Zooey Deschanel 'Pleads The Fifth' On In-N-Out
We’ve been talking for less than a minute and actress Zooey Deschanel has already said the word “vegetable” six times. Green things are the actress’s healthy obsession - literally - and it started percolating when she was pregnant with her first child, Elsie, in 2015. "My husband and I became really interested in what we were eating and how we could make sure our baby was as healthy as possible," she says. "We grew fascinated with food."
All that research led Deschanel and her filmmaker husband Jacob Pechenik to launch The Farm Project, a startup aiming to connect people with local food and farm-fresh products, wherever they live. To date, they've launched five "Your Food's Roots" videos - deep-dives on overfishing, bread, meat alternatives - and are trying to make vertical farming more prolific.
Their work led to an invite to speak on a panel at Power of Food, a José Andrés-hosted event that kicked of Los Angeles's month-long Food Bowl. We caught up with Deschanel before she went on stage. She dished on her healthy-eating initiative and revealed that, well, stars - they really are just like us: Even a veg-head like Deschanel can't refuse an oatmeal raisin cookie.
It's not a meal without a vegetable.
"I really try to enjoy vegetables as much as possible," Deschanel says. For breakfast, she makes smoothies with vegan protein powder, some berries, some greens, and sometimes a little banana. Come lunch, it's usually a salad with - you guessed it - "a ton of veggies" or some avocado toast with an egg. Deschanel's dinners are just as healthy: grain bowls with vegetables and tahini sauce.
She has a secret mission in the kitchen.
Deschanel admits she doesn't have a signature recipe; she craves variety. But if there's one thing she aims to do with every dish, it's make something healthy taste good - sometimes even decadent. "That's always my goal," she says, "I feel like I've succeeded if I do that."
Zooey and Jessica Day have the same opinion on desserts.
During one scene in an episode of New Girl, Deschanel's character Jess screams, "I find it fundamentally weird that you're not a dessert person!". Deschanel admits her "cheat foods" are sweet, too: Chocolate and cookies are two of her favorites. But it's not until we get to talking about the sometimes divisive oatmeal raisin cookie that she gets heated. "Who says no to that?" she demands. "I mean, it's a freaking oatmeal raisin cookie - it's delicious."
Her stance on In-N-Out will leave you shook.
We threw out the names of a lot of funky foods at Deschanel to see how she would respond - Delish or not Delish - and her answers were acceptable up to a certain point: pickles, Delish; Hawaiian pizza, not Delish; breakfast tacos, Delish. But when we asked about In-N-Out, and after five second pause - and a lot of facial expressions - she replied, "not Delish." How? What? Why?
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