Diet Advice: Don't Eat Anything White

The nephrologist gave me diet advice: “Don’t eat anything white.” (1)

From peaceandnutrition.com

I bristled. The advice felt less like medical guidance and more like a bumper sticker.  He gave me this catchy little motto without any explanation of what it was supposed to accomplish or why it applied to me specifically.

I've heard this adage before. It’s meant as a quick-and-easy guide to help people reduce sugar and refined carbohydrates. Fine. I get that.

But the thing is — I don’t eat a lot of sugar and carbs.

My blood sugar has always been normal, although it has recently crept slightly into the prediabetic range. I’ve also watched my diet my entire life. I know a fair amount about nutrition, and I’ve tracked my food intake for years on MyFitnessPal — calories, carbs, sugar, protein, fiber, all of it.

I can understand this advice for someone who has never paid attention to nutrition. Maybe for someone struggling with diabetes or obesity. Maybe someone whose exercise routine consists of walking from the recliner to the refrigerator.

For them, “don’t eat anything white” might be a useful starting point. It steers them away from things like white bread, mashed potatoes, and other high-carb processed foods.

But I’m almost 80. I’ve never been overweight. I’ve exercised most of my life. So I found the advice a little insulting: as if all the work I’ve done to educate myself on staying healthy counted for nothing.

Besides, the slogan itself is ridiculous. Someone with no nutritional knowledge could easily conclude that if food isn’t white, it must be healthy.

Chocolate cake? Not white.

Cherry pie? Also not white.

My friend and I burst out laughing when we saw a piece of chocolate cake.

“Well,” I said, “good news. It isn’t white.”

At the same time, people might avoid perfectly healthy foods simply because they happen to be pale: fish, cauliflower, yogurt, mushrooms, tofu, egg whites, jicama, and milk.

Created with ChatGPT 5/23/2026

And then some foods are more complicated than the slogan allows. Potatoes, pasta, and rice have all been demonized at various times, yet context matters — portion size, preparation, what you eat with them, and your overall diet.

I love Basmati Rice - I'll use it more often!

That’s why, if someone truly wants to manage blood sugar intelligently, it helps to understand concepts like the glycemic index — a ranking of how quickly foods raise blood sugar — and glycemic load, which considers the entire meal and portion size as well. (2)

For example, some foods with a terrible reputation are actually not that bad. Most pasta, for example, has a relatively low glycemic index because the carbohydrates are trapped in gluten and are digested more slowly. Which means the gluten-free fanatics who don't have celiac disease may want to calm down a little.

Yes, glycemic index sounds technical. But it’s actually practical.

If I eat a healthy dinner — salad, chicken, spinach — and finish with two bites of chocolate cake, that’s very different from eating half a cake by itself while watching Netflix.

Besides, all these nutritional calculations use brainpower.

And what feeds the brain? Sugar.

So maybe thinking hard about glycemic load actually burns off the dessert. Science should really study this. Perhaps there’s an official conversion formula in M&M equivalents:

30 minutes of word puzzles = 3 M&Ms

Sudoku = 5 M&Ms

Quadratic equations = family-size bag.

And this brings me to my guilty pleasure: whipped cream.

You can’t get much whiter than whipped cream. Yet it has a Glycemic Load of ZERO. Yes ZERO. Very little impact on blood sugar. My endocrinologist might say, "Pile it on! It makes you happy and lowers the glycemic load of any food it’s on." Of course, my cardiologist might not like it.

my dream dessert - a bowl of whipped cream

Personally, I think my body would benefit more from increasing my exercise instead of memorizing color categories for food. I’d been exercising less because of bursitis, but getting moving again will probably help more than banning mushrooms from my life.

Oddly, the doctor never mentioned the role of exercise. Maybe he noticed the muscles in my legs when he checked for edema and decided I was already training for the Olympics.

Or maybe exercise didn’t fit neatly into his slogan.

Since he was so attached to his “don’t eat anything white” motto, I didn’t bother telling him I’d already found an excellent kidney diet book.(3) Interestingly, the book never talks about food colors. It talks about phosphorus, potassium, sodium, protein balance, and portion control — in other words, actual dietary information.

The book also warns against dark colas because they are loaded with Phosphoric Acid, which kidneys apparently find far more offensive than whipped cream. And here’s another case where white is better – clear soda does not use phosphoric acid – they use lemon or lime.

Which taught me something important: Don’t expect your nephrologist to be a dietitian.

This entire experience reminded me of hubby’s favorite joke:

What’s the difference between God and a doctor?

God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.

For Great information on 'Don't Eat White' see blog:

Shena Jaramillo. Registered Dietitian, I Don't Eat Anything White, peaceandnutrition.com, March 27th, 2026.

References

1. Brown University Blog Team, Don’t Eat Anything White!, Brownhealth.org, March 14, 2019

2. Choosing good carbs with the glycemic index,  Harvard Health Publishing, November 12, 2012

3. Quinn Mathews, The Newly Diagnosed Stage 4 Kidney Disease Diet Cookbook for Seniors, April 18, 2026

4. Cherlin Davis, MD, The 5 Best Drinks If You Have Bad Kidneys (and a Few to Avoid), GoodRX,  May 6, 2026