© Ida Mae Astute/ABC via Getty ImagesGwyneth Paltrow cooking family recipes on Good Morning America.
Gwyneth Paltrow has been castigated for saying she avoids feeding her children carbohydrates, but she's right: we don't need to eat starchy carbs at all, says Joanna BlythmanGwyneth Paltrow has provoked the wrath of the dietetic establishment by saying that she avoids feeding her children bread, rice and pasta, because she believes that these carbohydrate foods aren't good for them. Paltrow was writing in her new low-carb, gluten-free cookbook,
It's All Good, which is out in April, and whose recipes are said by her publisher to "
form the basis of the diet Gwyneth goes back to when she's been overindulging, when she needs to rebuild, or lose weight."
Dieticians who subscribe uncritically to government nutritional guidelines have been wheeled out to testify to how 'vital' carbohydrate is in the diet, and warn in the bleakest terms of the dangers of restricting it. Paltrow is putting her children, aged eight and six, "at risk of nutrient deficiencies", warns one. Her children "won't be able to think straight as their brain won't be functioning", says another. In the same
Daily Mail piece, it is even
observed that Paltrow's children are thin - shock horror! - as if this was automatically cause for concern. So accustomed are we to the sight of overweight children, thin ones are beginning to look unusual.
Casting Paltrow in the role of the neurotic celeb, selfishly inflicting her own faddy and dangerous eating habits on her poor starved offspring, has undeniable appeal, especially for those of us who aren't rich or pretty and who struggle daily with our own excess weight. The
New York Post says: "The book reads like the manifesto to some sort of creepy healthy-girl sorority."
But Paltrow has a point: no one, not even a child, actually "needs" to eat carbs.
Comment: Listen to the excellent SOTT Talk Radio show: Paleo food: Healthy eating in a GMO world to learn more about the evils of GMO's