One of the internet’s most popular ‘tradwomen’ has revealed how her ‘ancestral diet’ keeps her and her family in good shape and prevents them from getting sick.
Gretchen Adler has more than half a million followers on social media, who follow her recipes and “tradwife” lifestyle – a term used to describe women who have traditional, family-oriented marriages.
Tradwives take care of the house and the kids while their husbands work, and they are often known as superpowers in the kitchen who cook everything from scratch.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Adler, a mother of three, said focusing on home-cooked meals using only whole ingredients and whole foods is the secret to staying slim and healthy.
‘Years ago I never thought I would eat the way I eat now, because you look at the food [I post] and you say, “That’s so unhealthy, it’ll make you fat. I can’t have a cookie. I can’t eat bread. I can’t eat butter.” But it’s not true and I’ve proven it to myself over and over again,” she explained.
Viral ‘tradwife’ Gretchen Adler (pictured) has revealed how her ‘ancestral diet’ keeps her and her family in good shape and prevents them from getting sick
Some of Adler’s favorite “fun foods” include homemade versions of Oreos and McDonald’s McChicken burgers, pumpkin cheesecake, cookie dough ice cream and chicken nuggets.
Adler — known to her followers as @Gretchy on social media — has a strict list of ingredients she avoids at all costs when cooking, including seed oils, artificial sugars and anything with food coloring.
“Everything I make has to be something that I feel good about and that I can confidently tell someone else that they can eat it and they won’t get fat or they won’t get fat. getting sick,” she said.
‘It’s all quality ingredients that I use to make these recipes, so I can eat whatever I want, which is incredible and that’s how it should be.’
Adler’s “ancestral diet” focuses on non-industrialized, minimally processed foods that our ancestors would have consumed.
It consists of whole, unprocessed foods, grass-fed and wild-caught meats, and sustainably raised and raised animals and crops.
It also contains seasonal fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, nuts and seeds.
Some of Adler’s favorite “fun foods” include homemade versions of Oreos and McDonald’s McChicken burgers, pumpkin cheesecake, cookie dough ice cream and chicken nuggets
“It’s all quality ingredients that I use to make these recipes so I can eat whatever I want, which is incredible and that’s how it should be,” she told DailyMail.com
Her favorite meal consists of pastured meat, with a salad from her garden and homemade sourdough
Adler said the “nutrient-dense” ingredients in all her cooking helped her feel satisfied sooner and therefore avoided overeating by listening to her body.
“Many of the foods we have in this country are created by food scientists, and the whole goal is to make them as addictive as possible. That’s why I make everything from scratch, so I know what ingredients I’m using,” she explains.
‘And we can still enjoy the food we eat. It’s not like we have to eat a diet of lean chicken and steamed broccoli. We can eat anything and nourish our bodies at the same time, which is so incredibly exciting.”
Despite indulging in a lot of “fun foods,” Adler admits that the family’s meals tend to be simpler than what she shows on social media.
“I don’t feed my family hamburgers every day,” she said.
‘The basis of our meals is quality pasture-raised meat, so I make a slow-cooked piece of meat or I cook a whole roast chicken and that is the basis of the meal.
“And from there we might have a whole wheat sourdough loaf that I made with some pasture-raised raw butter, and then I’ll throw together a salad from my garden or use local ingredients from a nearby farm and then a vinaigrette.”
Adler said her children rarely get sick and experience no behavioral problems as a result of avoiding unprocessed foods
Because of the diet, Adler said her children rarely got sick, and on the rare occasion that they did, they were able to recover within 24 hours.
She also said her children had no behavioral problems either, which she said was due to avoiding ultra-processed foods.
In April, California lawmakers passed a bill banning schools from serving foods containing six artificial ingredients that have been linked to low IQ, behavioral problems and cancer.
When it comes to identifying as a “tradwife,” which has become a controversial label lately, Adler says she prefers to be known as “tradwife 2.0.”
“I understand the criticism it’s getting because I think it really needs a more modern definition,” she said.
‘Tradwife is really a nod to the past, a housewife from the 1950s without feminist rights, so with the tradwife 2.0 I combined the best of the tradwife from the 1950s with everything women could get from the feminist movement.
‘So combining the best of both worlds in tradwife 2.0. I think it’s really just to educate people about what it means and what it is to be a trad woman.”