A Hoboken, New Jersey, man who ate nothing but Sweetgreen for 25 straight days said his celebratory return to normal food didn’t go as planned, leaving him nauseated after just one slice of pizza.
Tim Donohue, 27, framed his all-Sweetgreen stretch as a modern-day answer to Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary “Super Size Me,” in which Spurlock ate only McDonald’s for a month with damaging results. Mr. Donohue wanted to test the opposite extreme, eating solely from the health-focused chain, with black coffee as his only exception.
He originally aimed for 30 days but cut the challenge to 25 after concluding no stretch on his calendar was free of weddings, work trips or other conflicts. By the end, he’d lost about nine pounds and settled on a favorite order, the hot honey chicken bowl.
Mr. Donohue said the food itself wasn’t the hard part — logistics were. He had to plan meals around store hours, skip drinks when out with friends and work dates around the rule. He also called the month “very expensive” and said cooking at home would be far cheaper than repeating it.
The real reckoning came when the challenge ended. Donohue headed straight to his favorite neighborhood pizzeria for what he called a “well-deserved” slice of cheese pizza. He said the sudden return to heavier food made him feel ill.
“It did make me feel quite sick because it’s a shock to your system,” Mr. Donohue said.
Sweetgreen co-founder and chief concept officer Nicolas Jammet said Mr. Donohue’s video impressed the company enough that it’s now opening its own 30-day challenge to 30 selected customers, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. Sweetgreen will credit each participant $700 weekly toward their account for meals, plus a $500 Sweetgreen account credit upon completion of all requirements, in exchange for documenting the experience on social media.
Mr. Donohue was careful to distance his stunt from medical advice, stressing he isn’t a doctor or nutritionist and never meant to tell anyone else how to eat.
“The experiment was largely a fun filmmaking journey for me,” he said. “I would never prescribe this to someone.”
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