The Maker’s Diet

The Maker’s Diet is a diet book built around Old Testament dietary principles — whole, unprocessed, organic foods reflecting what its author, Jordan S. Rubin, describes as eating “as God intended.” It’s a genuinely unusual approach worth understanding before committing to its restrictive, three-stage structure.

What Is The Maker’s Diet?

Written by Jordan S. Rubin, the diet blends spiritual practice, hygiene, and eating guidelines rooted in Biblical teaching. It unfolds across three two-week stages, starting highly restrictive and gradually loosening as it progresses.

What You Can Eat

Approved vegetables include mushrooms, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, and leafy greens, all organic. Dairy is limited to hard cheeses and yogurt from goat or organic cow milk. Approved proteins include organic, grass-fed beef, lamb, venison, and buffalo (no pork), along with scaled and finned wild-caught fish, chicken, and legumes — shellfish is excluded. Grain options are narrow: quinoa, sprouted whole grain cereal, buckwheat, and fermented sourdough. Cooking fats are limited to extra virgin olive oil, ghee, and goat or cow butter, and approved fruits include grapes, lemons, apricots, limes, oranges, peaches, and pineapples, all organic. Sweetening is restricted to raw honey or date sugar, with weekly partial fasting built into each phase. Pasta, bread, shellfish, and pork are strictly off-limits.

Claimed Benefits

By eliminating processed foods, additives, and preservatives in favor of whole, natural ingredients, the diet’s foundational principle is genuinely reasonable on its face. Rubin claims most followers lose 10-15 pounds in the first 40 days, with broader promises around immune support and overall wellness. That said, per WebMD, nutrition experts note there’s genuinely no solid data showing organic food outperforms conventional produce nutritionally — “natural” and “organic” carry a marketing appeal that doesn’t always reflect a real health advantage.

Are Organic Foods Actually Better?

Research in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition found that while organic food’s popularity partly stems from a perception of superior nutrition, the evidence genuinely doesn’t support a meaningful difference — a well-balanced diet can improve health regardless of organic or conventional origin. This doesn’t mean fresh, whole foods aren’t beneficial — they genuinely are — but the diet’s specific claims linking it to weight loss lack direct supporting research.

A Real Cost Concern

Per Mayo Clinic, organic foods genuinely cost more due to more expensive farming practices — a real, significant ongoing expense for anyone following this diet strictly, especially given its emphasis on organic meat, fish, and produce across every category.

A Real Credentialing Concern

Per Quackwatch.org, Rubin’s “NMD” credential comes from a non-accredited school with no physical campus, and his “PhD” is from a correspondence school the State of Hawaii ordered closed in 2003 — real, documented credentialing concerns worth knowing before treating the book’s health claims as clinically authoritative.

Real Customer Feedback

Reviews are genuinely mixed — some readers, including devout followers, report real success; others, including some Christian readers, have pushed back hard, with one commonly cited complaint being a passage recommending eating dirt, alongside repeated encouragement to purchase Rubin’s own supplement line.

The Maker’s Diet Alternatives

For anyone drawn to the diet’s spiritual framing but wary of its real cost and restrictiveness, other religion-influenced or whole-food diet books exist as genuine alternatives, along with more conventional, research-backed weight-loss programs that don’t require organic sourcing across every food category to follow effectively.

The Bottom Line on The Maker’s Diet

The Maker’s Diet’s core emphasis on whole, unprocessed food is reasonable, but its real cost, restrictiveness, unsupported organic-superiority claims, and the author’s documented credentialing issues are all genuine concerns worth weighing. Anyone drawn to its spiritual framing should separate that personal appeal from the actual nutritional evidence — or lack thereof — behind its weight-loss claims.

Explore more Healthy Diet reviews and guides on our site.