Should I restart

[Omar Khan]

My Fiancé and I started Whole30 on May 28th and it has been going well. We went to a NY restaurant that was whole 30 friendly from on line sources. It was a upscale restaurant and everything was great. The only issue was we had some salad with the chicken and only had a few bites of the salad but asked what was in the dressing, they had said it was whole 30 compliant. But after eating a little bit of it I doubled checked cause I tasted olive oil but also seemed like it had something else. The chef did say the dressing had some cherry in it, they gave us a fresh salad (plain) and we ate that for the rest of the meal. Obviously we did not intentionally cheat at all, but the question we had is would that tiny about of cherry on the little lettuce we ate warrant a re-start. It was also a fairly light dressing not slathered on. Would love any thoughts.

Thank you. 

[Lorna from Canada]

@Omar Khan I'm assuming you are meaning sherry (the alcohol) as opposed to cherry, the fruit? Cherry is compliant; sherry, of course, is not.

I personally would not start over given the miniscule amount you consumes and the circumstances but everyone needs to make that choice for themselves. There is a helpful W30 blog post that gives some thoughts:

Do I Really have to Start Over

I started over after 11 days when I realized I had misread a label and been consuming chickpeas for a week. It was not the end of the world

Cheers!

 

[Jihanna]

If it was sherry, and you didn't want to think of it as a restart but do think it warrants letting your body have time to recover, you can always just keep moving forward and tack a few days on the end of your previously planned "last day".

That said, this is a great learning experience to always always always double-check on the actual ingredients. If I'm needing to eat out during Whole30, I never ask anyone if it's compliant (in part because many people assume that Whole30 is basically paleo, and while they're similar there are definitely things allowed for paleo that aren't allowed for Whole30!)... I ask for specific ingredients, all the way down to marinades used on the meat, and judge for myself whether or not it's compliant.

[Omar Khan]

It was Sherry. Yes. We actually did ask the ingredients and it was not till we double checked that they said sherry. But they were trying their best and clearly just made a mistake. I think I will try to tack on a few extra days but we are doing it before our wedding so don't have to many extra days cause we want the ten days to transition properly as well. This is really helpful, thank you both. If others have other thoughts please let me know. I did read that blog, and I am not sure if I fell in the category of the person eating honey on a salad dressing by a mistake and they said they did not need to restart or if our mistake is different cause it was alcohol. 

[Jihanna]

In the end, restarting (or not) is your choice. As Melissa put it, we're adults and ultimately we're the ones who are in control of our own Whole30 experiences... so it really comes down to how you feel about it. My suggestion would be to plan on the extra days, and judge for yourself how you feel at the end of the original 30, then decide if you want to do the extra days to give a little extra time or if you want to move directly into your reintroduction at that point. With having asked about what ingredients were in it, however, and only discovering that the answer you were given was wrong because you actually tasted something more in the dressing... I'd say you did all you personally could've done in that situation, so it just depends on how you feel about it (and whether or not you feel as if it's affected you).

[laura_juggles]

My other question would be was it sherry or sherry vinegar? Sherry vinegar is fine and I can't imagine putting sherry in a dressing, but sherry vinegar is delicious. 

[Jihanna]

^ That would be a good question -- and one I would never have thought of, because I have so little experience with vinegar in general (I've used ACV for a multitude of things from cooking to rinsing my hair, but that's about it!) and such an inclination to shy away from all things that even sound like alcohol (even if it'd get cooked off)... and I'd imagine the sherry vinegar would taste quite different enough to cause me to think there's "something odd" about a dressing!  

[laura_juggles]

21 hours ago, Jihanna said:

^ That would be a good question -- and one I would never have thought of, because I have so little experience with vinegar in general (I've used ACV for a multitude of things from cooking to rinsing my hair, but that's about it!) and such an inclination to shy away from all things that even sound like alcohol (even if it'd get cooked off)... and I'd imagine the sherry vinegar would taste quite different enough to cause me to think there's "something odd" about a dressing!  

Vinegar is not a situation where alcohol gets "cooked off". It's similar to how sugar is eaten up in the first fermentation of making kombucha. The alcohol is eaten up to make the vinegar. 

[Jihanna]

I was actually referring more to recipes where alcohol IS cooked off during the process of making the dish, but I still avoid them because there was alcohol involved at all... but I also wouldn't have known the alcohol gets "eaten" to make the vinegar, so I do appreciate that insight! Still won't make me feel any better about using vinegar with alcohol-sounding names, but that's my hang-up, lol