One of our big stories back in January was our coverage of an interview with Tom Brady and Gisele’s personal chef Allen Campbell. Their chef was explaining their somewhat extreme elimination diet, only this diet is not a temporary, let’s-clean-out-our-systems thing for a month. This is how Tom and Gisele live full-time, every day that they are together, and it’s how they’re raising their kids too. Their daily diet eliminates: white sugar, white flour, MSG, caffeine, dairy, peppers, mushrooms and eggplants. They do eat lean meat (mostly fish) with whole grains, beans and quinoa. That’s it, day in and day out. Well, did you know that Gisele and Tom also have a home in Costa Rica, and that they have another personal chef at the Costa Rican home? It’s true. Her name is Joanne Gerrard Young, and she’s been cooking their vacation meals for the past five years. And she’s given an interview about what their vacation diet is like.
We turned to Joanne Gerrard Young, master raw food chef, holistic nutritionist, and health educator behind The Healing Cuisine, who has spent the last five years cooking for the power couple—and their family and friends—at their home in Costa Rica, to find out what might really end up on the Brady-Bündchen clan’s plates.
“They don’t always do raw, but since it’s so easy to do in Costa Rica, we do a 80/20 raw diet, with big colorful salads and lots of fresh veggies,” says the Canada-born chef. “‘G’ likes to eat vegetarian sometimes, so we’ll do a grain separate from the protein, and she’s totally into juice cleanses, so she’ll do about one per year.”
The couple also primarily eats their biggest meal at lunch and then a smaller dinner. As for sweets? “They didn’t want to do desserts anymore, for healthy eating purposes, but I shared all of my raw vegan desserts with them and they love them and have them all the time,” the chef explains.
With Brady’s busy schedule, he’s only able to make it down to the Central American paradise about once a year, but Bündchen makes it down there regularly and always requests Young as her local plant-based chef. “Eating Joanne’s healing food reminds me of our connection to our beautiful planet,” the model explains on The Healing Cuisine site.
I like salads as much as the next person. I know I talk a lot about how much I love potatoes and carbs, but the truth is, as I get older, I do crave fresh food, salads and “raw” options more and more. If you gave me a month of only salad-eating, I would be fine with it. But eventually I would need some French fries. So it’s not that I hate the fact that Gisele and Tom want all of this veggie-heavy food, it’s that it’s the same thing, day after day, and doesn’t that get boring/tedious? And the phrase “raw vegan dessert” made my stomach turn, then I reached for a Reese’s peanut-butter Easter egg. God, Tom and Gisele’s kids will never know the joy of Easter candy!!
Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.
