Get ready to cook in color

Introducing this newsletter + forthcoming Color Club!

Hello friends, both new and old!

It’s been a long-time coming, but I’m finally expanding beyond Instagram to have more space to write and share metabolic health tips and colorful recipes with you.

While I love (really it’s love-hate 🤣) Instagram, and will continue to share and engage with content there, it’s not the best user experience for viewing and saving recipes, and the caption limits don’t allow me to share enough of the why behind concepts or recipes.

You’ve also all been asking me for more recipes, so I’ve been behind the scenes building a website that will (I hope!! will be eager for your feedback!) be a great user experience. This means no ads, no super long SEO game where you have to read about someone’s grandmothers favorite tomato type before you get to the recipe. Website will be live by the end of the month.

I love your feedback :)

The forthcoming website and this newsletter are focused on one core principle: cooking in color.

What is cooking in color? and why does it matter?

We are in a state of mass confusion around what to eat and what healthy actually means. More than 78% of consumers say they receive conflicting information about what to eat. I could go on and on about the reasons why here (i.e., incentives and conflicts of interest in food science and government agencies, and poor medical education around food) but the key point is that this mass confusion has resulted in Americans being sicker, fatter and more infertile than ever before.

Only 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy (defined metabolic health as having ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference, without using medications). This is not surprising because almost 60% of calories American adults consume are ultra-processed.

Cutting out ultra processed foods is the first step towards being healthy, but then the next layer of confusion and noise arises - should you be keto? vegetarian? paleo? vegan? low fat? Red meat or no red meat? I once found myself drowning in this noise. I tried various diets and fads. They all felt restrictive. They never stuck. My relationship to food once caused me constant stress and anxiety.

Then I dove into reading, studying and living the science of food and nutrition. I’ve honed my approach to food over the last 5+ years through:

• Studying Nutrition Sciences at Stanford Center for Health Education (I completed an 80 hour course, which means I have 4X more nutrition training than most MDs who get less than 20 hours of nutrition training during medical school...🤯)

• Working at Levels health and creating blood-sugar stable recipes for the Levels app

• Working with my dear friend and one of my personal heroes, Dr. Casey Means on the launch of Good Energy…the best health book of the century and a #1 NYT Bestseller, baby!

• Reading thousands of books and absorbing content from professionals I respect like Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, Dr. Casey Means, Dr. Sara Gottfried, Dr. Rob Lustig, Dr. Mindy Pelz, Dr. David Perlmutter, Chris Palmer, Ben Bikman, Mark Schatzker, Kelly LeVeque, Calley Means, Shawn Stevenson, Melissa Urban, Ali Layfayette, Beth Bollinger and many many many others

• Cooking countless meals for my friends and family

• Testing my recipes on a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and experimenting in the kitchen for hours with Alex (my fiance) and Alfie (my sous chef cat)

Through all of this, I’ve created a simple, sustainable approach to cooking and eating that has made me look and feel good (and my labs gave me the data-backed validation too). I learned to trust myself and my own body. This is the only approach I’ve been able to stick with while living a life of joy, adventure, and abundance.

What’s the cooking in color approach?

The approach is to eat real, whole, colorful foods.

And lots of them.

The approach is to minimize white (non-colorful) foods like refined sugars and refined grains.

One of the reasons I am launching cooking in color is because I am tired of making countless swaps and modifications to existing recipes to make them fit this approach. The other reason is simply because I LOVE food and I LOVE cooking.

My core principles for cooking

What’s the goal?

The goal is to get as much COLOR as you can on your plate from organic, unprocessed foods.

Research actually shows people who eat a wider variety of plants (think 30 a week vs. 10 a week) had more diverse gut microbiomes. The more colors, the better!

The goal is to count colors, not calories.

How do we make this happen?

We cook in color, together!

We cook easy, delicious, saucy, colorful meals made from whole, unprocessed foods.

We share tips and learnings with each other to encourage one another to cook and live in color.

The purpose of this newsletter and my forthcoming website are to inspire and show you how to cook in color and to create a community around people who are interested in cooking in color, and living this way.

So, what can you expect next?

Color Club - launching by end of September! The website will have something called the COLOR CLUB, which is going to be like having your favorite cookbook in your pocket, but new pages are added in every week. In the color club, you’ll get (at least) 1 new recipe each week that’s easy, colorful, and blood sugar friendly. You’ll also have access to alllll of the previous recipes. The founding color club member rate is $5/month.

Weekly newsletter - starting TODAY! I’ll be sending out a free weekly newsletter, every Thursday, with some free recipes (more will be on the Color Club for $5/month), easy to apply metabolic health tips, and deep dives into topics I’m exploring and learning about. To be honest, the newsletter focus is going to evolve as I go, and I’d love nothing more than feedback and input from you on what you’d like to read and learn about!

This is just the beginning - let’s get started. 🚀

Love,

Sonja

P.S. If you signed up for my newsletter via Flodesk, I’ve moved here - to Substack! After much deliberation, I’ve decided it’ll be a more user friendly experience for us both, and it allows you to easily go back and reference and find previous newsletters.

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