Gwyneth Paltrow is back in the kitchen and stressing out the internet. The Oscar winner stopped by the Today show this week to whip up her gluten-free, grain-free turkey meatballs from Goop Kitchen, and a viral clip shows her casually suggesting replacing Parmesan cheese with arugula. The leafy green, usually minding its business in overpriced salads, somehow found itself being introduced as a dairy substitute on live television.
© Getty“If you want to avoid dairy, one trick that I do is I dice up arugula, and I put it in,” Gwyneth explained. But even Savannah Guthrie - who is currently dealing with the unimaginable stress of her mother Nancy Guthrie’s still-unsolved disappearance - looked visibly caught off guard by the suggestion
“It sounds weird, but it kind of adds a nice texture to it, and it’s delicious,” Paltrow said, doubling down.
Of course, social media wasted absolutely no time dragging the wellness mogul for the suggestion. “Hell no, straight to jail,” one person commented, while another wrote, “I love arugula, and this is insane.”
Someone else joked, “Trying this on my next cheesecake recipe,” while another compared the swap to replacing pancake syrup with “a shoe” because it “adds texture.”
To be fair, a few people defended her idea, arguing that arugula would add moisture and peppery flavor rather than literally tasting like Parmesan. Still, for viewers at home watching a beloved cheese get replaced by chopped leaves before noon on national television, it was simply too much to process.
© @gwynethpaltrowBut if you’ve followed the Shallow Hal star, this barely cracks the top ten of her most Gwyneth food moments. This is the same woman who once revealed she survives many lunches on bone broth, gave the world a fridge tour that looked like an Erewhon scavenger hunt, and promoted an eight-day goat milk cleanse through Goop.
She also admitted she got “kind of obsessed with eating very, very healthily” while trying to help her father during his cancer battle. “I went into hardcore macrobiotics for a certain time. That was an interesting chapter where I got kind of obsessed with eating very, very healthily," she explained on an April 2025 episode of The Goop Podcast.
At the time, she was helping her father, Bruce Paltrow, during his battle with cancer before he passed away in 2002. "I think that was—I was really trying to heal my dad by proxy, and he just didn't really want anything to do with it," she shared.
And while she’s become the unofficial patron saint of almond moms everywhere, she has recently loosened up a bit. Earlier this year, she admitted she was “a little sick of” the Paleo lifestyle and started bringing sourdough bread, pasta, and cheese back into her life.
She’s also not above a little chaos when it comes to treats. During quarantine, she revealed she was drinking quinoa whiskey cocktails with maple syrup every night, and confessed in 2025 her last junk food indulgence was a chocolate-covered Oreo. “I love it,” she said. “I think it’s all about balance.”
