammation after long Covid.
“It’s not meant to be advice for anybody else,” she said.
Even still, the A-lister has developed a reputation for being one of the most health-conscious Hollywood stars. She turned “seriously macrobiotic” in 1999 after her father was diagnosed with throat cancer a year earlier.
“I felt I could heal him by proxy,” she told British Vogue in 2013.
She told the Mail on Sunday in 2011 that her plan was “obviously ridiculous,” but she tried anyway. “But I didn’t want him to die and the doctors said he had to be healthier,” she continued.
“He literally had a hot dog before his surgery, and I was like, ‘Come on.’ So I started to read about how powerful the body can be if you do not poison it with processed food and white sugar—there are cases that show that sometimes people can heal themselves,” Paltrow said.
However, when serving him gluten-fee noodles for lunch post-op he said it tasted like “biting into the New York Times.”
Bruce Paltrow died in 2002, aged just 58, while on holiday in Rome, Italy, with his daughter.
Paltrow remained a macrobiotic obsessive, only shelving the diet when she was pregnant with her two children with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin—Apple, 20, and Moses, 19.
“I went from being completely macrobiotic, I got pregnant with my daughter, and if I smelled brown rice or salmon or vegetables I threw up,” she told Leandra Medine of now defunct fashion and lifestyle blog Man Repeller in 2020.
Instead, her diet consisted of “grilled Swiss cheese sandwiches, french fries, Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream from Baskin Robbins, yogurt and apples.”
The macrobiotic diet champions working in harmony with nature, choosing organic food free of toxins. Paltrow parlayed her version into her lifestyle brand, “Goop,” which was founded in 2008.
In the aforementioned Man Repeller interview, Paltrow admitted that she liked a beer and a bag of Doritos occasionally, but credited her products with helping her skin remain glowing. “I swear by them, I’m not kidding,” she said.
As well as vagina-scented candles and vibrators, Goop sells lots of curious pills packed with “clinically researched ingredients” that help women specifically over 45 have healthy hair and strong, erm, finger nails.
Also available is gel that apparently makes your brain perform better.
An annual “5-day detox” shared in 2022 seemed to echo Paltrow’s now former eating habits. It urged readers to ditch an exhaustive list of ingredients, including caffeine, alcohol, dairy, gluten, corn, nightshades (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, potatoes), refined sugar, shellfish, white rice, eggs and soy.
The brand has undergone somewhat of a cleanse in recent years, especially after it came under fire from watchdog group Truth in Advertising for “deceptive” health claims on over 50 of its products.
The group said in Aug. 2017 that Goop “claims, either expressly or implicitly, that its products (or those it promotes) can treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments,” according to a press release.
In 2017, NASA had to debunk a claim by Goop, which suggested that its science was used in its questionable wearable “stickers” designed to “promote healing.”
One of Paltrow’s five cook books, It’s All Good, espoused her macrobiotic lifestyle in particular, and shunned gluten, dairy, and sugar.
Each recipe in the book features a subheading “denoting whether it’s apt for an elimination diet, a lean-protein weight loss program, or a food allergy issue, avoiding dairy, sugar and gluten,” according to Get the Gloss.
It’s All Good will presumably now go back on the shelf in Paltrow’s kitchen, as her social media seems to confirm her recent food pivot.
On Tuesday she shared an Instagram post showing her dinner, two large—albeit incinerated—chickens with all the trimmings. Paltrow has also shared images of fries, burgers and pizza of late.
The post Gwyneth Paltrow Ditches Caveman Diet as She Returns to Modern Food appeared first on The Daily Beast.
