As the second-oldest quarterback to appear in a Super Bowl, 39-year-old Tom Brady must be doing something right.
Make that a lot of things right – including, perhaps, a rigorous nutrition regimen that shuns most of American comfort food. Allen Campbell, a professional hotel chef hired by Brady and wife Gisele Bundchen to feed their family, prepares his employers – including their children – a menu that is largely plant-based.
It is based on research out of Cornell University that points to a plant-rich diet as a way to prevent disease, he told The Boston Globe.
1. Brace yourself: Here’s what you can’t eat.
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Campbell’s dishes avoid white sugar, white flour, coffee, caffeine, and dairy products. We repeat: coffee.
2. Brady doesn’t like nightshades.
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Cambell told The Globe that Brady prefers to avoid peppers, eggplants, mushrooms and tomatoes because in some circles, they are thought to cause inflammation. “Tomatoes trickle in now and then but just maybe once a month,” Campbell told The Boston Globe.
So….no flour, no dairy, no tomatoes. That’s a long way of saying no pizza.
3. Brady likes bananas, but that’s all in the fruit department.
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His kids eat fruit, Campbell said in The Globe interview, but Brady himself prefers not to eat fruit, except for the occasional banana tossed into a smoothie.
4. No gluten, which means a lot of brown rice, quinoa, and millet instead.
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Campbell finds ways to make raw granola and raw chocolate chip cookies.
5. No iodized salt.
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The Brady-Bundchen clan is served Himalayan pink salt instead. The reasoning for that choice wasn’t clear, as iodine has been put into commercial salt for nearly a century as a way to prevent iodine deficiency in the United States. A small amount of iodine is essential for human health, but Campbell may feel his charges get enough from the seaweed and seafood he serves.
6. Please tell me I can eat meat.
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By all means eat meat, so long as it is grass-fed organic steak. The other sources of protein Campbell likes to prepares? Wild salmon, chicken, and duck every once in a while.
7. So what do Tom and Gisele eat?
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Vegan fruit roll-ups for the kids. Raw lasagne for the family. Veggie sushi made from brown rice avocado, carrot and cucumber. Spirulina, which is an algae that can be dehydrated. Soups, root vegetables, quinoa with wilted kale, beet greens or Swiss chard, seasoned with garlic, toasted almonds, and a cashew sauce made with lime curry, lemongrass, and a touch of ginger.
Think you can’t eat this way without a private chef?
Barbara Mintz, vice president of healthy living and community engagement at RWJBarnabas Health and a registered dietician, actually does eat this way, for the most part.
She’s not on board with Brady’s “no caffeine” rule. She drinks some coffee: “I gotta tell you, that I do.” But she mostly sticks with green tea. Nor does she shun all sweets. She tries to stay away from regular sugar, believing it to be “worse than anything you can put in the body.” That doesn’t stop her from baking her own applesauce-sweetened cookies, or indulging in a vanilla wafer now and then.
Mintz works long hours, including weekends, and says she doesn’t particularly enjoy cooking. She adheres to a plant-based diet by stocking her refrigerator with veggies, including those bags of washed salad greens. She’ll roast a chicken over the weekend, or buy the organic version at the supermarket.
In general, she tries to steer clear of processed food – food in a can or a box, preferring versions that haven’t been manufactured. “Naked food, let’s call it,” she says. “Straight from the ground to your mouth.”
She tells people it will take at least 14 days for their palettes to get used to the change, although for some people, it could take up to three months.
“It’s almost as if you have to detox,” she said.
Kathleen O’Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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