Question about SWYPO

[Angelrai33]

I think that the whole30's rules about what can or can't be recreated is a little culturally biased in my opinion. I can't make caulirice or mashed potatoes or fake french fries because for me, that's SWYPO. Even eating my spaghetti squash pad thai felt out of bounds... Because of how I relate to food. Everyone relates to food differently. We have a question in our first timers facebook group about tortillas made with cauliflower and being told to start over. I get not making floury concoctions, but tortillas are different. They're a stapleton in certain cuisines in fact. I'm reading a book with my son as we speak that takes place in Central America and every single meal is served with tortillas. So I guess my question is why is recreating a tortilla grounds for starting over but french fries and mashed potatoes are not? Or why is it okay to make a big bed of rice out of cauliflower but that's it?

[GlennR]

The SWYPO guidelines are based on the Standard American Diet, so yes, they are culturally biased. Like you, cauli rice is SWYPO for me (I'm Filipino by birth) precisely because it has long been a staple in my diet -- and faux cauli rice makes me just miss the real thing. I can see how cauli rice is not problem for the typical American, for whom rice is an occasional dish, but it can present problems for people like me. (In the same vein, fake macaroni and cheese is totally not SWYPO for me because it will never make me long for real macaroni and cheese. I simply have no cultural taste for it.)

 

SWYPO will continue to be the grayest of gray areas for Whole30 precisely because of these issues. But in my opinion, it all boils down to this: if a dish is meant to simulate an existing noncompliant food and causes you instead to crave the noncompliant food, then it's SWYPO. It's a psychological thing, in the end, and not a cultural one. But it's one a lot of us will have to figure out individually.

[ShannonM816]

SWYPO can be very hard to define (the official explanation is here). However, there are a few things listed specifically in the rules that are absolutely not allowed, including tortillas. Anyone who is going to do the Whole30 should have read the rules and known that. As for them being a staple in some diets, well, yes, they are, but if you look around the US -- bread is a staple for most people here. That's not a reason to allow it on a W30, it's all the more reason not to, to force people to step away from the things they're used to eating, to change habits. If you keep having tortillas -- albeit ones made from cauliflower -- then when you're not on Whole30, you just go back to eating your regular tortillas, because you haven't found something new and different, you've just used a substitute for what you've always done, just like if I went and found some paleo bread that had compliant ingredients and ate sandwiches on it for lunch most of the week, just like I did with regular bread before, then I wouldn't have changed my habits at all, and it would be that much easier to just go back to eating regular bread.

 

Other things are very personal. I don't find roasted pieces of potato, no matter how they're sliced, to be all that much like real french fries, personally. They're potatoes, and they're tasty, but they're not ever the salty, deep fried, restaurant french fries. I can eat a handful and then stop, unlike the fries at McDonald's. I don't find cauli rice to taste like rice, it's just a nice substitue when I need something fairly mild in flavor to serve something else over, but it always tastes like cauliflower to me and the texture isn't ever quite right -- plus I didn't really eat much rice before anyway. For me, those things are not particularly SWYPO. For other people, they may be. If they are for you, it's fine to leave them out. I don't usually make mashed potatoes on a Whole30, because that is a comfort food for me, and even without cream and butter, they taste like mashed potatoes. I can have mashed cauliflower, no problem -- still tastes like cauliflower and I'm not at all tempted to eat tons and tons of it, but actual mashed potatoes, not so much -- way too easy to overeat them, or to indulge in emotional eating if they're around. 

 

The point is, there are things that are absolutely not allowed, they're listed in the rules, and the rules were written to address the most common issues that the Hartwigs have come across in their work, so that they help the largest number of people -- and yes, they are based in the US, so it makes sense that their rules are going to apply more to those in the US than in other countries. For things not specifically addressed by the rules, it's a matter of knowing yourself and how you react, and learning which foods you have to leave out of your Whole30 because they are problems for you. 

[MeadowLily]

I don't make french fries, mashed potatoes, cauli rice or zucchini noodles..  I didn't know there was a swapped out version of macaroni and cheese.  I think some of the private W30 FB groups have incorporated many recipes that are confusing.  I've never thought of any SWYPO's being cultural vs. visually pleasing reminders of old temptations.

 

Anything that stirs up alot of excitement, I steer clear of...that includes highly creative recipes that take it to the razor's edge.  I do like basic simplicity.  Bread is a daily staple on most tables all over the world.   We give it up and don't make SWYPO pancakes that we can put in the toaster for pastry reminders.  People would be making nut butter sandwiches out of SWYPO pancakes with a fruit compote for jelly.  They would use their gelatin with berries and starting canning jams and jellies. It can go from zero to crazy pants in the blink of an eye.

 

If tortillas were my daily staple, I'd have to give them up just like bread.  In Italy and France, bread is life.  It's soda bread in Ireland and dark rye in Sweden and Norway.   We all have a cultural staple.  Native Americans adopted Indian Tacos many years ago in North America.   It's the simplicity of basic foods that break the cycles of food addictions.  Giving up grains help others get rid of inflammation and heal the gut.

 

It's the creative formations that stir up desires and cravings for the real thing.