For the Love of Food

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2:47bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders, and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers, and seekers here to start conversations because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Goop podcast. I'm your host, Gwyneth Paltrow. and today I'm going to do a little bit of a reflection that's maybe a little bit lighter and different although maybe parts of it won't be that light but I thought today I would talk about an aspect of my life that's really meaningful to me which is cooking and food kind of a strange topic maybe but as I sit down to record this I am in preparation for a big Easter brunch and so I started kind of taking note about how much joy I was feeling with this upcoming holiday and gathering and it filled me with so much joy to think about everybody coming together and bringing their children.

4:04And I guess it's really that idea that when we're congregating together, which as we know, helps with longevity, connections, and general happiness and contentment, we need those social connections. And so often at the epicenter of those things, those meaningful moments is food. And food is sort of the excuse, right? That we all come together to love one another and talk and share ideas. Come for dinner. I'll meet you for lunch. Come for this holiday. And so I started to think about how important food has been in my life and really going back to my childhood. I can't really remember all that well what mealtimes were like when I was growing up, when I was a little girl in Santa Monica.

5:04I do remember us always eating together as a family, which is a tradition that I've continued with my own family. But I can't really remember who cooked dinner and what we ate. I know my mother had some really fantastic dishes in rotation, but I don't think she loved to cook. And she also was an amazing working mother. I remember Stouffer's frozen dinners, which I loved, Stouffer's chicken pot pie, and those baguette pizza things that you would take out of the freezer and toast up. And I remember making my own lunch for school for my lunch box, probably starting fourth grade. And I remember taking great pleasure in putting together a lunch for myself and being able to add just the right amount of mustard to my roll with salami.

6:07That was my favorite lunch. And I suppose even at that age, I started to get the sense that I was pleasing myself, creating something for myself, delighting myself with something so simple as a sandwich. And that could be taken out and extrapolated to the people that you love. My dad loved food. And I think growing up on Long Island with not a lot of money, going out to dinner for my dad was like a sign of the American dream. It was emblematic of his success that he had started from relatively little and had worked incredibly hard and now could afford to go out to dinner. And the excitement around going out to dinner was infectious and something that we all got very excited about.

7:15And he never got jaded about it. He was always so thrilled about getting dressed, a little bit dressed up, and going to a restaurant either with his friends or my mom or all of us together. and I remember how thrilled he was always when my brother and I would eat something adventurous, you know, the early stages of our foodie culture in our house, you know, eating oyster, raw oyster or, you know, in elementary school or something. He would get so excited about my brother and I partaking in things that he never could have dreamed of as a child. I remember going to Tony Roma's for ribs. That was one of our favorites as a family.

8:10And just the concentration of flavor and deliciousness and the joy of my dad and the barbecue sauce and french fries. And he talked about it with so much love and kind of cherished every bite. And we learned to have kind of bold palates and really enjoy new flavors and sort of be brave around food and what we were eating. And I wouldn't say I grew up with a particularly healthy pantry, although my mother did try. And I remember we would have, you know, Hansen sodas instead of, you know, regular sodas, which were supposed to be healthier, though. I'm not sure that they were. But we really loved Oreos and Malamars.

9:02And Malamars, by the way, is that the greatest cookie of all time? I think it is. In England, they have these things called Tunnock's Tea Cakes, and they're very similar to Malamars. Anyway, I'm digressing. So we weren't such a ingredient-driven, like farmer's market-y, healthy. It wasn't totally there, though we did live when I was little in Southern California where we had access to incredible produce year-round. So we did have that. And we had pomegranate trees in our backyard that when they came into season, we would always come home after school and clamber up the tree and sit up there and eat pomegranates.

9:45My best friend Mary and I would sometimes sell them on the street in front of our house. So that was kind of the food scene growing up. So that was instilled in me very young, this idea that food was important. Food was a privilege. Food was central to a gathering. that flavors were meaningful and that's really where I think my palate got established and then we moved to New York City permanently after going a lot of doing a lot of back and forth we moved to New York City when I was 11 and then the world of restaurants really opened up there. We had a tradition of going to a restaurant called Elio's every Sunday night for a family dinner.

10:43There was also a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side called Pig Heaven, which was fantastic. And we continued to be a family that really gravitated around food. My dad actually invested in a restaurant in Aspen, Colorado called Gordon's, which was very sort of haute cuisine, like kind of by way of California in the mountains. It was delicious. And that was a really fun food chapter in our family as well. And whenever I would travel and do a film, once I got a bit older, I was always on the lookout for the best possible farmers markets in Paris or pizza places in Naples when I was shooting there.

11:34And really, that was how Goop started all the way back then. It was really me researching and keeping reams of notes on where the best place to go in all these various cities were, really driven by food.

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12:59When I was about 26, my father was diagnosed with cancer, throat cancer. And he endured a very difficult final chapter. The surgery that he had to undergo was pretty extreme. It was called a radical neck dissection. so the recovery was really brutal and unfortunately the radiation at the time was a bit less targeted and burned his salivary glands away so that he had a very difficult time eating from the time his treatment ended until the end of his life which was a particularly difficult thing to witness somebody who loved food so much and equated the joy of the day through how delicious the dinner was.

14:00But it was at that time that I started wondering really through trying to see if there was anything we could do to help my father, if there was any kind of intersection between wellness and food. And that's when I really started to research environmental toxins and our body's inability to properly detox many of these new compounds that exist in our environment, microplastics and forever chemicals. and I started to really try to get him on a bit of a health kick. You know, I was reading about cancer loving sugar. For example, when you go to get a PET scan, they give you a big glass of sugar water because the cancer cells love it.

14:56It really lights them up. So we made the inference that maybe sugar isn't such a great thing to have in great quantities if you're struggling with cancer. And there are many papers on that now. So I tried to convince him to stop putting sugar in his coffee in the morning. And I tried to make him go gluten-free, which was a hilarious endeavor. You know, I got met with comments like, I'd rather be dead. Or one time I spent a lot of time making him this gluten-free, sugar-free, you know, baked good of some times. And he famously said, well, it's like biting into the New York Times. So no, I did not convert him to eat a more healthy diet in hopes that it would translate into longevity.

15:59But through the process, I did start to kind of experiment on myself. And it was the first of my, what would become a long history of guinea pigging. And I started to read about detoxes and trying to help the body, aid the body in detoxing some of these compounds that are more difficult for us to get out of the system, like heavy metals, etc. I got very drawn to this idea of trying to detox the body and did a very early version of a cleanse that I found in a health food store in New York City downtown. town. And I noticed very quickly that I felt incredibly clear and light. My cognition was better, you know, all the things, my digestion.

16:54And I thought, oh my gosh, we really can impact the way we feel with food. And interestingly, you know, so many cultures have some kind of detox embedded in them. I mean, Ramadan is in a way a type of detox, as is Yom Kippur, as is Lent, and I'm sure many others. Certainly in indigenous cultures, there's fasting in order to purify the body. And I remember being met with an incredible amount of pushback when I talked about this in the early days. I remember a particularly vitriolic doctor coming out and saying the body knows how to detox you know detoxes are bullshit and yes that that is true the body does know how to detox and it is designed to detox but we have put chemicals into the environment and certain substances into the environment that as we all know have become very difficult to detox you know there was a study that analyzed human breast milk and found contamination with flame retardants, brominated flame retardants, and all kinds of carcinogens.

18:16In 2023, there was another study that found 25 different flame retardants in the breast milk of 50 mothers. There's been studies around microplastics in human placentas. I mean, I can go on and on, and we've all heard about heavy metals and how they can impact our inflammatory levels, et cetera. So yes, the body does need help in certain instances, especially me because I have a few genetic mutations that make it really difficult for me to detox properly. So I have a much harder time than the average person. And that's why I think I hypothesize that when I started doing or when I first did this detox, why I felt so good because I was really aiding my body in the detoxification process.

19:08Anyway, all this to just sort of paint the picture of this building block around the idea of moving away from foods that they themselves contain, quote, food-grade plastic or highly processed foods. At least in my case, I found that over time, when I tried to eliminate these things, my vitality spiked, my energy levels, clarity, etc. So that's what I was trying to bring into the life of my father as he was healing to no avail. But deliciousness could never be compromised. So when I did make him dinner, I always did try to make things as nutrient dense as possible, as unsprayed as possible, as whole food driven as possible.

20:03And that really spawned this whole other chapter in my life around, I think, bringing in the idea that there can be an autonomy over your wellness and how much food is the cornerstone of that. What we eat and what we abstain from directly impacts so profoundly how we feel, how we wake up in the morning. we know this if we have a night of drinking a lot of alcohol you know we wake up in the morning impacted by that and the reverse is true so i owe my father a real debt in a way to for i should say not only teaching me about the joys of food but then putting me on the path to find the joys of healthy food and the immediate impact that it has on how we feel.

21:00I believe this idea of food impacting our well-being goes all the way back to Hippocrates, who, so this is, you know, 300 years before Christ. And he's attributed with saying something like, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, which is something I think we've gotten quite far away from in our culture. But I don't want to digress too much further. I went into hardcore macrobiotics for a certain time. That was an interesting chapter where I got kind of obsessed with eating very, very healthily. I think that was, I was really trying to heal my dad by proxy and he just didn't really want anything to do with it.

21:55But the beauty of it for me was that I really deepened my connection with food and this whole philosophy around macro robotics, which is essentially just how they eat in the mountains of Japan. So very local, very seasonal, lots of fish and vegetables, rice, no dairy, no sugar, etc. I think that period of time, I might have gotten a little didactic about it, but I think I just felt so good. And I wanted to kind of share that with my, especially my dad, but my friends and family, and I guess the world to some extent as well. I think I was just so amazed that, you know, we had this power in our hands, you know, that if we treated ourselves well and hydrated and ate whole foods that we could just feel so much better.

22:52I was sort of intoxicated by that idea. And I still feel that way to this day. I mean, things have gotten a little more complicated with me and longer term inflammation and health stuff, as you would probably know about if you've listened to this pod before when I've interviewed doctors and experts on the subject. But it's the reason Brad and I became paleo a few years ago now, although I'm a little sick of it, if I'm honest, and getting back into eating some sourdough bread and some cheese. There, I said it. A little pasta after being strict with it for so long. But again, I think it's a good sort of template, right?

23:40Eating foods that are kind of as whole and fresh as possible. And I don't think that there's any doctor or nutritionist in the world who would refute that, right, as sort of a good starting point.

24:02Going back a little bit, somebody was asking me the other day how I got started on my boyfriend breakfast thing that I've been doing for many, many years now. When Brad and I were dating, I would make him breakfast every Saturday morning. We had a little bit of time together on Saturdays. If my kids were at a sleepover and before he got his kids on a Saturday morning, I would always make him breakfast. And it just became a nice tradition. You know, food, preparing food is a real love language for me. It's a way that I show how much I love and care. And he definitely deserved that kind of love and care and attention.

24:52and and I think you know without sounding too weird there is kind of a warm domesticity that makes me feel really good I would never prescribe that for anybody you know but for me I think that I've kind of unearthed this domesticity that's really mixed with independence and it's kind of you know on my terms which again is a privilege but there's something that makes me feel so good and I think makes our house feel good about my love of that particular domesticity cooking and looking after people that cooking dinner there every night became kind of my, it became my daily project. I wasn't working in film at all at the time.

25:53And I loved thinking about dinner time and what we were going to eat and what I was going to make. and it gave me this incredible grounding and I think as a person who had been a working woman who had stepped away from it even though it was very simple I did really love the creativity the outlet that it gave me of creativity and grounding and like sometimes even though it sound silly. Like that was what I put into the world that day, you know, just dinner for my family. And even though it was small, it felt whole to me. It, it generated a feeling of, of wholeness. And I was so grateful to the concept of dinner for giving me that, you know, it was also a period of time where I felt a bit, I don't know, like aimless, lost, you know, I had had such a strong identity as an actor for so many years.

27:01And then I was home with kids, which I loved. And I was so lucky, so lucky to be able to take some time off, a few years off to be with them. But also as somebody who had been so driven and achievement oriented, it was destabilizing to stop and be at home and not have all of those inputs from the outside world. And it was beautiful and important. and I'm so glad I did it. But I always look back at those meals with so much fondness because they gave me the feeling that I mattered even though I was simply making dinner and I felt accomplished even with a simple pasta dish. And again, that kind of domesticity that, you know, for me personally, it, it fed me.

27:58And I, and it's interesting because I have so many friends who hate that and they hate cooking and they, they don't want to be measured by whether they cook or not. And, and they don't have to be, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. I'm just, you know, every woman should conduct her life and her family exactly as she sees fit. My kids love it when I cook. We've managed to keep this tradition going where, you know, the decade later we are, I'm still making breakfast every Saturday morning. And I think it's, it's a very nice tradition that we have. And, and now of course I've had to convert all these recipes to paleo boyfriend breakfast, which is certainly a challenge, but I'm not mad at the idea that a woman can be really powerful in the world, have full agency, live life on her terms, and also really enjoy the hearth part of life, gathering around the hearth, investing in the effort of putting something together.

29:11It's been very enriching for me and us in our lives, You know, that making mealtime something special. And you don't even really have to make the food if you don't want to, which is part of the reason why I started Goop Kitchen. If you live in Southern California, hopefully we'll be coming to a city near you in the near future. but it's interesting actually because goop kitchen is really the culmination of all of these things and all the lessons that i've learned around food the importance of ingredients expressing love through flavor through the creativity of a recipe and i also kind of since my dad passed have wanted to disprove the idea that something gluten-free has to taste like you're biting into the New York Times and have spent many years creating food that is as delicious as it is healthy and it definitely is possible and that's just one of the many reasons why I'm really proud of what we've been able to do at Goop Kitchen with the amazing team there, Donald and Kim and Brent and everybody.

30:31We have such a heart-centered team and everybody there who really understands this approach to food, that it is a love language. Anyway, it's not meant to be a commercial for Goop Kitchen, but I do think it's something that my father would be really, really proud of if he were alive and able to taste it. Somebody asked me the other day, I have these things in my, you know, chiller drawer, or I want to go to the farmer's market. Like, how do I even start to make something ingredient driven. Of course, in California, we have the immense pleasure and privilege of having farmers markets all year round.

31:23But I think the idea that an ingredient can drive a creative conceit is really interesting to me. You know, chat GPT is a really great way to do this. I started messing around with that a bit where I'll cut a bunch of things from the garden and then ask chat GPT what I should make with it. And it's pretty incredible. I have to say for me, again, that idea of the hearth, and I think it goes back to my dad and his example of creating that feeling, that profound feeling of wholeness that comes from everybody being together, everybody laughing over a meal, hearing your three-year-old crack their first joke at the dinner table, people exchanging stories and having an amazing bottle of wine.

32:25I think when I look back at my life, it will be those moments when I conjure my life. And I think about how I spent my time. I think it will be those moments around a table probably more than anything else. You know, with my kids and my husband, my friends, the people that I love, hopefully in a very provocative single thread conversation where my husband has set the theme. And again, it will have been all centered around food.

33:07so there you go my meanderings and musings around a subject that is very near and dear to me what we eat how we eat how we express ourselves through the food that we make those of us who do how the quality of our lives are enriched by being together over mealtimes and how we have the capacity to change the way we feel in our bodies by what we decide to eat so thank you for joining me today i hope this wasn't too random but I was sort of called forth to talk about what food means to me, my friends, my loved ones. And thank you for joining me today. I hope you go eat something super delicious.

34:16This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.