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Solving the "variety" problem By Dr. John M Berardi, Ph.D.
The Greatest Nutritional Complaint
“Are you kidding, JB? You expect me to eat this stuff? Where’s the taste? Where’s the VARIETY?!!”
This is BY FAR the nutritional complaint I hear most often from clients, athletes, seminar attendees and readers alike. Ever since I first starting publishing articles on t-mag about six years ago, I’ve been bombarded with this complaint. And over the past two years, I’ve probably gotten at least one angry email a day, basically saying the exact same thing:
“This stuff is boring and tastes terrible! Give me better food choices!”
Now, I’ve cleaned up the profanity, because this is a g-rated site.
Variety?! You gotta be kidding me.
To be honest, for the longest time I just dismissed the variety of “variety complaints.” Sounded like a bunch of nonsense to me, for two reasons:
1) The “no variety” complaint sounds like just another weak excuse for giving up.
People stopped eating well and needed someone to blame. Of course it’s not their fault they’re overweight. It’s their genes. Of course it not their fault they’re not building muscle or recovering properly. It’s their job, they can’t be expected to eat – gasp – at work! Of course it’s not their fault they’ve got high blood glucose and high blood pressure. It’s that damn JB’s boring eating plan!
2) There is no reason why great nutrition must necessarily mean boring, repetitive meals and bad tasting food.
One only needs to look to my Berardi’s Kitchen articles to see that the variety is almost unlimited. I practice what I preach, and my kitchen has more variety than most others I’ve seen. And if MY kitchen is boring, an exciting kitchen must be some kind of culinary amusement park, a veritable Six Flags of cuisine.
But despite all this, people still complain about variety. And quite frankly, it started to annoy me. So in an effort to squash this complaint once and for all (yeah, right), or at least buy myself a brief reprieve from the anti-boredom coalition’s email campaign, I started to investigate the problem a little more seriously.
Step 1: The Client Survey
The first step was an informal survey of former clients of mine. Usually, when I client ends his or her service tenure with me, I’ll send them a questionnaire regarding the experience. Among other things, I want to know why exactly they ended their service, so that I can continuously refine my coaching systems to get industry-beating results. I hadn’t taken a look at the numbers in a while, so the other day I sat down and got to work.
When the results were in, I was happy to learn that most of our clients (about 83%) had ended for the only reason I accept as good: during their stay with us, they had learned exactly how to design and monitor their own training and nutrition plans. For my head coach, Carter Schoffer and I, that’s our goal in coaching – to make ourselves dispensable. Once a client has learned how their own body responds to various training and nutrition protocols, they shouldn’t need us for anything beyond occasional support and troubleshooting.
But what about the other 17% of clients? Why did they stop? Well, that was the disappointing part. They quit because they got sick of the food. One client in particular remarked, “I don’t think I’m cut out to eat such Spartan meals.”
The Taste Bud Approach
All these years, I’ve had a standard response to complaints about taste and variety, and it goes something like this:
“Your taste sensation will change. Studies show that eventually you’ll lose that sweet tooth and that love of deep friend, trans-fat soaked garbage. Further, you’ll grow to prefer natural, healthy, richly textured foods. You’ll even grow to like the crunchy freshness of fruits and veggies.”
And this comment is absolutely true.
The study of taste is fascinating. A few facts about taste:
- Women tend to be better “tasters” than men, which may make them more finicky and may allow them to decipher between 800 types of chocolate.
- Age leads to losses in taste sensation, leading to a loss in appetite and the desire to eat. That’s partly why nutrient deficiencies develop with age.
- And finally, as mentioned earlier, our sense of taste will change with what we’re habitually eating.
Let me stress how important this final point is. I’ve seen people come to love foods they used to hate, and turn those same foods into their favorite meals. Exhibit A: cottage cheese. Anyone who’s done this long enough knows a good cottage cheese flip-flop story. Such a flip-flop can even be induced instantly from time to time, by having the subject taste the famous Cottage Cheese Peanut Butter Cup Concoction: cottage cheese, chocolate-flavored Low Carb Grow, and natural peanut butter. This stuff is awesome.
But in the end, this discussion still doesn’t get the job done. People still demand variety and “better tasting” foods.
The Gourmet Solution
Hence, the Gourmet Nutrition E-book. This book was created with the express intention of feeding both your body - with health, great tasting food AND your mind - with cooking tips and nutrition strategies designed to improve your understanding of which foods are best and why. We'll show you:
- What exactly you need in your kitchen, and what you must not have, if you're to succeed -- from foods, appliances and utensils, right down to the spices.
- A 6 step system for building your kitchen anew – even if it’s in need of the most dramatic of overhauls!
- 100 perfect meals, quick and easy meals as well as 5-star, impress-your-friends style meals. How about healthy Chicago deep dish pizza or striped bass with artichokes and asparagus?
- Meal categorization according to the best time of day to eat the meals. How about a post workout shake, followed an hour later by our healthy Hawaiian pizza. Then, later in the evening, sit down for our pecan-crusted salmon.
- 17 food preparation tips, making you a culinary dynamo in no time. No more fingertips in your vegetable medley!
- 25 food facts and strategies, tips that help you make sense of all the confusing nutritional recommendations out there.
- How to pick the absolute best fruits, the best vegetables, the best grains, the best times to eat, and more!
Now remember, this is not a mere cookbook. It's a full-blown optimal eating manual.
If you want to learn 50 different ways to bake an apple pie, this is not the book for you.
But if you want to get in the best shape of your life, you've come to the right place. That's what this site is about, and that's why we wrote Gourmet Nutrition. These recipes are designed specifically to get you there.
Order the Gourmet Nutrition E-Book Today!
Price: $29.99 USD Format: Adobe PDF |  |
Unconditional Money-Back Guarantee
Simply put, everyone should have this e-book. So what I'd like to do is completely remove the risk. If you disagree that Gourmet Nutrition solves the dreaded variety problem, if you disagree that Gourmet Nutrition will drastically improve your meal plans -- just let me know within 30 days of purchase and I'll refund your money, 100%, no questions asked. I can't make it any easier than that.