Here's what it's like to spend a whole day eating like Kamala Harris and Donald Trump

Pass the Tums.

Much has been made about Kamala Harris cooking talent –— her knife skills and comfort in the kitchen have spawned countless ideas. After four years of ice cream and angel hair pasta, cooks and personalities from the world of food and drink are clearly excited at the prospect of having a treat in the White House.

This is in stark contrast to her opponent in the race for the presidency, Donald Trump. A germaphobe As a fast food lover, the former president’s most famous culinary exploits include ordering fast food for Clemson football players and enjoying a well-cooked steak slathered in ketchup.

In theory, there could not be two diametrically opposed presidential candidates on food. And the recipes are on it Cooking with Kamala and Trump’s Taco bowl ‘I love Hispanics’ don’t tell you much about the person; they tell you more about the carefully constructed political personality.

To get to the person behind the persona, I decided to take two days to spend an entire day eating exactly like Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, in a completely unscientific experiment based purely on first-hand masochistic experiences . And yes, that meant staring down four McDonald’s sandwiches in one sitting. We’ll get there.

Breakfast

The Trump breakfast: Diet Coke

Trump prefers to skip breakfast and often fasts for 12 to 16 hours a day. As a coffee drinker, I found it difficult to eat just the caffeine from his beloved Diet Coke all morning. Even after drinking three before 9am, it was a hazy start to the day.

The Harris breakfast: raisin bran with almond milk

For Harris, breakfast is also unceremonious. She often eats ‘over the sink’ and sticks to classic dishes Raisin Branand choose almond milk instead of regular. Like Trump, she forgoes coffee, although her drink of choice is green tea, which gives me an equally small sip of caffeine. Both diets left me fully aware that coffee, even with two heart-healthy cups a day, was winning the war with my body; I am chemically dependent.

Snacks

An unexpected overlap in the diets of Trump and Harris? Doritos. Both favor the nacho cheese flavored chip when it comes to snacks.

Lunch

The Trump lunch: overcooked steak smothered in ketchup

By the time lunch came around, I couldn’t wait to eat a well-done steak with ketchup, even though I don’t like ketchup and prefer most meats cooked medium-rare. With only maltodextrin cheese dust and suboptimal caffeine levels in my bloodstream, I cooked the beef puck until it “curled off the plate,” as described by a former White House staffer. The ketchup was a much-needed addition in terms of safety, as the well-done steak was so dry that without the tomato-based lubricant it would have remained a choking hazard. I powered through the steak with a salad topped with Roquefort cheese dressing and appreciated the greens.

The Harris lunch: cottage cheese rice

It was during Harris’ lunch that the two diets really diverged for the first time. So far the snacks have been the same and the breakfasts similar. Curd rice, an Indian dish of rice puree, unsweetened yogurt, salt, pomegranate seeds and spices, immediately brightened my day. Filling, delicious, and layered with the flavors of cilantro, green chili, cashews, and coconut oil, the dish reset my day as if the quick raisin bran eating had never happened.

Dinner

The Trump Dinner: Two Filet-O-Fish Sandwiches, Two Big Macs, and One Chocolate Milkshake

Dinner was always going to be the Mount Everest of this endeavor. I was sitting in the drive-through at McDonald’s drinking my sixth Diet Coke of the day (Trump often drinks until 12). The cashier opened the takeout window and handed me my order: two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, two Big Macs, and a chocolate milkshake. He asked, “Do you need napkins?” and I thought how polite it was for him to assume that several people were eating this meal.

I got home, grabbed my four sandwiches from the box and sat down to eat what Trump is known to consume in a single seat. I knew that speed would play a role in whether I could successfully eat this excessive amount of food, so I went about it methodically, channeling Chestnut, Kobayashi, the Black Widow, and my 18-year-old self. As I took the last sips of my chocolate shake, I debated whether to turn off all the lights and lie down, or go out into the world and start a fistfight. Both felt good.

The Harris dinner: gumbo over white rice

Dinner on my Kamala Harris Day was decidedly different, though almost as tough. Gumbo is one of her favorite dishes, and I made mine from scratch—the roux, the stock, the spice mix—which took me almost two hours, which also felt authentic to Harris. She finds peace in cooking Sunday dinners, so it made sense to zoom through breakfast and have a delicious but easy lunch. I had saved time and space in my day for a hearty bowl of gumbo with white rice. Packed with chicken, shrimp, Andouille sausage, celery, onion, plus herbs and spices, the New Orleans regional specialty filled me up. I wait anxiously Kamala’s headquarters to drop an official gumbo recipe.

Dessert

The Harris dessert: bourbon-pecan-caramel cake

Trump’s dessert was included with the dinner, but Harris’s came a few hours after I digested the hefty gumbo. Like Joe Biden, Harris loves sweet treats. Since she was a fan of caramel and chocolate, I enjoyed a warm bourbon pecan caramel cake with a chocolate drizzle. And to relax, a bath and a cup of chamomile tea.

The aftermath

A day of eating like Kamala Harris was confusing at times, but it all came together and left me feeling full, happy and well rested. A day of eating like Donald Trump left me feeling beaten to death, thirsty, powerful, and strangely accomplished.

Every day felt like a day that started with a full morning schedule, with breakfast being more of a hindrance than a source of pleasure. Until early afternoon at 1 p.m., both the Harris and Trump diets left me feeling the same way: a little hungry, a little tired, and deeply opposed to the idea of a light breakfast.

While Trump’s final meals were consistent in terms of regionality (or lack thereof) and flavor, Harris’s were vastly different: raisin bran, doritos, cottage cheese rice and gumbo cover a wide range of gastronomy. It’s a high-low mixture, like something from a David Chang tasting menu. Her food also had no punch. The curd rice was creamy and salty, the gumbo was herbaceous and spicy, and the dessert and tea brought sweetness and floral notes. The day was an exercise in power struggles, and although it started off a bit restlessly, it ended with peace.

Trump’s dinner was an act of aggression and achievement, and although I couldn’t decide between darkness and fistfights immediately afterwards, I eventually went to sleep that night. The next morning I was hungover in a way I thought only alcohol could be inspiring. The 50-plus ounces of Diet Coke I ingested, plus a few days of sodium, gave me the same “morning after” feeling as a pint of wine from an $8 box. I stumbled through my usual 8 a.m. walk around the neighborhood and check my calendar to see if I should cancel meetings before taking half a day to recover. I couldn’t shake the headache for three hours and vowed never to eat four McDonald’s sandwiches in a row again unless it was really funny.

A day in the life of Donald Trump

2 Big Macs
2 Filet-o-Fish sandwiches
58 ounces of Diet Coke
1 bag of Doritos
1 cooked steak of 250 grams, plus an ounce of ketchup
4,468 total milligrams of sodium

The result

A single food preference cannot define a person; Ketchup on a well-done steak should not indicate that someone lacks sophistication, and curd rice should not indicate that someone is elitist. When a collection of preferences is put together in this way, the picture becomes clearer.

If I were to play a little word association, it would go something like this:

Kamala Harris: fiery, diverse, random, warm, work
Donald Trump: sassy, salty, cheap, accessible, frat boy

Am I describing the person or their diet? I’d wager that neither campaign would question even 80% of the word associations (“frat-boy maybe, but who else, besides 19-year-old athletes, eats more than one Big Mac at a time?). Most importantly, these two days of eating finally revealed a political common ground for Harris and Trump: the supremacy of nacho cheese Doritos. That’s probably all we’re going to get.