Frank Lipman MD, New York, NY. 53,193 likes · 1,615 talking about this. Practicing physician, founder of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in NYC and NYT. Find and save ideas about Amanda Jean on Pinterest, the world's catalog of ideas. Find and save ideas about Amanda Jean on Pinterest, the world's catalog of ideas. Thrive energy cookbook Download thrive energy cookbook or read online here in PDF or EPUB. Amanda Chantal Bacon’s food diary is mystifying, but is her diet actually healthful? I think she’s focused her diet on some of the. The New New Age: An Interview With Amanda Chantal Bacon Of Moon Juice. A woman walks into Silver Lake’s Moon Juice. She very carefully pushes open the glass door to the space, a tissue coming in between her hand and the handle. ![]() She sneezes and says hello to chef and shop owner Amanda Chantal Bacon in a nasally congested chirp. Amanda greets her with a smile, saying hi and waving to her. Amanda turns away from the low storefront table she sits at and points to a clear cold case of colorful juices: “The Strawberry Silver is good for a cold.” The woman nods, thanks her, and speeds to the counter for this natural medicine. This is a common situation in Moon Juice. Amanda crafted her Venice and newly opened Silver Lake culinary concepts to be a mixture of natural based soul nourishments and refined, fresh pressed juices. She finds it to be her duty to point people toward things she makes that will help them feel good inside and out. She finds that this approach to food and drink making is a result of California food culture and the lifestyle of the West.“I learn a lot from the mad and crazy food scientists who are behind the cool stuff,” she says, pointing to neatly rowed merchandise in the store. You don’t find these people outside of Los Angeles. There are a few in New York but they aren’t literally living on the side of a mountain or living in a van in a forest, coming out to talk about the new mono- atomic folds. And Crosby explains how there isn't one single diet for everybody because we all have. This is why I live in California.”“Equally so, the California food movement has been influential. I have to check myself when I start with these jokes about salad. It’s like Hemingway: everyone has read him and knows about it but he was part of a movement and he was really great. That is equally an influence on me. It’s as Californian and as it is uniquely LA.”The irony in this is that Amanda is a New Yorker, one who has been transformed by California and similar cultures so much so that the East coaster has been stripped away.
![]() ![]() Amanda Chantal Bacon RecipeShe’s found her way out West by way of experimenting in different cultures around the world. There was fun to be had and many adventures to play out. I went there thinking I would go into some sort of fine art but I ran with food and it hasn’t stopped. That made sense though as I remember looking back to when I was four and that I was most interested in the restaurants scene.”Her growing up in Chelsea and witnessing places like Laurent become as successful as it was had an impact on her. She matured into a food person, someone obsessed with the art of food making and the art of entertaining. There was no farm to table or slow foods: those were not household jargon. That sent me on my path.”She lived in Italy for over a year and then began to bounce around quite a bit, hopping from place to place to place. I was in Italy and then New Zealand and I tried teaching young children. I went back to New York and worked for a while and ended up spending a few years traveling through Central America, living between Buenos Aires and a beach in Uruguay called Ignacio for a few years.”“I actually learned a lot about food and ingredients and simplicity there,” she says. That’s where I learned the beauty of something as basic as a grilled carrot: it’s about that simplicity of one thing. It was about the soil that the carrot was grown in and the wood you started the fire with and how you stoked the coals and what olive oil you were using and even what shape the salt is that you were using.”“I wound up leaving and going to culinary school in Vermont,” Amanda says, noting that she went on to attend New England Culinary Institute. I didn’t just want to learn how to cook an onion. The school is also tiny and all the professors are food activists or have come from great restaurants. I spent my time working at bakeries and dairies there. There’s such a great thing happening in Vermont! Before New York and LA hopped on the bandwagon, the culture was there.”She details the lifestyle of living in Vermont, one that you can see still present in her current work. It was very interesting. There were a lot of duck eggs and root vegetables and bread and Green Mountain coffee and goat milk. It was an experience!”“After that, I really wanted to got to California because that’s where the fruits and vegetables were,” she continues. She ended up connecting with one of the best chefs in town, one who has a similar mind when it comes to food. I learned so much directly from her. It was truly a mentor experience.”“She’s amazing, through and through. As someone who was all up in her grill for a couple of years, she’s still one of my favorite and most inspiring people. I’m forever grateful to her.”Amanda eventually departed from working with Suzanne at Lucques and went on to work privately and in catering. She ended up working an assortment of jobs like being the food and wine editor of the LA Time’s now defunct LA Times Magazine and originating Forage’s initial menu. She wanted to get back to making food for herself and doing her own thing, though.“I needed to get back into the kitchen and get my hands dirty,” she says. I throw myself full on at things so I took a moment to figure out what my dream come true would be. It was also a response to her experience of Los Angeles, one that was particularly stunted when creating the concept and born of her constant moving around the city. But I had this overwhelming feeling that I was in the . This was during the conception of Moon Juice, which meant a lot of working from home. I’m very physical and very hands on: I like to be around people all day long. I’m a New Yorker in LA—or maybe it’s my personality or working hospitality. I need that beat and I need to be around people: I need the energy of people.”Being tied to your car was challenging and seeing the same chorus of people at the Sunset Junction Intelligentsia was a challenge too. She needed a change—and West Los Angeles provided that. What is the coffee shop you go to? Who are the eight hipsters you will see everywhere? Those are things I want to find out. I also needed to walk and bike. And, for opening this esoteric, organic, premium, green juice temple, the Westside would be the place to do it.”“I wasn’t quite sure it was going to work out!” she says with a giggle, gesturing to the space that has materialized as a result. Turns out there was a movement.”Now at the height of juice and health culture in Los Angeles, it’s time to push the concept even further. What else is there to this lifestyle and how can it become something more? Like learning that certain juices can cure a cold, Amanda wants to empower those who are fans of her work. As there is a movement and our planet needs us to be drawn toward nuts and seeds and vegetables. I see Moon Juice as how we can bring education and information to people in a fun, sexy, easy, non- dogmatic way. With juice that has a 7. Well, a 2. 4 hour life.), I’m working on making things so that they can be delivered elsewhere.”This logic pertains to teaming up with potential hoteliers to figuring out how to bring it fans in Japan to starting a digital forum for get juice people talking. To start, she’s getting everything down, forming it into something that people will want to share and use and learn from. It will have recipes and education and, again, it will great to bring a book to the health world that is fun and inspiring and delicious looking. That won’t be free but it is education.”If Amanda could, she would go up to every person willing to get involved with the brand and give them personal instruction. Like providing simple healing, holistic remedies through juice, she wants to provide those interested with the means to live the Moon Juice lifestyle in their own way.“I feel like, if I could, I would hand each person a book and a nut milk bag and four jars,” she says with a lofty smile. Moon Juice is located at 2. W Sunset Blvd in Silver Lake and 5. Rose Avenue in Venice. You can learn about their cleanses here and their packages here. A Skeptical, (Mostly) Non- Mocking Look at Amanda Chantal Bacon’s Diet. Internet wags and pseudo- science watchers alike went nuts when an Elle Magazine article about the daily eating regimen of one Amanda Chantal Bacon went viral. Bacon is a resident of Venice, California and the owner of Moon Juice, which is “a cold pressed, 1. She also appears to someone whose eating habits Elle felt it would be illuminating to write about. Her food diary is a doozy, as she appears to live entirely off juice, homemade yogurt and chocolate, and the occasional salad. A lot of herbs. Green juice. Full of green things. The piece is actually from May 2. February 5th, 2. 01. Jezebel wrote about it with the headline “I Have Never Heard Of, Much Less Eaten, Any of the Foods in This Juice Lady’s Food Diary.” Other outlets picked it up after that, using similarly mocking headlines, and by the end of the day the Internet was replete with thinkpieces and videos mocking Ms. Bacon’s diet, the bizarre things in it, and how laughably out of touch rich white people are. While mocking people’s food choices simply because they’re unusual isn’t particularly skeptical, examining a diet held up as aspirational, when it’s actually ludicrously expensive, woo- laden, and quite possibly disordered is. In fact, it’s likely that eating the way Ms. Bacon does will leave Elle readers broke, exhausted, and non- functional – even if she herself isn’t. Ms. Bacon starts her first- person food diary with a little tea and solitude: “I usually wake up at 6: 3. Kundalini meditation and a 2. Rohan wakes.”So far so good, right. Her copper tea cup sells for $1. Her tea is available in a box of 9. Incidentally, the FDA recommends against drinking hot liquids out of copper cups, but they’re just in bed with Big Food and want us all to be fat and sick, right? She goes on to a pre- breakfast drink, and we crash hard upon the shoals of woo.“At 8am, I had a warm, morning chi drink on my way to the school drop off, drunk in the car! It contains more than 2. Brain Dust, cordyceps, reishi, maca, and Shilajit resin. I throw ho shou wu and pearl in as part of my beauty regime. I chase it with three quinton shots for mineralization and two lipospheric vitamin B- complex packets for energy.”Shilajit resin – also known as “tar”Wow. That’s a lot to digest (or not) so let’s start with cost. Vanilla mushroom protein costs $3. Almond butter is $1. The Brain Dust is a staggering $5. Cordyceps runs $3. Reishi is $4. 8 for a 2. Maca will lighten your wallet by $2. Shilajit resin is $7 per serving, and ho shou wu runs $1. Pearl is $3. 5 for a 3 ounce jar. The three quinton shots come for $6. B- complex packets run $3. Added all together, that’s a staggering amount of money – $3. But keep in mind you don’t eat all this stuff every day. I tried to amortize the cost of the chi drink/quinton/vitamin combo based on what one morning’s worth costs, using one serving of each and 1 teaspoon as a serving size for supplements that don’t have a serving size (because the FDA probably has never heard of them), and came up with $2. For that much money, all these supplements and herbs must do some pretty amazing things, right? The Moon Juice website extols Brain Dust as “. An elixir to maintain healthy systems for superior states of cognitive flow.” As Skeptoid has discussed many times, anything that uses science- sounding driven to sell you brain, libido, and immune boosting properties is probably somewhere between useless and harmful. Speaking of harmful, Cordyceps mushrooms are known to have toxic properties that can cause paralysis, while Shilajit resin is the black tar extract of a rock, sold in a tonic that contains fulvic acid, a pollutant thought to cause bone disorder. None of the things she lists have been studied in any kind of major trials, and none are approved by the FDA to treat anything. And remember, immune system boosting is bad. As for the Quinton, it’s a supplement containing “1. The “mineralization” she speaks of is an actual scientific term, meaning impregnating an organic substance with an inorganic one. What that has to do with “pure marine plasma” is anyone’s guess. The vitamin B she takes can be purchased in much larger quantities for much less money. And by “drunk in the car” I sincerely hope Ms. Bacon means she drinks her drink in the car, not that she’s drunk in her car. She goes on, describing phase two of her liquid breakfast: “At 9: 3. I drink 1. 6 ounces of unsweetened, strong green juice, which is my alkalizer, hydrator, energizer, source of protein and calcium, and overall mood balancer. I love Moon Juice’s soft and chewy bee pollen—it’s a creamy, candy- like treat that gives me my daily B- vitamin blast. I’ll also grab a handful of activated cashews. I try to get these in every day for their brain chemistry magic. I chase this with a shot of pressed turmeric root in freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.”Again, a double barreled blast of nonsense. In case you’re scoring at home, green juice runs $8 per bottle, while three tablespoons of bee pollen will denude your bank account of $1. The “activated cashews” – “activating” being a fancy way to describe being soaked in salt water and baked – are $2. Second breakfast runs about $2. I will do no such thing. What does any of this stuff do? Woo peddlers make a lot of money off goofy concepts like alkalizing blood and balancing mood, and if you know what “brain chemistry magic” is, then you’re probably making money off it already. Also, why does she need a “B- vitamin blast” if she’s already hammered down two B- complex packets? Bacon knows that overdosing on vitamin B can cause liver damage, jaundice, and nerve damage. That’s not great for the skin. On to lunch we go, and at last, real food appears: “For lunch, I had zucchini ribbons with basil, pine nuts, sun- cured olives, and lemon. I know the right answer would be to sit down and take 1. Putting aside the woo terms like “mineralizing” and “nourish the brain,” it’s hard to fault someone for basically eating vegetables. Though you might want to ask yourself where the protein and fiber are in this lunch? I can’t find it in anything other than small amounts. Bacon is likely too busy to ask herself this, inhaling her food while multi- tasking. PS: the “pantry staple” of umeboshi paste runs $9. If I’m home around 3pm, I always reach for coconut yogurt with cardamom, dried figs, walnuts, and apricots from a weekend farm visit—and a chunk of raw dark chocolate. I ferment big batches of coconut yogurt and make big batches of raw chocolate spiked with maca and any other medicinal herb I’m focusing on. It’s easy to do, and makes for potent, fast snack food throughout the month.”All kidding aside, the yogurt with figs and walnuts sounds pretty good, and like an actual food that a person would eat. Why she has to go ahead and ruin it by “spiking” it full of herbs is beyond me. Incidental question – it’s literally impossible for her to sit down and spend ten minutes eating, but it’s “easy” to make huge batches of yogurt and chocolate, both of which can be found in any respectable grocery store? Bacon owns the store and probably gets it all for free, but for those of you playing at home (assuming you haven’t given up and hit In- N- Out Burger) that’s about $3. I had an early, pre- yoga dinner at Shima in Abbot Kinney, which is my 3- year- old’s favorite restaurant. I had a seaweed salad with micro cilantro and daikon, and a delicate broth of mushrooms and herbs.”I couldn’t find the menu for Shima online, but Yelp lists it as $$$, meaning a meal there will run between $3. Bacon isn’t eating a meal – she’s having seaweed salad and miso soup, essentially. It’s actual food, in the sense that some of it involves chewing, but where’s the protein? That heirloom raw cacao is $1. Not that expensive, given everything else she’s splashed her cash on – again, assuming one serving is one tsp. Where does that leave us? It leaves us having spent over $9. It’s not a crazy guess to think that eating like this, including organic fruit and vegetables, the makings of coconut yogurt and raw chocolate, and going out to dinner could easily run $1. Per week, this is close to $1,0. Just for comparison, the median household income for the average Elle reader is $6. One factor here is something I mentioned above – Ms. Bacon owns Moon Juice, which happens to sell most of the supplements and juices she ingests in lieu of food. So she’s likely getting either a major discount or just snagging it all for free. Obviously, this would cut down on the cost of eating like Ms. Neither she nor the article ever mention this. I want to make it clear that Ms. Bacon can eat in the fashion she chooses. It’s her right to spend whatever she wants on whatever she wants, whether it’s Mc. Donalds or activated nuts and liquefied rock tar. Her health is her business. But for most women, this diet doesn’t and can’t work. It’s ludicrously expensive, dangerously low in calories, stuffed full of dodgy herbs and sugar- packed juices, dependent on non- existent or unproven magical benefits, and involves spending far more time obsessively preparing food than actually enjoying it. Some of these traits are warning signs of orthorexia or disordered eating. I’m not diagnosing Ms. Bacon with anything, but for her diet to held up as an aspirational model to Elle readers is insane. As I was finishing up this piece, I found another quote from Ms. Bacon, this from a 2. I already figured out already – “Here’s my dirty little secret—living in Southern California, I’m in the sun everyday and I don’t wear sunscreen. I don’t know why I don’t wear it, It’s not like I’m unaware of the dangers; I’m a fanatic about my son wearing it. But it just feels so good to be in the sun.”.
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