As with all aspects of “food as medicine” I am not an expert, just a cook; speak with a professional dietitian, nutritionist or doctor before moving to any diet, to make sure you stay healthy.
My diet listing is a suggestion of how the food fits into the diets my friends have, you should ALWAYS verify and not take my word on these diets.
Additionally, my nutrition listing is my best guess at totals; if your health depends upon nutrition counting please verify any counts on my website yourself. Keep yourself healthy and safe, if it matters, verify.
What is a Diet
Wikipedia: The deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake.
Many of my colleagues, friends and family identify with certain diets or have to avoid certain foods. I am attempting to define my understanding of what those diets are so that I can better serve them great food that fits within their dietary needs. This listing is what I understand these diets to mean, which guides what I cook for these friends. This is not a medically driven explanation, just clear enough so I can cook.
Major Diets (intake for nutrition)
Flexitarian or Omnivore: This would be how I categorize my diet, I primarily eat a plant-based diet with occasional meat (meat, fish, or fowl) products. This diet seems to focus on getting all required nutrients from plants, reducing sugar intake, reducing processed foods, and eating some meats but rarely.
The Mediterranean diet consists of eating the traditional foods popular in southern Italy and France, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. Drinking water is important as well. I will mark a recipe as a “[x] Mediterranean” only if it seems to meet what people from these regions traditionally ate. Having been to most of these countries moderate amounts of red wine (at least a glass a day) and some fermented food are also critical to this diet.
- Food avoided by this diet is added sugar, most processed meat, refined grains, refined oils and other highly processed foods
- Eat lots of veggies, fresh fruits as dessert, beans, nuts, whole grains, seeds, and olive oil
- Cheese, yogurts and eggs are the main dairy foods
- Includes moderate amounts of fish and poultry with very small amounts of red meat (lamb)
Pescatarians are vegetarians, but eat dairy, eggs, fish and seafood.
The Trader’s Joe diet is for those who buy and eat mainly TJ’s fast food. Although I am partially being funny here, there are some people who have made food from TJ’s as their main diet.
The Raw food diet is a version of Veganism, and involves non-cooked non-processed foods that are completely plant-based and organic. This means foods that have never been heated over 104–118F (40–48C), and thus not pasteurized. What is allowed is juicing, blending, dehydrating, soaking and sprouting. (HealthLine writes about this diet, pro and con.) Since I am not an expert in this diet, I mainly serve salad or coleslaw or veggie filled lettuce cups type meals to people on this diet.
Vegan is a way of life, including a diet. The attempt is to remove all levels of “exploitation from animals.” For a cook this means no eggs, milk products, honey, or flesh of any kind.
Vegetarian for me is the ovo-lacto type; that is, someone who does not eat flesh (meat, fowl, or fish) but will eat animal byproducts like unfertilized eggs, milk, cheese, honey, etc. No comment on the one bacon-eating vegetarian friend.
Named Diets
Ketosis Diets
The recipes at PattyCooks.com contain a calorie and carb count by grams so you can use this to count to make sure you are under 50g carbs/day, or calorie level, whatever your ketosis diet calls for.
I have written a post detailing ketosis diets.
- The Atkins Diet as a self-directed high fat, high protein, and low carb diet leading to ketosis. I do not know much more about this diet and have never been on it.
- Health Management Resources Program (HMR) is a medically monitored program featuring meal replacements to minimize carbohydrate consumption leading to ketosis, along with nutritional and diet instruction. I am most familiar with the OptiFast program so am focused on that.
- Keto Diet (KD) is a self-directed high fat, low carb, nominal (or adequate) protein diet leading to ketosis.
Avoidance Diets (for medical condition)
Lectin Avoidance diet
(healthline.com)
This is an attempt to reduce the consumption of lectins, a carb-binding protein that is reported to lead to all sorts of gastric issues. For a cook, this is such a complex diet that I usually just ask them what they want to eat, and make some side dishes that they can enjoy.
- Avoid uncooked or slow cooked beans (prevention.com) and legumes, especially red kidney beans and peanuts
- Avoid grains. wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers, eggs
- Avoid Soy, Corn or Milk and their products
Oxalate avoidance diet
(kidney.org + ClevelandClinic + UofChicago)
This is a VERY complex amount of food to avoid, so use caution when I indicate something is okay to eat, I may be wrong!!
This is intended to assist people with kidney stones. The goal is to avoid any food that promotes stone-forming, those that are rich in oxalates and phosphates. Similar to the other avoidance diets this is a complex diet and I may just make several side dishes I know they like and serve that.
- NO: Fruits: raspberries, avocado, oranges, dates, grapefruit, kiwi, dried fruit and canned pineapple Veggies: potatoes, spinach, rhubarb, tomato sauce, turnips, okra, and yams (sweet potatoes) along with beans of different sorts Cereal/Nuts: Millet, bulger, wheat berries, rice bran, corn grits, + cornmeal, nuts + seeds, chocolate, miso, peanut butter, and tahini
- OK: Other berries, milk products, meat products, and fish, white rice, hummus, corn flour, corn bran, flax seed, and oat bran
Gluten avoidance
This diet is intended to assist people with gluten-intolerance, irritable bowl syndrome, wheat allergy, or celiac disease. If I am in doubt is something is gluten-free I do a quick google search. I will mark a recipe as a “[x] Gluten Free” only if it contains no gluten, otherwise I will try to offer alternatives to the items that contain gluten.
- Avoid Wheat, all varieties (whole wheat, wheat berries, graham, bulgur, farro, farina, durum, kamut, bromated flour, spelt, etc.)
- Avoid Rye, Barley, Triticale
- Avoid many processed foods that use these products as fillers (canned fruits, cross contaminated foods, some dried fruit have fillers, frozen veggies or fruits that have sauces, etc.)
- Use gluten free Quinoa, Brown-Wild-White-Red-Black rice, Buckwheat, Sorghum, Tapioca, Millet, Amaranth, Teff, Arrowroot, Oats
Purine avoidance
(mayoclinic.org and healthline.org)
This diet is intended for people who have gout.
- Avoid All organ meats: liver, kidneys, sweetbreads and brain
- Avoid Game meats: pheasant, veal and venison
- Avoid Fish: Herring, trout, mackerel, tuna, sardines, anchovies, haddock, etc
- Avoid Other seafood: Scallops, crab, shrimp and roe
- Avoid Sugary beverages: Especially fruit juices and sugary sodas
- Avoid Added sugars: Honey, agave nectar and high-fructose corn syrup
- Avoid Yeasts: Nutritional yeast, brewer’s yeast and other yeast supplements
- Avoid Alcohol: beer
- Avoid Refined carbs: cookies, and cake