A specific, deliberate choice runs through every session of this workshop: no product is ever named, endorsed, or positioned as necessary. Here is the reasoning behind that.
Walk down the aisle of almost any wellness-adjacent grocery store and the pattern repeats itself. A jar of turmeric that costs four times what the supermarket version costs. A bag of "ancient grain" blend that is, on closer inspection, mostly quinoa and rice. A cold-pressed juice with a shelf life of three days and a price tag that assumes urgency.
None of these products are dishonest, exactly. But the framing around them often implies something the underlying research does not actually support: that a particular branded item, purchased from a particular specialty retailer, produces an effect that an ordinary equivalent would not. That implication is where this workshop draws a hard line.
Peer-reviewed studies on food and inflammation almost never test a specific commercial product. They test a compound, a food group, or a dietary pattern, usually in a generic, unbranded form. A study on olive oil and inflammatory markers uses olive oil bought or produced for the study, not a particular bottle from a particular shelf.
When a retailer or brand cites that same study to sell a $30 version of the ingredient, it is borrowing the credibility of research that was never about them specifically. This workshop tries not to make that same move in reverse.
The no-brand approach isn't a marketing angle. It reflects four separate concerns that came up repeatedly while developing the curriculum.
A supermarket frozen blueberry and a specialty-store fresh organic one have been studied under broadly similar categories in the literature. The price gap between them says more about retail positioning than about nutrient behavior.
Not everyone lives near a specialty grocer, and not everyone has room in a weekly budget for one, even occasionally. A curriculum that assumes otherwise quietly excludes a large share of the people trying to learn.
Naming products creates a natural opening for sponsorship arrangements, which in turn creates pressure to favor certain items regardless of whether an ordinary substitute performs the same role.
Consistent findings in nutrition research tend to describe categories, like legumes, leafy greens, or fatty fish, rather than a single proprietary product within that category. Teaching the category keeps the emphasis where the evidence actually points.
When a recipe calls for canned chickpeas, the instruction is simply "canned chickpeas, rinsed," without pointing toward a particular brand as though it were meaningfully different from the one already in a participant's cupboard. When a recipe uses olive oil, it's described by type, extra virgin versus regular, not by producer or origin story.
This occasionally means recipes look a little plainer on paper than something styled for a product photograph. That trade-off is intentional. The goal is a set of habits someone can keep using long after the three Saturdays end, not a shopping list tied to a particular retailer's inventory.
The workshops page breaks down the three sessions individually, including format, timing, and what materials are provided.
View CurriculumA separate page addresses what tends to happen around the third week of any new habit, and how the rotation approach is designed around that.
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