From Marianne: I Believed in BRAT for 35 Years. I Was Wrong. 🍌

When my kids were little and got a stomach bug, I knew exactly what to do. BRAT. Bananas. Rice. Applesauce. Toast. Their pediatrician told me about the BRAT diet, and I followed it like it was gospel. 

Upset stomach? BRAT. Diarrhea? BRAT. Nobody got a normal meal until I decided their digestive system had recovered. I believed in BRAT. I practiced it even on myself. Apparently a lot has changed in 35 years.

Today, experts don't recommend putting kids with diarrhea on such a restrictive diet. Once they can eat, the advice is to get them back to their normal foods. Wait. WHAT?

This fascinates me. Food is one of those areas where we learn something, file it away as FACT, and keep believing it for the next 30 years. Fat is bad. Meat is bad. Low-fat is good. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. BRAT will fix your stomach. I know this because I've had to rethink a lot of what I believed about food myself.

After being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I started paying very close attention to what I eat and how my body responds. And here's the crazy part. All those foods I spent years believing were the gentlest things you could possibly eat, bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast, are now exactly the foods I avoid. My body feels dramatically better when I eat very low-carb, closer to keto or carnivore: protein, healthy fats, very little processed food. That's me, not a prescription for you or anyone else. But it's made me question a lot.

Bob still instinctively thinks avoiding meat and fat means he's eating healthier, no matter what I hand him to read. Thirty years of low-fat messaging just runs on autopilot in his head. Give him a choice and he'll still reach for the low-fat option every time. I'm the lunatic standing next to him going, "EAT THE STEAK."

Nothing we learned was necessarily wrong (or who knows?) Nutrition science just moves all the time. Food changes, and the advice changes right along with it. Which makes me wonder how many things I still believe about food just because somebody told me they were true in 1989.

BRAT worked for me as a mother because I thought I had the answer. Thirty-five years later, I've landed on something more useful than an answer. Be willing to question everything.

What's something you believed about food for years, until your body (or the science) told you otherwise? Hit reply and tell me — I read every response.