What does a flavor-honest diet mean? What do flavor-honest meals look like? This page contains photographic examples of flavor-honest meals and offers an illustrated guide for those who are new to this way of eating.
You have probably found this page after reading Foods That Lie, or hearing from someone who has. This book presents a new explanation for the obesity epidemic – centered around deception in the food supply. Foods That Lie outlines how to stop overeating and rapidly initiate normal eating patterns, naturally returning you to a healthy weight.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: What is flavor-honest food? | The benefits of eating flavor-honest | Which foods are flavor-honest? | Breakfast ideas | Lunch ideas | Dinner ideas | Flavor-honest snacks | Desserts + party foods | Thoughts about chocolate | Drinks | Thoughts about coffee | Eating out | Cookbooks | How to begin | Menus, shopping lists + meal planning
A definition: what is flavor-honest food?
Flavor-honest food is food that tastes like it should – just as nature intended.
Food manufacturers commonly disguise unpleasant tastes, magnify pleasant flavors, and apply flavors where they do not belong. This muddling of flavor signals disrupts the learned relationships between flavor and nutrition so it is difficult for the body to predict when and where nutrition will be found. Food manufacturers also add many other chemicals – such as preservatives – which further confuse existing flavor-nutrition relationships.
Because these flavor-manipulation strategies are varied and widespread (involving thousands of different additives), a simple rule of thumb is that genuine, flavor-honest food contains no isolated chemicals.
All refined and isolated chemical additives can create intermittent reinforcement. Using isolated chemicals confuses flavor-nutrition relationships and misleads sensory receptors about what is entering the body. – Libby Marama Grace, Foods That Lie (2024)
In concept, identifying flavor-honest food is simple. Flavor-honest food is grown of the Earth and has only been processed in a basic way: grinding, cutting, peeling, cooking, squeezing, and so on.
This means:
- Any fruit in the world is fine.
- Any vegetable in the world is fine.
- Any whole fresh or frozen meat or fish is fine.
- Any nut, seed, or grain is fine.
- Any whole milk, butter, cheese or yoghurt is fine.
- Any natural spice or herb is fine.
In other words, every genuine food available in the world is fine, as long ingredients are not refined into isolated molecular components and reassembled anew – or manipulated via flavoring molecules, additives, or extracts.
Whole foods vs flavor-honest foods
What is the difference between whole foods and flavor-honest foods? Some assume that flavor-honest might be just another way of saying ‘whole foods,’ but this is not necessarily the case. Although most whole foods are flavor-honest, not all processed foods are deceptive. Traditional processing methods, such as chopping, peeling, squeezing, grinding, cooking, and so on, do not mislead the sensory receptors and can still create reliable flavor-nutrition relationships. In other words, grinding wheat to make flour does not suddenly change the substance from genuine to deceptive. It is the isolating of substances into their individual molecular building blocks and then applying these chemicals in new locations that disrupts the learned relationships between flavor and nutrition.
Uncertainty and edge cases
Although recognising genuine food is simple, people can feel uncertain about some items. After all, many modern foodstuffs are prepared in factories, away from prying eyes. Even if someone researches a particular manufacturing process, how can they be sure that deception or food fraud has not taken place?
There can be a tendency, in such cases, to worry and dither, with the individual fretting about particular items, sometimes hindering escape and momentarily delaying the leap to freedom.
Remember this: It is impossible to be sure about every single item. Deception cannot be eliminated from this Earth. There will always be those who try and weasel their way through. It is part and parcel of this survival game.
You don’t have to pinpoint every form of deception. You don’t have to be sure about every single item. You can instead focus on the many hundreds of delicious nourishing foods that ARE genuine.
Flavor-honest foods include every single fruit, vegetable, meat, seafood, nut, dairy, grain, spice, and herb on Earth. Start there.
At the outset, it can help to forget about the edge cases. Set aside those few areas of uncertainty and embrace the foods that you know for sure ARE genuine.
As appetite swiftly resets, and excess weight begins to melt away, and hunger doesn’t nag and fret eternal, you will soon discover that eating becomes gloriously simple, and these tiny areas of uncertainty don’t seem to matter so much, anymore.
As an example, I remember initially worrying about coconut sugar. Cursory research seemed to indicate coconut sugar was just boiled sap from coconut palm trees and had the original trace minerals etc intact, and thus should be fine…but I still didn’t really trust it (I thought it was possible that it was adulterated in the way that maple syrups are sometimes adulterated with high-fructose corn syrup).
In the end, I decided I could keep worrying about it, OR I could focus on what I was sure about. Thus, I temporarily set aside my concerns about coconut sugar, and focused on eating large, delicious meals of almost entirely fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, nuts, seeds, grains etc…consuming a wide array of delicious nourishing foods that I knew were genuine.
Over time, when I needed baking for the kids, and for family gatherings etc, I eventually did more research and began eating coconut sugar here and there and realised it really was fine. Yet, there was a benefit in not worrying about this at first.
Place all attention on getting yourself out of the trap. Once hunger has subsided and you are accumulating clear in-person evidence that this works, and energy and enthusiasm for life is returning in leaps and bounds…then you can set about researching any remaining few areas of uncertainty. There are so many wonderful, delicious things to eat. No one needs to delay the escape due to a few edge-case uncertainties.
Manufacturers would love society to remain confused. They love to muddy the waters and delay escape. They would love people to think the business of recognizing real foods that grow on this Earth is difficult, even though, like all your ancestors, you can easily recognize truth.
You know which foods are real. You can think of a million nourishing, delicious, flavor-honest foods. Start there.
The benefits of eating flavor-honest food
Flavor manipulation creates intermittent reinforcement, whereby nutritional rewards arrive in random patterns, similar to a slot machine, driving overeating. Returning to a flavor-honest diet (as humans have eaten for millennia) immediately restores reliable flavor-nutrition relationships, rebooting hunger and satiety levels to normal.
One of the most common reasons why people embrace a flavor-honest diet is that it normalizes eating patterns and helps to rapidly extinguish binge eating, leading to the return of a healthy weight. It not only nourishes and heals the body but leaves you satisfied, full, and content after meals, eliminating food-related obsession. This is just one of many wonderful reasons why eating flavor-honest is enjoyable – and unlike any other dietary approach you have tried.
Which foods are flavor-honest?
This way of eating embraces every single genuine food on Earth. There is hence no printable flavor-honest food list because it does not exclude any food group or type of food – only those items that pretend to be something they are not.
It may help to think of this as the best of a vegan diet and carnivore diet thrown together – a flexible whole food extravaganza, but without obsessive concern about basic processing, such as peeling, chopping, squeezing, scraping, polishing, or grinding. – Libby Marama Grace, Foods That Lie (2024)
This way of eating includes:
A wide range of fruit
In addition to fresh fruits, this also includes freshly squeezed juices and dried fruits like dates, raisins, and sultanas (as long as these do not have added sweeteners or preservatives). It also includes very sweet and high-carb fruits like grapes and bananas. Eat these liberally to appetite, and aim to source local, seasonal fruit where possible.
A wide range of fresh vegetables
Eat a wide range of fresh vegetables, including starchy and high-carbohydrate vegetables like potatoes and kumara (sweet potato). Do not fear oxalates or antinutrients – just eat to appetite of these foods as flavor preferences desire. However, make sure that you do not force down any vegetables simply because you believe they are ‘healthy’ – eat only those vegetables you genuinely believe taste good. (For example, do not also consume copious spinach smoothies in the name of health – eat as your appetite dictates.)
Animal products, dairy, and saturated fat
Consume a wide range of fresh animal foods (meat, eggs, fish – full fat, with skin). Fresh, grass-fed meat, shellfish, and fresh fish are ideal. Eat lots of animal fats, cheeses, full-fat milk, and cream. Do not worry about calories. The aim is to maximize nourishment, so that you feel satisfied and full and your body thrives.
Grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes
Do not fear the oxalates and antinutrients in grains, nuts, seeds and legumes. Soaking legumes before cooking helps to deactivate these, and consuming nuts with dairy (such as within muesli with milk) also helps. Your body will naturally gravitate toward combinations that provide the nutrition you need to heal. These things also look beautiful in your pantry! 😊
Flavor-honest sauces, condiments, herbs, spices, and dressings
Traditional herbs and spices contain hundreds of natural compounds with nutritional and medicinal benefits, including antimicrobial properties. Whereas herbs and spices are entire pieces of plants, commercial flavoring strategies rely on isolated chemicals to manipulate flavor. Traditional herbs, spices, as well as other seasonings, such as unrefined salt, aren’t just flavoring agents – they’re whole foods that provide real nutritional benefits.
Where to buy flavor-honest foods
When you are ready to initiate a flavor-honest way of eating, prepare by stocking your home with beautiful, nourishing foods. Visit a fruit shop, butcher, organic store, whole food shop – wherever you wish – and fill your kitchen with a spectacular array of nourishing items. Celebrate bringing these wonderful, life-sustaining foods into your home. 😊
(If you are wondering how to eat flavor-honest food on a budget, do not fear. When I began this way of eating, I was a single mother with very limited funds. It is certainly possible: bulk packs of beef mince, sacks of potatoes, fresh vegetables, and fruit…not to mention the endless savings in increased energy and productivity.)
Flavor-honest breakfast ideas
Here, I have included examples of flavor-honest meals I have consumed over the years to illustrate how simple and delicious this way of eating can be. I may also expand this section at a later date to include easy flavor-honest recipes for those who are struggling for ideas!
Please note: I am not a chef. I am an ordinary mother, with little time to expend making exotic dishes. My go-to cooking technique essentially involves throwing everything on a plate. 😊 Also, bear in mind that during the week, I usually have the same thing over and over again for breakfast – often a homemade flavor-honest granola / muesli type mixture made from dried dates, currants, nuts, seeds, and milk (only in the weekend do I make more exciting things like pancakes)! I have attempted to include a range of different flavor-honest breakfast options here, but really, the best flavor-honest breakfast is one you like.
Flavor-honest lunch ideas
When I work from home, lunch usually involves leftovers from dinner thrown onto a plate alongside freshly chopped vegetables and fruit. Now that I leave for work early in the morning, I often have a huge breakfast and then pack the simplest, easy flavor-honest lunch possible, such as boiled eggs, leftover meat, and whole fresh fruit.
I have included some images of the packed lunches I’ve made for my children below, so you can see that it is more than possible for the whole family to follow this way of eating. It is also possible to make flavor-honest sandwiches using spreads such as raw honey and peanut butter made from only peanuts and salt. We also often make sandwiches for school lunches with leftover meat from the dinner the night before, with cheese, lettuce etc, or make mince and cheese toasties, or cheese toasts with tomato paste, capsicum, pineapple etc – as well as baked items for school lunches (see below) when time permits.
School lunches was something I worried about at first, because I was absolutely exhausted and time-poor. However, as my own health and energy returned, it suddenly became MUCH more feasible to bake flavor-honest things for them, and ensure that their diet, too, was almost entirely flavor-honest. Every month or so we do now do a couple of big batches of baking at once and fill the freezer (so we can put them frozen into school lunches), however there are also times when we don’t have time for this, and then they just have sandwiches, fruit, and sometimes nuts (although many nuts are banned by schools in NZ). Sometimes dried organic seaweed too. Other school lunchbox options include plain cheese, leftover cold meat or vegetables.
Flavor-honest dinner ideas
When contemplating what to make for dinner, no special considerations are necessary. Any meal can be converted into a delicious flavor-honest recipe with little effort. I tend to favor quick flavor-honest dinners wherever possible, such as roasts, slow-cooker meals, pot roasts as main dishes, alongside salads, chopped veggies, fruit as side dishes, etc. The photographs below illustrate simple and easy flavor-honest meals suitable for beginners to home cooking (as well as busy people like me 😊).
Flavor-honest snacks
With this way of eating, you are likely to be so satisfied and full at meals that snacking endlessly is not necessary. However, if you are starving between meals – to the point that you cannot concentrate on anything else – have something nourishing to eat.
Flavor-honest desserts, party foods, and treats
Any ordinary recipe can be easily converted to a flavor-honest recipe. After all, it is the flavor-honest recipe that was the original, genuine version – it is only the modern forms of deception that have complicated what was once straightforward. For example, honey or coconut sugar can be used in place of refined sugar in baking to make flavor-honest cupcakes, muffins, cookies, and so on. Homemade banana cake can be topped with lashings of freshly whipped cream and berries and drizzled with raw honey or maple syrup to create a beautiful and delicious flavor-honest birthday cake.
FLAVOR-HONEST COOKBOOKS: Flavor-honest baking is not difficult. After all, it is cooking as it was meant to be. Many existing cookbooks can be useful for generating ideas for easy flavor-honest meals. I tend not to use recipe books anymore and just invent everything; however, due to popular request, I will test some out and add a collection of my best flavor-honest recipe books here soon. If you have any recommendations, please let me know! 😊
CHOCOLATE: Many people wonder whether chocolate is deceptive. In addition to added refined sweeteners, cocoa contains caffeine and theobromine which mimic neurotransmitters, which can be concentrated by manufacturers. This is discussed in some detail within Foods That Lie.
For many years, these stimulant-strengthened products played a leading role in my deteriorating health. When it became evident that manufacturers were employing subtle strategies to concentrate caffeine and theobromine in these items, it immediately explained my ongoing and excessive consumption of chocolate-flavored items in particular.
Chocolate contains multiple forms of deception and is one of the most deceptive foodstuffs available. Even plain cocoa or cacao nibs deceive.
Flavor-honest drinks
Drink water, whole milk, freshly squeezed juices, or homemade bone broth – whatever you desire.
COFFEE: Many people wonder about coffee. Caffeine (like theobromine, found in chocolate) mimics a neurotransmitter, and is thus a separate class of deception from flavor-deception.
Oddly, I have never drunk tea or coffee, so I don’t view these items in the ordinary way. (My mother never drank tea or coffee, so I grew up thinking this was normal, and just never started! I also noted how coffee and energy drinks seemed to affect people negatively when I was at university, so I just never ended up drinking these items.) However, I DID consume copious volumes of chocolate (see above).
Caffeine – like all deceptive substances – offers the illusion a benefit, while systematically stealing the very thing it appears to deliver.
If you do choose to avoid coffee, as a growing number of people now do, bear in mind – as Allen Carr takes pains to detail in his numerous books – that substitutes only help to reinforce the notion that an individual is ‘missing out’ on something. When discarding a counterfeit, there is no need to replace it with another phony option. Not only does de-caffeinated ‘coffee’ fail to provide the illusory stimulant the drinker is unwittingly seeking, but it reinforces the notion that coffee offers a benefit.
However, just as it is possible to quit drinking alcohol, while continuing to smoke cigarettes, it is certainly possible to abandon deceptive food, while continuing to drink coffee. Breaking free from one deceptive thing is certainly better than continuing to pursue two.
Some people prefer to hurl all forms of deception to the curb at once; others prefer to tackle one class of deceptive items at a time. The choice, like everything in life, is up to you.
Aeroplanes and restaurants
When travelling on aeroplanes I just eat the least contaminated looking option (usually not much) and leave the rest, and then buy proper food when I land. At restaurants, I again choose whatever seems least contaminated and don’t fret about it, returning to flavor-honest foods at the next opportunity. If only highly-deceptive items are available, waiting until genuine food is available remains a viable option.
The real key is in acquiring the right mindset whereby you don’t want deceptive items and are essentially repulsed by them. This makes the whole business of avoidance much simpler.
How to begin a flavor-honest diet
In concept, it is very simple. Eat as high nourishment as you can, at regular meals, until full and completely satisfied. At each meal, fill your plate with the most delicious, nourishing, flavor-honest foods you can find: fresh fruit, vegetables, berries, tubers, meats, fish, dairy, legumes, nuts, and so on – seasoned with herbs, spices, salt, lemon juice, etc.
Eat foods that you like until full. Not 80% full, almost full, or ‘maybe-I’m-full-perhaps-I’ll-stop-and-see-in-20-minutes’ full, but until you have no desire at all left to eat. Aim for well-balanced, nourishing meals.
Menus, Shopping Lists, and meal planning
There is no fixed 7-day flavor-honest diet plan nor a meticulous flavor-honest shopping list saying eat this or that. The whole point of this approach is to let the body naturally direct food intake, once deception is removed – not to abide by a rigid pre-determined schedule. Each individual requires different nutrients in different quantities at different times. A flavor-honest lifestyle returns your dietary patterns to the way nature intended.
The photos above give a good indication of the sorts of foods I regularly eat. However, if I were to present a precise weekly shopping menu, my own dietary preferences would please some and disgust others. This might cause some individuals to reject these ideas, simply because they hate peanut butter, fish, or beans, for example. Furthermore, ingredients may or may not be available, depending on local availability.
Rather than seeking a ‘perfect’ shopping list, it is far better to start with foods you already enjoy in their natural form and which are locally available, and to trust your body’s preferences to lead you towards what it needs.
However, a simple tactic to make meal-planning easier (particularly with school-age children) is to plan dinner meals that can be utilised as lunches the next day. For example, leftover roast beef can be used to make sandwiches, and leftover mince bolognese used to make mince toasties. Similarly, a batch of flavor-honest pizza (made with tomato paste, chicken, pineapple, capsicum, onion, cheese and so on), could be served as a dinner meal and with salad, and then leftover pizza popped in lunch boxes the next day. Cold chicken legs, chopped vegetables, and so on, can also be used to top up school lunch boxes. This strategy has been a lifesaver as a busy mother with school-age children.
The goal is to develop a sustainable approach that works for your lifestyle while minimising exposure to deceptive flavors, as and where possible.
Eating flavor-honest foods inherently leads to the return of health and an optimal weight. No special endeavors are needed. These ideas are expanded more in Foods That Lie – which most importantly helps you acquire the change in mindset necessary to implement this approach rather effortlessly in a way that is exciting. I recommend you read it!😊