Should Your Kids Go On Your Diet? Let’s Ask Gwyneth Paltrow
03/14/2013 2:06 PM BY
For a few days now the interwebz has been having a field day over ametur dietician and professional sefl-awareness-lacker Gwyneth Paltrow. The 40-year-old actress’ is about to debut her new cookbook It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great. Reports suggest that had a third subtitle not been overkill, the cover would also read, “And Why My Kids Can Never Have Toast.”
Ever subtle celebrity gossip channels also suggest that Gwyneth Paltrow is starving her kids.
Only for quality entertainment, AMIRITE?
Dear Apple, I hope you like that your name is a food. That’s the closest you’re getting.
Always quick to tell us what she won’t eat, Gwyneth says she wrote a cookbookafter a so-called health scare – which most of us call a headache from not eating – that revealed she was anemic. She says she was advised to cut out coffee, eggs, sugar, shellfish, potatoes, wheat, and meat. Presumably she is to get the iron that might ease her anemia from sucking the shavings off Mr. Wizard’s giant magnet.
Paltrow writes that she had her entire family tested for allergies and everyone in the joint (Paltrow, husband Chris Martin, and kids Moses and Apple) is gluten-intolerant. She suggests that scientists named physicians random people assure her that a majority of us are likely intolerant as well.
Oh I am intolerant alright.
As wacky and irritating as it is to listen to a celebrity’s sanctimonious opinions about what you shove in your face-hole, Paltrow only really started catching Hell when she shared what it has been like since nixing gluten and carbs from the Gwynner table:
“Sometimes when my family is not eating pasta, bread or processed grains like white rice, we’re left with that specific hunger that comes with avoiding carbs.”
Shhhhhh! Put you ear to the ground and you can hear it. ”OH DEAR GOD WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!”
Okay, does Gwyneth Paltrow talk about food a lot? Like, a whole lot. Especially for someone who decided she was a foodie/lifestyle guru/average woman the way a five-year-old me decided I was a Space Cowgirl. Yes. Does she make surprising suggestions in her book that smack of pseudo-science, fear-mongering, and someone who missed the day they taught probability in stats class? Sure. But should we judge her for how she feeds her children, especially if she thinks she’s doing right by them or if the kids do have allergy diagnosis? Meh, probably not.
However, this whole shebang does summon up a bigger question: if you get a wild hair to go on a diet or if your doctor – or spiritual adviser or nutritionist or trainer – does suggest a restrictive eating plan, should you make your kids follow suit? I mean, your kids are still growing. And unless they have a diagnosed allergy or severely screwed up, nutrition-free diets, maybe their dietary needs are different than yours. Look at those fresh little faces! They haven’t had time to fuck up their bodies like we grown-ups have. Unless you have one hairy, ancient, advanced first grader on your hands, he or she hasn’t survived Boone’s Farm, grain alcohol, red dye, sliding down hills on cafeteria trays, accidentally doubling up on Tylenol PM, or downing a friend’s expired antibiotics.
Known to cure 88 different strains of intolerance.
So while I can’t comment on Gwyneth Paltrow’s nutritional or maternal deficits, I can’t suggest that she and other celebrity parents are the Physicians Desk Reference either. They’re not even WebMD. Yes, gluten allergies, celiac disease, wild food intolerances…all are real things. But they are highly individual and not up for self- (or Paltrow-) diagnosis. Especially when it comes to your kids.
Bonus Tip: don’t ever take advice from a woman whose lifestyle website GOOP proudly proclaims, “Us Busy Bitches Love a One-Pan Meal.”
Or a woman whose house contains nothing but crates full of squash.
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