Sara Dickerman - Bon Appetit: The Food Lover’s Cleanse

For Mary Dickerman, who taught me to cook and let me pore over all her copies of Bon Apptit when I was growing up. CONTENTS

It was manageable, not monastic. When we read the cleanse guidelines in the pages of the magazine, we couldnt help but smile: * Avoid booze (mostly). (I mean, cmonhow awesome is the mostly part?) * Choose healthy fats. (Code for avocados; praise the Lord.) * Limit sugar. (Not abstain, limit.) And it turns out that its not only we who dig the cleanse; our readers and online users love it too. Sara and nutritionist Marissa Lippert tap into a desire that so many Americans share.

After an indulgent holiday season, we want to recalibrate. And more than anything, Sara preaches doability. The cleanse is two weeks, not in perpetuity. She provides the user with detailed online shopping lists for the entire two-week run, and three recipes a day that mix and match ingredients. And all of the recipes can be repurposed thoughout the week. Oh, and did I mention that the recipes are delicious? Youll find yourself serving them to friends and family even when youre not technically on a cleanse.

When so many fad diets come and go, theres a reason The Food Lovers Cleanse has thrived for six years. Because it works. And, hey, its now a book, with a flavorful cleanse for each season! So go ahead and enjoy it. I can say that, because I know you will. Adam Rapoport It All Started Online... Six years ago, at the suggestion of my editor, I set out to get bonappetit.com readers back into the kitchen after the holidays by designing a healthy and appealing two-week eating plan with Marissa Lippert, a registered dietician.

The plan would put an emphasis on home cooking and whole foods, and the key rules in my mind were: no feelings of denial and absolutely no diet-y foods such as turkey bacon, artificially sweetened protein shakes, or egg-white omelets (for me, the only proper place for solo egg whites is in the meringue coating a baked Alaska). I wanted to show readers that flavor was the best way to coax ourselves into eating less of the super-refined stuff we all crave and more of the skin-on, whole-grain, lower-sugar food we could all use a little more of. I make a point of avoiding words like detoxing or superfoods, which are rooted more in media health hype than in science. If food can be the source of great temptation, why not harness the desire it creates by putting together healthieror, as Bon Apptit editor in chief Adam Rapoport called it, healthy-ishrecipes that are full of big, seductive flavors? And Evolved... With each annual cleanse, weve tried to streamline for real-life logistics, while at the same time delving into exciting new flavor territory. Weve all been astounded by the growing enthusiasm year after year.

I have done the annual program along with readers, blogging about my cleanse successes and hunger-induced temper fits alike. The community response was a huge part of the appeal: readers were Instagramming their delicious meals and actively commenting on bonappetit.com (catching typos with incredible accuracy, I should add!). Just like me, readers were eager to take good cooking into their own hands and retool their kitchens for good taste and good health. With Lots of Reader Input... Some followers stuck to the exact specifications of the program, even the snacks. They would write in upset that they couldnt find some odd ingredientsay, the salad green mizunaat the grocery store.

Dont worry! Eat some spinach instead, I would write back. Many readers would just pick and choose recipes from the plan. That was fine too: if I could get people excited about one great recipe for quinoa, or black cod, or Brussels sprouts, it felt as if I was doing some good. And one of the most frequent comments from readers was: Do more cleanses, for different times of year! And Now a Book! It may have taken a while, but with the publication of this book, were doing just that. We have a section for each season. If you want to do a full two-week cleanse, we have four schedules for you as well.

If youd rather use the book as a springboard for your own la carte version of healthier eating, by all means do that. Just remember that at the heart of the book is a true desire on my part to let the pleasures of eating guide you toward healthy habits. Enjoy! THE CONCEPT OF THE CLEANSE Ive been putting together The Bon Apptit Food Lovers Cleanse for six years now, and I have a confession to make: I have misgivings about the word cleanse. Its more appealing, I suppose, than diet or regimen, but using it is hard for me, because it suggests that the opposite of cleansing is getting dirty. And Im pro-food. I dont think eating, no matter how indulgent, is a sullying experience.

IS THIS REALLY A CLEANSE? There are plenty of cleanses, such as all-juice cleanses and lemon-water cleanses, that are far more radical than ours and are taken on as a kind of penance for the previous enjoyment of food. They promise, with little scientific evidence, to flush the body of toxins and give you a near-ecstatic energy boost. The problem with these cleanses is that they tend to vilify food, treating it as the enemy of health rather than a key to it. This kind of relationship to food is troubling to me and antithetical to a publication like Bon Apptit, which sets out to celebrate food and eating. Such withdrawal from typical eating patterns makes it too tempting to rebound from a program with defiant overeating. That said, I think there are moments when you can fine-tune the trajectory of your eating in a healthier direction. A CLEANSE IS A PROMISE TO YOURSELF What I do like about the idea of a cleanse is the idea of a resolution.

If you set up a series of healthy rules and follow them for a limited time, I think you can discover some key things about your own eating habits. You might discover, as I have, that some of your most ingrained habits are more changeable than you think. Cravings for sugar or starchy snacks do get less pointed; you may find that you need far less meat in a meal to feel satisfied. You might realize that you have the strength to make a few small, meaningful tweaks to your diet for the long term. We dont promise weight loss (though it could happen!) or an extra five years on your life, but I do think that working with this book can help you find a new equilibrium in your eating. RADICAL MODERATION The parameters of healthier food are ever shifting, even treacherous. To make sure our suggestions are sound, I have worked together with Marissa Lippert, both a registered dietician and a card-carrying Food Lover (she owns the West Village cafe, Nourish Kitchen + Table), to create a set of guidelines for four two-week clean-eating plans.

The boundaries are more radical in their moderation than anything else: its a program based more on saying yes than no.