You’re going to want to sit down for this one, because there’s a lot to digest.Gwyneth Paltrow, who has consciously uncoupled from multiple food groups in the past, is bringing pasta back into her life. And she can have a little bread and cheese, too, as a treat.
The actor and entrepreneur broke this news on arecent episodeof her Goop podcast, where she mused about all the fad diets she’s cycled through. “I went into hardcore macrobiotics for a certain time,” she noted. “That was an interesting chapter where I got kind of obsessed with eating very, very healthily.”
More recently, Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk, have been on the paleo diet. This is based on the idea that we should all have the same pre-agricultural food habits as our Paleolithic ancestors – a group of people who didn’tlive past the age of 35. While most interpretations of the paleo diet involve cutting out a lot of carbs, the “scientific” underpinning of this diet is bunk. Studies show that early humans had variable diets, influenced by a number of factors, and did, in fact,eat carbohydrates. Indeed, the average caveperson probably ate more carbs than the modern celebrity.
Now, however, it seems the Goop founder is a little bored of the paleo diet. “I’m getting back into eating sourdough bread, and some cheese – there, I said it,” she said. “A little pasta after being strict with it for so long.”
Why on earth am I writing about this? I’ll tell you why: because this little development in Paltrow’s digestive tract has made international news, getting coverage from the likes of theBBCto the Times of India. A wealthy white woman’s decision to (sparingly) eat spaghetti again seems to be getting more attention than the fact that kids are starving inGazaandSudan.
This, by the way, is not the first time that Paltrow breaking bread has been deemed breaking news. In 2021, she revealed on a podcast that things hadgotten so darkin the early days of the pandemic that she had started eating carbs. “I drank alcohol during quarantine,” she said. “I was drinking seven nights a week and making pasta and eating bread. Iwent totally off the rails.” Do you know what Paltrow was binge-drinking while nibbling at sourdough, by the way? Honestly, you can’t make this up:quinoa whiskey.
While all this may seem very silly, there is a serious side to Paltrow’s ever-changing palate. The Goop entrepreneur’s wellness ideas are highly influential – even if many of them are scientifically dubious. Over the years, she has arguably helped tonormalizerestrictive eating and glorifyorthorexia, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. I’m not trying to diagnose Paltrow with anything, to be clear, but I think it should be fairly obvious that going on a podcast to share that you now eat pasta, like it’s some sort of dirty little secret, is not a particularly normal thing to do. It should certainly be a sign to her followers that Paltrow isn’t someone you should look to for health and wellness advice.
Of course, these bread revelations may be a sign of something else – perhaps they are a subtle recession indicator? With Trump’s tariffs poised to make everything more expensive, I cannoli imagine that we’re going to see a lot of people cutting back on meat and eating more pasta.
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