Revisiting Clean Eating in 2024
“Of course I eat clean: I wash all of my produce before I eat it”
It’s the year 2020 and anti-diet accounts abound on all social media platforms. It’s a movement that has been building for years and is music to the ears of people who found themselves bouncing from fad diet to fad diet only to grow in self-hatred with each failed plan.
In another corner of the internet, tan, smiling women pose with Pop Tarts and pizza in sports bras, revealing tight, lithe stomachs and toned arms. “I can eat whatever I want, as long as it fits my macros”, they announce.
The IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) diet, popularized in the early 2010s, is essentially flexible dieting rebranded. It relies on the idea that as long as you hit your macronutrient targets, and therefore your calorie goal, you can eat whatever you want. In the eyes of flexible dieters, sweet potato carbs are the same as gummy bear carbs.
Though vastly different in principle, both groups are trying to take down the idea of “Clean Eating”.
What is Clean Eating?
Clean eating is actually quite tricky to define, mostly because it can mean so many different things to different people.
The term “Clean Eating” is said to have been coined by bodybuilders in the 1990s to describe eating a high protein, low carb, junk-food-free diet.
The term came to mainstream popularity shortly after Canadian fitness model Tosca Reno released her book “The Eat-Clean Diet” in 2006. This book emphasized cutting highly-refined carbs and sugars from your diet to lose weight and get healthier.
But since, the movement has seen many iterations as it grew in mainstream popularity.
Some Clean Eaters espouse strict veganism, even raw veganism. Remember Freelee the Banana girl?
These extreme eaters shun any and all processing, often eating heaps of raw produce to keep themselves running.
Though this sounds noble - eating food right from the earth! - it can have a dark side.
They shun any and all processing, which frankly, can be dangerous. Some processing, like cooking or soaking, can make nutrients more available to the body, meaning you will absorb more of those foods when they go through these processes. Other types of processing, like pasteurization, cooking, pickling, and drying, can make foods safer to eat by killing harmful bacteria or preserving them in a way that inhibits bacterial growth.
These foods are also very high in fiber. Though fiber is very beneficial to health in the right amounts, it can wreak havoc on hormones, digestion, and the absorption of fiber when someone over-consumes fiber to the extreme. Not to mention that this diet can be very low in dietary fat - another essential nutrient for hormonal and cognitive function!
Other “Clean Eating” camps advocate for wild and locally-raised animal products. They eschew seed oils and grains, and instead emphasize wild game, organ meats, bone broth, and raw milk.
Though this version of “clean” is a world away from the plant-based diet, they are both based on the exclusion of certain ingredients deemed “toxic” to these dieters.
“Clean Eating” influencers nowadays will often make viral videos walking through the grocery store highlighting ingredients in everyday foods. “I would never eat this because it has [X ingredient]”, they announce, waving some food at the camera and demonizing the toxic ingredient du jour.
Then there are the “clean” food products that crowd the snack aisles of health food stores. “Guilt free” versions of your favorite cookies, frozen pizzas, and chips, made from all whole, organic ingredients. The cookies are made with coconut sugar, the pizzas with stone-ground heirloom grains and A2 mozzarella, and the chips are grain-free and made with beef fat. Of course they’re processed, but they’re pesticide- and preservative-free, so of course they must be good for you! Why else would they cost 5 times as much as the “toxic” versions lining the aisles at Walmart?
As you can see, so many different diets can fit under the umbrella of Clean Eating, so it really is hard to make any definitive statement about it. It ranges from swapping ingredients for less refined versions, to extreme restriction and exclusion of entire groups of nutrients.
The Dirty Truth Behind Eating Clean
All of these Clean Eating camps have their own baggage.
The most extreme “clean eaters” fall into disordered territory. Certain foods, or even groups of foods, are off-limits to them, and some become distressed if they can’t find foods that fit this bill. Their quest for purity can be disruptive to living their lives, and can cause lots of worry and fear.
If you are constantly worrying about the purity of the ingredients you are putting into your body, you are spending too much mental energy on food!
Often, the negative health impacts attributed to single “toxic” ingredients in modern processed food are really the result of over-consuming highly processed foods in general. Maybe it isn’t seed oils; maybe it’s the accumulation of a lifetime of over-eating foods with little nutritional value.
Some critics of “clean” eating point out that the terminology assigns moral value to eating certain foods. The implication of “clean” is that eating things outside of the diet is “dirty”. You can definitely see this in the marketing that health and diet foods rely on - “guilt free” is a common claim on the packaging, as if you should feel guilt for eating other things.
This assignment of moral values to food choices can lead to disordered attitudes around food.
Sometimes, it’s healthier to just have a regular old brownie in the break room at work than to fret and vow to make a sad replica with cacao nibs, date syrup, and black beans when you get home so that you can have one. Caring about what you’re eating is only healthy until it goes too far!
There’s also the practicality factor of it all.
Depending on where you live in the world, the growing season for local produce may not span the entire year, and you may need to rely on canned, frozen, or otherwise processed foods to get your nutrients. You may also need to eat items that have been shipped from other regions of the world and treated with gasses to control the ripening and freshness while they are en route to a store near you. These food processing techniques allow people in all climates to access fresh, healthy produce when it is not in season near them!
We also lead incredibly busy lives, and it is often not practical for someone to make every single thing they eat from scratch.
Sometimes, it’s better to buy a rotisserie chicken on your way home from work so you can put a healthy dinner on the table while living your life than it is to add the stress of making something from scratch because you believe you have to.
Economic status also plays into this. Someone in a less affluent area may have limited access to abundant, good quality produce and meat, and may have to resort to more processed options to feed themselves. A person on a tight budget may also have to rely more on frozen and canned options, as these tend to be cheaper. Organic produce may also be out of budget for people with less money. “Clean eating” fear mongering may discourage people who can’t afford to eat “perfectly” according to this set of standards, and put them off of even trying to eat well.
Frozen produce can be a great option if fresh produce is out-of-budget or if you find yourself not using it before it spoils!
Just because something is “clean” does not mean it’s healthy.
If you walk down the snack and candy aisles of Whole Foods, you will see some seriously bougie versions of your favorite junk foods, and they will all have some sort of health claim on the packaging.
Non-GMO, organic, gluten-free, vegan, guilt-free, grain-free, made with coconut oil, made with date sugar, no artificial colorings…
None of these labels matter for your body’s health, performance, and appearance if you are mostly still eating junk food!
Simple ingredient versions of junk foods do not magically become health powerhouses because they are made with sweet potato instead of whatever starch they were previously made of. Date sugar is still sugar, and coconut oil is still a calorie-dense saturated fat. If these products are a large part of your diet, it is likely that despite the possibility of getting more micronutrients than you might from a diet of traditional junk food, you might be getting more sugar and calories than you need.
You can eat all “clean” foods and still have a very unbalanced and nutrient deficient diet.
The health halo is real: you can see that the product on the left is a dairy-free ice cream made to look healthy and clean, while the one on the right is more traditional and straightforward about being, well, ice cream: the labels show that the “clean” version still has 12 g added sugar, and 20 g fat per serving, with 18 g of that being saturated fat! Now, both are great as a treat, but one might make you think you’re making a healthy sacrifice, while the other is clearly just ice cream. Read your labels, folks!
One thing flexible dieting/IIFYM really gets right is macronutrient ratios. It is important that your body gets protein, fat, and carbs in the correct proportions to stay healthy, and just because something is “clean” doesn’t mean it will fit within this ratio on a regular basis.
Even with products containing simple, healthy ingredients, it is important to read labels and have an idea of the macronutrient profile of your diet.
The “health halo” effect can lead to overconsumption of foods that are perceived to be healthier.
Claims of health benefits on food packaging can make someone believe the product can be consumed in larger quantities than something with no health claims made on the package. Being made with “clean” ingredients doesn’t necessarily mean that a product will fit your goals. After all, coconut sugar, barley malt syrup, date syrup, and beet sugar are all still added sugar, and consuming too much added sugar of any sort will still cause health risks.
Benefits of Clean Eating
Obsession and misleading marketing aside, there are definitely some redeeming qualities of eating “clean”.
Foods generally have more nutrients when they are minimally processed. Notice that I say “minimally” and not entirely unprocessed.
As mentioned before, some processing may be necessary to make foods safer, enhance nutrient availability, or preserve their quality enough to get them from the farm to your plate. Other methods of processing, like cooking, can transform the vitamins in certain vegetables into forms the body can use. Cooking can also ease digestion of plant foods.
When foods are highly processed in a factory, they are often stripped of some of their nutrients, pumped up with some fillers to make them more easily shaped into whatever product they are becoming, and preserved with lots of extra additives. A diet high in highly processed foods will often also be high in added sodium and sugar, and laden with less healthy fats.
Whole foods, however, generally contain lots of the nutrients missing from a highly processed, Western diet. Whole fruits and vegetables (whether fresh, frozen, or canned) carry fiber, water, healthy fatty acids, and a host of other vitamins and minerals that can support your health. Fatty fish, flax, and organ meats give us omega-3 fatty acids that support our brain health and help balance inflammation.
Many people will also experience some fat loss when switching out heavily processed foods for less processed alternatives. A few factors play into this:
Whole foods tend to take longer and more work to eat. Think about drinking a glass of orange juice versus the experience of peeling an orange, separating the sections, and eating them one by one.
It is easy to drink the orange juice while distracted by something else and keep going back for more, consuming lots of extra sugar and calories without even registering it. The whole orange, however, is a sensory experience and requires some work to eat. Your body will have more time to register the act of eating and acknowledge that food has been taken in, and hunger and fullness cues will have some time to catch up.
The body often burns some additional energy converting whole foods into forms of energy usable by your body.
For example, the carbohydrates in a bagel may be readily absorbed by your body, while oats require a little more work to digest and convert to glucose. This difference is often negligible, but over time, these choices can all add up and make a difference.
Additionally, the fiber and other nutrients in these less processed choices can keep blood sugar stable, meaning you will likely experience stable energy and satiation over a longer period of time, rather than the sharp spike and dip of a simple carb.
Though it definitely is possible to overeat whole foods, they are more difficult to eat too much of than highly processed foods are.
Whole foods are also harder to overeat due to the fact that they often have more volume than highly processed foods. The removal of some parts of foods in the refining process makes it easier to densely pack them into a compact form. Think about sweet potato chips versus sweet potatoes. All of the water and some of the fiber is removed from the chips, making it easy to eat the whole bag, while eating 2 to 3 sweet potatoes would take some serious dedication.
Highly processed foods are often engineered to be extremely palatable, set off pleasure in your brain, and keep you coming back for more. Less processed foods are incredibly tasty, but they are more subtle in flavor. Carrots are crunchy and delicious like Cheez-Its are, but most people might have an easier time accidentally eating a whole box of Cheez-Its than a whole pound bag of carrots!
The good news is that after a while of eating primarily whole foods, you may grow to prefer the more complex, subtle flavors of foods in their true form to the in-your-face pop of dopamine a bite of their highly-processed counterparts may set off.
Should We Even Call it “Clean Eating” Anymore?
I’m sure “eating clean” was once a statement, but now that it has been so polluted (haha) by so many different philosophies, it’s genuinely confusing.
I find “minimally-processed” or “less-processed” to be more specific, helpful terminology when I am coaching my own clients.
As we saw above, there is certainly some merit to pursuing a less processed diet, but as mentioned above, it’s nearly impossible to eat entirely unprocessed foods - I’m not interested in taking a bite of a whole, raw cow, are you?
It can be helpful to think of processing as a spectrum that you can move along as you see fit.
Take chicken for example. On one end of the spectrum, we have fast food chicken nuggets - the leftover pieces of lower quality chicken, ground up, breaded, and fried in cheap oil. On the other end, we have a beautiful, local, pasture raised, homemade roast chicken. There is plenty of territory in between! A grocery store rotisserie chicken is a step in the right direction, as is pre-cooked chicken breast from the freezer aisle. Even grilled nuggets at a fast food restaurant can act as a good intermediate step along the spectrum for some.
You can create your own standards for better, and decide when you think it’s appropriate to use them. Sometimes, there’s a time and place for chicken nuggets! And you will likely have seasons of life when you can be more picky about these standards than others. It’s about what you do most of the time, not once every few weeks.
The real message here is to think about how many steps your food went through to get to your plate, and decide what you are comfortable with and what is realistic for your lifestyle. You don’t have to be perfect, but it will benefit your health to audit your diet every now and again and ask yourself “is what I am eating food?”
So, is Clean Eating Worth It?
Like most situations, nuance wins here.
The idea of clean eating should not be totally discarded by any means, but it should not be an obsession, and it’s not a good idea to blindly eat anything “clean” with no regard to the macronutrient profile.
The best approach is a blend of flexible dieting and working on eating a majority of minimally-processed foods. Mostly meat, fish, veggies, and whole grains, with the occasional Starbucks egg wrap or handful of Swedish fish!
I don’t remember where I saw this, but there was a sound byte on Instagram asking “do you want a chicken and rice body, or a Kodiak cake body?”
I think about this a lot. The macros-only crowd may rely heavily on protein bars, protein enhanced baked goods, and sugar-free syrups to hit their protein and calorie goals, but for what? Sure they may be getting leaner and gaining muscle, but what are the long term implications on health?
I coach fat loss clients online, and when I look at their food logs, one of the first things I try to help them do is get their nutrients from real food sources. I don’t want to help people drop body fat at the expense of a varied and nutritious diet, so if they are relying on multiple Quest bars daily to hit their protein goal, we talk about it and figure out how they can get that protein from less-processed sources.
The bottom line: know what your body needs, and try to meet it with foods pretty close to their natural state, with a treat here and there!
Need Help Moving Towards Healthy?
Whether your diet is a free-for-all, you eat a bunch of diet crap fake foods, or you need help incorporating “fun food” in a way that won’t zap your energy, I am happy to help! Let’s get in touch and come up with a nutrition plan together!
