One Man Ate Only Sweetgreen for 25 Days, So the Company Is Now Recruiting 30 More to Do 30

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After one very committed individual ate nothing but Sweetgreen for 25 straight days, the salad chain has decided the right response is to find 30 more people to do it again, this time for 30 days, and to document the whole thing.

The original challenge was undertaken by Tim Donohue, who ate Sweetgreen twice a day for 25 days and, in a detail the company has chosen to feature prominently, reported that he “pooped 23 out of the 25 days” — a metric he offered with no additional context, and which the chain has since presented, in its marketing materials, as a result worth celebrating.

He spent $996.91 on 50 bowls and 20 sides over the course of the challenge, which the company notes was, in a sense, a saving, because he “bought nothing else,” a statement that is true and also, in the way that matters most, not really what anyone was asking to hear.

The new “30 Days of Sweetgreen” campaign is recruiting participants who are “willing to eat Sweetgreen every day for 30 days and document” the experience, a phrase that, on the company’s landing page, is followed by a very specific call for people to “share their results,” which, based on the original participant’s most-cited finding, will very likely center on the bathroom.

Food experts were divided on the whole endeavor, but in a way that was surprisingly unified. “I do not understand why this is a thing,” one said. “And also, why is the company happy about it?” A second expert offered a more measured take: “The bowl is a very consistent product. That is the whole story. That is the entire article.”

At press time, the company had not yet confirmed how many of the 30 recruited participants had completed day one, a number that, given the nature of the commitment, the company has described, in internal materials, as “in progress.”