What I Eat

I have a relatively unusual diet and people ask me about it a lot, so I figured I’d write the definitive guide.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What I Eat
A Typical Day
Food Philosophy
FAQ

What I Eat

Things I eat almost every day
Yogurt, pecan/walnut, blueberry, egg, avocado, spinach, tomato, mushroom, tortilla, orange, apple, banana

Other things I eat often
Carrots, hummus, black beans, green beans, tofu, salmon, lentils, brown rice, onion, zucchini, chickpeas, bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, barley, cheese, eggplant, garlic, cashews, cucumber, mango, peas, parsnips

Things I Wish I Liked But Don’t
Beets, pickles, brussels sprouts, radishes. Bitter veg basically.

Things I Wish I Didn’t Like But Do
Bread

A Typical Day

Pre-breakfast/right when I wake up: banana
Breakfast: Yogurt with blueberries and either pecans or walnuts (I alternate; pecans are tastier/sweeter but walnuts are cheaper). God I love this combination of foods.
Lunch: Egg sandwich on a whole wheat tortilla with avocado, tomato, mushroom, and spinach. Lately I started adding cucumber sometimes. I cook this 6-7 times a week and have gotten super-efficient. Usually I cook the vegetables together, but if I want to save time I skip the mushrooms, cook the spinach with the eggs, and eat the tomato raw. I top it off with a piece of fruit.
Snack: Carrots and hummus
Dinner: If I’m cooking, it’s salmon with zucchini and bell pepper (I cook two meals’ worth at a time). If my wife’s cooking, it’s whatever carb/protein/veg grab bag she’s in the mood for from the “other things I eat often” list above. She loves onion so that’s probably the most common of those. Top off with fruit again.

Food Philosophy

I got my whole food philosophy from Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food”. His main points are:

• You should eat things your grandmother (great-grandmother at this point) would recognize as food, and not eat things she wouldn’t.
• Nutritional science is constantly flip-flopping and you can safely ignore it. No need to stress out about individual vitamins or micronutrients.
• Fruits and veggies are good.

He suggests the heuristic of “Buy things that are sold around the edges of the grocery store”. I don’t know why grocery stores are set up this way, but it totally works. Some other heuristics I like:

• Don’t buy things that come in non-transparent packaging
• Don’t buy things that are trademarked
• Don’t buy things with lots of ingredients. Ideally you’re buying singular objects that don’t even have to have a list.

FAQ

Q: How do you season your food?
A: I cook with olive oil. Other than that, I… don’t. I figure adding salt puts people on a hedonic treadmill where food tastes bland to them without it, so why bother starting down that road? As for spices, mostly I either find them overwhelming (e.g. poblanos, chili flakes) or undetectable, so I don’t bother adding them myself, but my wife likes to add cumin, paprika, oregano, and maybe a few others I forget.
Q: Do you go out to eat?
A: I get takeout probably 2-3x a month. In order of frequency: Mediterranean (I was the first customer at Oren’s SF outpost), Ethiopian (check out Moya if you live in SF!), Indian (check out Raavi), Thai. Plus my wife brings me various bread objects sometimes when she hits a bakery.
Q: You vegetarian?
A: Eh not totally, I love salmon and eat shrimp whenever I can get it. I never eat non-seafood meat at home but occasionally have meat socially.
Q: You don’t eat dessert?
A: WDYM, I eat dessert after every meal. Apple, orange, a mango as an occasional treat.
Q: Come on man. I mean like real dessert.
A: Nah never.
Q: You must have a lot of willpower.
A: At this point it’s pure habit. Most things people call dessert don’t register to me as edible substances. Plz don’t take this as an insult but watching someone eat a donut makes me feel confused & roughly the way you’d feel watching someone eat like a wad of candle wax.
Q: Do you ever overeat? A: Never at home, but when I’m eating work food (I go into the office 1 or 2 days a week), sometimes. They cook with all kinds of alien-sounding ingredients; rice bran oil, xanthan gum, soy lecithin. I think your body naturally stops you from overeating unless what you’re eating is actively trying to trick it, which most additives unfortunately are. Q: I heard you can’t smell.
A: Yeah. I’m sure that colors everything you just read, but IDK exactly how.
Q: Can you taste?
A: Yeah. Not sure if worse than smellers (“smell is a part of taste”, I’ve heard) or better (blind people hear better than seeing people, I’ve heard)
Q: Don’t you get bored of eating the same food all the time?
A: Not really. I go to bed every night looking forward to breakfast the next morning.