Jamie Truppi (’00 Liberal Arts) doesn’t sugarcoat. The Idaho nutritionist recently released an unapologetic food-and-marriage memoir and is already contemplating a prequel and a sequel.
Clean Food, Messy Life: A food lover’s conscious journey back to self details her early dating life through divorce via her complicated relationship with and passion for food. Here, she dishes on everything from her writing process, lessons learned, and more.
How did Clean Food, Messy Life come about?
I’ve always been a writer, even in my youth. I think I published my first piece, a poem, at 12 years old. I started journaling before that, in elementary school, and I kept a journal all through college and beyond. In high school, my English teachers always pulled me aside and encouraged my writing. I never thought I’d be an author, though into adulthood I regularly wrote freelance food articles for several publications—just for fun. Fast forward into my thirties when my marriage was in a fragile place and I was looking for something to rekindle joy or, at least, light-heartedness. I had two young kids. My marriage was crumbling. I was in grad school. I was trying to start a business. I thought I’d write a parody comparing “a nutritionist wife’s detailed food fixations” with a restaurant-industry husband’s desire “just to relax and order take-out.” We got divorced. It was the pandemic and all the work I had been doing came to an abrupt halt. I was wondering: what I am going to do with my life, and who am I as I emerge into the next chapter of my life? I was doing so much work on myself and rediscovering who I was. I was doing a lot of healing and forgiving myself—and all of a sudden, I just knew I had to write this book.
What was that process like?
The first draft took three months. I wrote 100,000 words. And then I rewrote the whole thing because my friends reminded me that I am not, in fact, just a “divorced woman,” that I have so much more to share than a messy marriage, spoiled by food. So I removed about 40,000 words, added about 40,000 words with peer-reviewed citations, and added recipes, which were little stories within themselves. I wanted to be as true to myself as possible without sugarcoating. By nature, I’m a pretty open book, one might say. The story became less about the relationship with my former husband and more about my relationship with food. But I also wanted to appeal to all the skeptics to, you know, legitimize myself in my field, toying with the concept of a book to build business. After round three, I asked myself: What story do I want to tell? I realized my ego was getting in the way. The science-y stuff got in the way, too. So I took it all out, simplified the recipes, and removed unnecessary details, like entire chapters. Nineteen months and six edits later, I finally finished it. It changed so many times, just like we do. It went through its own metamorphosis. It was all part of my healing process. It got easier each time I went through it. But, at some point, you have to stop editing and worrying and wondering. It started out as a book about my marriage. But the concept always kept coming back to food. Food is my jam. Writing the book changed me. For one, it changed me from a night person to a morning person. I still try to write most mornings, even if it’s just ten minutes. Who I became is part of the next story.
What did you learn—about writing, about yourself, about life—through the process?
When you write a book, especially a book as personal and as vulnerable as this, what unfolds is a tremendous amount of self-growth because there is a lot of self-inquiry. I wanted to be as truthful as possible about the way I showed up even though I didn’t always like the way I showed up. I’ve been a person who gets angry or frustrated, often living with a short fuse. But that’s not who I want to be for my children. Writing this book gave me a deep sense of how we can observe ourselves with nonjudgement and forgive what we did, how we behaved. I forgave my ex. I forgave myself. I did a lot of grieving as well. There is a lot of loss in this book. I lost a sister, my best friend and husband, my family, my dreams. Writing this book was putting away my past in a neat little 376-page volume and shelving it and saying, “This happened. This is part of my story. It is not the whole story, yet I get to share this version with the world and not carry it with me.” There’s power in the written word. Once it’s published, I’m also letting go of whatever outcomes it brings. I’m just going to be present with what is. Showing up every day is just enough. There’s a lot of acceptance. Forgiveness, non-judgement, and acceptance. I think writing this book rooted me back to myself and reminded me: This is who I am. I am a person who writes. I’m also a person who finishes things, even if it takes years. I’m a person who likes to connect with people over stories. Another thing that was really poignant for me was I thought you had to be an author to be a writer. Now I see that you don’t have to be a published author to be a writer. Now, I see writing as a gift for me. Writing the book rewrote my view of my world.
Was it a cathartic process?
Yes. There were days when I would just cry and cry as part of the process. That was what I needed to do in order to see that period of my life differently, objectively. I needed to stop obsessing over the pain or the grief and ask myself from a writer’s perspective: How do I say this? Do I say this? Is this necessary? It’s been really good. I’m more grounded and more aligned with myself now.
Was it difficult to sort of separate yourself from your life story in order to write it?
There’s this tug of war. There are so many emotions tangled up in writing a book, especially a memoir. I wanted people to see it the way I saw it. So it mattered to me how I wrote it. I wanted to find the right word or the right description. But readers bring their own experiences to the table. They might not see it the way I do, the way I want them to. It is the past. I wouldn’t change it. Beautiful things always come out of something difficult. I hope that concept resonates with people in a meaningful way. That, and we always have a choice. We choose all the time. We have to remember we choose our path. That can be really hard to accept.
What else do you hope readers take from the book?
What I want people to see is the human condition and the hard stuff and the not hiding behind the façade that we’ve become accustomed to with social media but becoming comfortable with showing your truth—even when it changes. I hope the way the book is written provides an invitation for people to deepen conversations with people they love. I hope it gives readers insight into how we can screw up a lot and still fundamentally be a good person. I hope it helps people look at their relationships and start reflecting on how they show up. Maybe they start with their relationships with people but also consider their values and food and ask themselves: Where do relationships, food, and values intersect? Mostly, I want people to ask deeper questions about who they are on this earth as their stories unfold.
What are you working on now?
I have been intending to record the audio version, and my goal is to do so this fall. It’s a memoir, so it needs to be my voice. I feel compelled to do it. I’m also rewriting the recipes in Clean Food, Messy Life to make them more consistent and easier to follow. I’m also prewriting the prequel to Clean Food, Messy Life. I’m interviewing my cousins and sister and parents and friends. I write a monthly nutrition column for my local newspaper, the Idaho Mountain Express. I write some freelance pieces, too. I just finished a story on high-extraction flour with a deep-dive into gluten. I’m finishing an article about psychedelics as a potential catalyst for food consciousness. I love teaching nutrition workshops, and there’s writing involved in how I present those. I love geeking out on science. But what really fills me up is writing. And, with the writing comes interviewing or traveling to meet with farmers or chefs or naturopaths. So writing is story-telling that is both extraverted in introverted. And I write a lot of personalized nutrition protocols.
What do you enjoy when you’re not writing or working?
I do so many things, probably too many. I consider myself an adventurer. I really like to get outside into nature. It’s one of my favorite things to do with friends and my kids. I try as much as possible to be in the woods. I love to explore new places—hot springs and hiking trails—and travel. I’m always planning a trip. I practice yoga almost every day, and I’m involved in my community and my kids’ school. I cook a lot. I love cooking, baking, modifying recipes, sharing food, and snapping photos of everything. There are stories in photos, too. Experimenting in my kitchen underlies almost everything else. I also spend a lot of time talking with people who have similar values but different perspectives. I love being around people.
Read a review of Clean Food, Messy Life in the Fall 2024 issue.
Find out more about Truppi on the web, Facebook, and Instagram.