food

Lola Berry recorded everything she ate for Day on A Plate. Then a dietitian responded.

Since Pete Evans, celebrities surely must await Dr Joanna McMillan’s response to their Day on a Plate in fear.

A popular health/food column in the Sydney Morning Herald, well-known faces record everything they eat in a typical day then submit it to the dietician for her expert verdict.

Lola Berry’s in Sunday’s edition may well be the best one since Evans’.

As a nutritionist, yoga teacher and author of new book Beauty Food, Berry’s daily menu is as healthy as you’d expect. There’s a lot of raw foods (including chocolate), activated almonds (raw, of course), activated charcoal in her “black detox smoothie”, a turmeric latte and “natural Nutella balls” that disappointingly, contain no Nutella at all. And that’s all by lunchtime.

She finishes the day at 8:45pm by “Writ[ing] tomorrow’s goals down before sleeping with crystals under my pillow.”

Dr McMillan’s response was simultaneously sassy and kind.

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She gave Berry “top marks” for all the plant foods she was packing into her diet, but had a warning for her.

“If you keep eating like this you’ll… Spend a lot of money on foods and health treatments that lack scientific evidence,” she wrote.

“Activated nuts cost double the raw variety. Activated charcoal is used to treat some drug overdoses but that doesn’t mean it’s good to have in your regular diet. Watch your coconut oil intake and remember, a healthy liver does the detoxing for you.”

As for her claim her evening dessert of a couple of squares of raw chocolate had less sugar than a carrot, McMillan disagreed.

“Your chocolate may have less sugar than a carrot, but that carrot is all natural and the bar will have a whole load more kilojoules,” she wrote.

You heard the woman – sometimes superfoods aren’t so super after all.