Is The Kaufmann Diet Restrictive?

For most people, the acronym SAD both describes the Standard American Diet, and the abysmal quality of the nutrition it includes. It is no secret that on the whole, Americans do not enjoy a diet that promotes health. Most people survive on fast food, junk food, candy, snack foods and take out. 

So when people switch to The Kaufmann Diet, it can feel like an entirely different way of living, much less eating. Gone is most of what you are accustom to eating; instead, you are focusing on vegetables, lean protein, eggs, nuts, seeds, some fruit and limited amounts of dairy products. This naturally includes a wide variety of foods, but because it is so different from the way most people are used to eating, The Kaufmann Diet feels very restrictive. 

It is true that many of the foods you are used to eating might be eliminated; but it is interesting to think about this. The Kaufmann Diet eliminates wheat and grains, corn, sugar, soy and peanuts. But when you look at the ingredients for most kinds of fast food, processed food and junk food, these are exactly the ingredients that you will find. 

Foods like wheat, corn and soy really do underpin our entire industrialized food system. These foods are versatile in the sense that they can be used to make all kinds of food products. But does that really count as a diversified diet? 

In reality, the kinds of foods you eat on The Kaufmann Diet open you up to a much wider variety of foods with a broader spectrum of nutrition than what you would eat with a non “restrictive” standard American diet. 

The Kaufmann Diet likely feels restrictive because it eliminates so many foods that people crave and may even be addicted to. Simple carbohydrates and sugar raise levels of dopamine, the feel good chemical in the brain. For many people, these foods become what seems like an innocent addiction. 

Sugar, and the simple carbs that turn into sugar are know to be deleterious to health in the long run, and these are the exact kinds of foods that could potentially make an underlying yeast problem worse. This is the goal of The Kaufmann Diet––to eliminate yeasts in fungi; the diet does restrict foods that would make a yeast infection worse. But when done right, you are like eating a much broader spectrum of nutrition while on The Kaufmann Diet than you would eating the standard American Diet. 

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