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What gives.
The day the meals that were going to turn me into Tom Brady arrived, I carried the oversize Purple Carrot TB12 Performance Meals box into my buildings elevator. There was a dude in there. He noticed my box, clearly sensing the power of the gluten-free, 100 percent plant-based ingredients contained inside.
Whats Purple Carrot? he asked.
Its, like, a food-delivery service.
So, kinda like Blue Apron? he replied.
Yeah, sort of, if Blue Apron came straight from Tom Bradys kitchen and could help you throw a goddam country mile, I thought. A half-hearted I guess came out instead.
You see, as part of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Bradys TB12 Sports business, the handsome, five-time Super Bowl winner joined with plant-based food-delivery organization Purple Carrot to create a jacked-up meal-delivery kit. Its inspired by the strict nutritional regimen that helps him remain, at the NFL dinosaur age of 39, the greatest man to ever throw an oblong ball to other men for points. Theres no gluten, no nightshades (a vegetable family that includes eggplant and our beloved tomato), no sugar. It is not a diet that sounds like a lot of fun, but it is a diet that sounds like it might make your muscles just as pliable as Tom Brady wants them to be.
I was never expecting to enjoy the plan, but I did want to better understand who on Earth would do this. Who would take one of the extremely unsexy means by which Tom Brady achieves the very sexy end that is his life, and make that into an end itself? And also: Did anyone actually think it would work? Would it? If GQ agreed to pay for it, then I figured I might as well take three weeks and try to find out.
The meals are delivered every Tuesday in a giant red-and-white box decorated with the unfortunate slogan #eatlikeaGOAT and some other aspirational words (What we get out of our bodies is a direct result of what we put in. Food is fuel, and we believe that food can help you achieve and sustain your peak performance). For $78 a week, you receive ingredients for three meals, along with three detailed, step-by-step recipe cards. The finished dishes on these cards look like what Tom and Gisele look like in photos, which is to say: not at all realistic. Every ingredient, aside from whole vegetables, comes in a perfectly parceled-out portion size: Theres the little baggy of turmeric, the pat of vegan butter, the sac of cauliflower florets. Probably not super awesome for the environment, but convenient for me. The first box came with a letter from Tom, written in all-caps block letters.
I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR TB12 PERFORMANCE MEALS! I AM A BIG BELIEVER IN THE POWER OF PLANT-BASED NUTRITION, AND I AM EXCITED TO SHARE MEALS ILL BE EATING WITH YOU TOO. THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND HERES TO YOU ACHIEVING & SUSTAINING YOUR OWN PEAK PERFORMANCE!
[SIGNATURE OF TOM FAHCKIN BRADY!!!!!]
My enthusiasm did not match Tom Bradys enthusiasm, but maybe thats because Id been eating gluten.
Week 1 Okay, so I did not make the ramen bowl with gingered amaranth greens and watermelon radish. I did not make the crispy turnip cakes with quinoa tabouleh and Zaatar yogurt. I did not make the white lentil risotto with Meyer lemon and cashew gremolata. Things came up. Lesson number one: You can buy the raw ingredients for Tom Bradys meals, but you cannot buy his discipline. And by discipline, I mean: his chef.
Here is a little bit about me: I do not cook. I can cookjust not that well, because I never do it. My angel of a mothera truly tremendous cookbought me an All-Clad skillet and was so excited about it being an All-Clad that I figured it must be a good brand. I put it to use by cooking for a date once. She described the meal as pretty good. It was not pretty good. So asking me to make turnip cakeslet alone crispy ones with quinoa tabouleh and Zaatar yogurtcasually, on a weeknight, is like asking Bill Belichick to give expressive, eloquent soliloquies in response to reporters' press conference questions.
Week 2 My second week was only slightly more successful. The beluga lentil tacos with quick guacamole and radish slaw (610 calories, 20 grams of fat, 84 grams of carbs, and 26 grams of protein), which I forced myself to make the Thursday after they arrived, were easy enough to make and possessed a flavor profile I would describe as fineeven though the avocado was not quite ripe enough (maybe my fault since I left it in the fridge), leaving the guacamole chunky and weird. But it did not take thirty minutes to prepare, as the friendly card assured me. I got home at 8:17 that night, and was eating by 9:07. By that time, my night was already over. I had dishes to clean, and no supermodel wife to do them with as we lovingly sprayed water on each other, before tucking in our beautiful, glowing, nutrient-rich, gluten-free kids, and heading to our room where wed sleep under the watchful gaze of our five Super Bowl trophies.
The following Monday, my friends graciously invited me to join them for pizza, to which I had to say: No, I have to go home and makewhat did I have to make? It was a Monday, so I was forced to choose between six-day old saffron paella with walnut chorizo and fresh fava beans and six-day old creamy cauliflower Alfredo with radicchio and arugula salad. (Apparently Tom Brady only eats meals with three distinct componentsis that his real secret?) Easy choice, considering step four of the formers recipe begins In a food processor and if youll remember, I didnt know what All-Clad was, so no, I dont own a food processor. The assumption that I would tells you a lot about who Brady is writing his meals for. Alfredo it was, which was unfortunate since it called for chickpea pasta and nutritional yeast. (It also asked me to zest a lemon which I had only previously known as a noun.) The first instruction was to preheat my oven to 400. A strange instruction, considering I did not need to use the oven for the rest of the recipe.
The resulting pasta? Not good, though I will say: I did feel significantly less of the brick-in-the-stomach sensation I normally get post-pasta. Theres something to be said about a lightness that follows the consumption of the BradyMeals; I felt significantly less drained of energy. Unfortunately, that comes at a price: flavor. There is never a sauce or some overbearing ingredient that can help you save yourself from yourself if you botch the cookinga cooking ripcord, something flavorful, like marinara, that you can drown your food in if it comes out underwhelming. The taste of chickpea pasta was just as bland as the alfredo sauce (made of cauliflower, shallots, garlic, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and almond milk) I doused it in. Not even salt could save it. But at least my oven was heated to 400 degrees.
Week 3 Meals Thursday of that same week, I opted to dive into the third week of meals that had arrived Tuesday (the day after I ate the pasta). The coconut tofu with mango fried cauliflower rice & spicy cucumbers was out again on account of my still not having a food processor, so I opted instead for mung bean dal with tamarind, popped sorghum, and flatbread. This recipe called for popping sorghum on the stove, which I tried, but did not ultimately do, even though the sorghum smoked out my apartment like it was really trying. But you know what? This dish was pretty good! I could not make out a single ingredient outside the salt and the lime and, yet, it was kind of pleasant? I actually saved the leftovers to eat later. (I did not eat them later.)
And then the next night, a Friday, a miracle. This was going to be my last Tom Brady meal: stuffed sweet potatoes with crispy garbanzos & muhammara vinaigrette. It might have been the best meal Ive ever made (admittedly, a low bar). It actually cooked in roughly the time it said it would (about 40 minutes). The sweet potatoes were delicious (credit to Tom, who probably picked them by hand). The muhammara vinaigrette was shockingly complex in its taste, and yet incredibly simplistic in its design (throw roasted red pepper, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, aleppo pepper flakes, walnuts, cumin, chopped scallion, olive oil, and salt in a blender and push the button that blends). The crispy garbanzos were easy to crisp (with an oven that was heated and used). Of the four potatoes, I ate three, and saved one to eat later. (I did eat it later.)
I may not have given this an earnest try, and I may not be the most competent cook, but when I asked myself, after four out of nine BradyMeals, who would actually eat these, the only answer I could come up with is: Tom Brady. This plan makes sense for Tom Brady! Tom Brady doesnt have impromptu, mid-week happy hours with coworkers. Tom Bradys friends probably dont ask Tom Brady to get pizza. Tom Brady has discipline. Tom Brady has a chefand a food processor. Tom Bradys entire life is optimized to achieve and sustain peak performance. Tom Bradys diet is one prong of a multi-pronged, holistic approach to being the best quarterback in the world. Im just a dude whos trying to be mostly healthy and not die. And so I want to eat healthy, but theres healthy food thats accessible, and delicious, and doesnt require me to cut out nightshades and use vegan butter, or make me skip dinners with friends. Food fuels your body, true. And yet thinking of it purely as fuel turns cooking and eating into a means to something else and negates the possibility that they can be enjoyed in and of themselves.
But I guess thats why I didnt turn into Tom Brady.
Original post:
I Ate Tom Brady's Diet for Three Weeks and Gisele is Still Not My Wife - GQ Magazine
