‘Clean’, ‘Processed’, and Other Meaningless Nutrition Buzzwords You Should Ignore
Everyone wants to eat healthy food, but “healthy” does not have a specific meaning. As are many other food-related buzzwords used on packaging or by influencers. These words and phrases are meant to make you feel good (or bad) about your choice, while giving you little to no useful information.
“Clean”
“Clean” tops the list. It simply means “things I want to believe are good” and does so by drawing the “us versus them” line. These foods are clean, which means these foods are… dirty? Unless we’re talking about an omelet that’s dropped on the floor, that’s an absolutely meaningless distinction .
“Inflammatory” or “anti-inflammatory”
Inflammation is a complexly coordinated process that our bodies use to fight disease, repair damaged tissue, and more. It’s not always bad. But since inflammation is linked to cardiovascular disease, it is hypothesized that preventing inflammation in general may reduce the risk of certain diseases.
This is an interesting hypothesis and even has some support, but there is little evidence linking certain diets to inflammation and in turn health outcomes. Many of our ideas about what constitutes an “inflammatory” food are based on laboratory or population-based studies, and we cannot narrow down the impact of individual foods.
“Real Sugar”
Cane sugar is all the rage right now, it’s not high fructose corn syrup, but there is very little nutritional difference between cane sugar (or beet sugar) and the often demonized HFCS. Both are about half glucose and half fructose; HFCS is “high fructose” only in the sense that it has more fructose than regular corn syrup, which is mostly glucose.
And if you’re going to come to me with the fact that HFCS can be 55% fructose instead of 50% fructose, I’m going to ask how much sugar do you eat, what do you think about the subtle change in composition of five percent of your sugar intake would have some or real value.
“Multi-cereals” and “grams of whole grains”
There’s nothing wrong with multigrain bread (I love it) or bread labeled “seven grains” or “nine grains” or something like that. But multigrain does not mean whole grain . If you’re trying to include more fiber and whole grains in your diet, you need to look for foods that are made entirely of whole grains rather than refined flours made from several different grains mixed together.
These labels are betting that you will see the word “grain” without even thinking about what it means. The same goes for labels that say they contain so many “grams of whole grains.” We should all get about 30 grams of fiber every day, and whole grains are a good source, but 30 grams of whole grain flour (for example) only contains about 3 grams of fiber.
“Net Carbohydrates”
“Net carbs” is a roundabout way of saying that certain carbs in a meal don’t count. I think the idea comes from a good place: an apple with 10 grams of sugar and 3 grams of fiber should not be considered equivalent to a handful of Skittles, which contains sugar and almost nothing else.
But you don’t need a calculator to tell you that an apple brings more to the table, in terms of nutritional value, than candy. Reducing foods to their macronutrients is unnecessarily restrictive and has led companies like Atkins to create and sell low net carb smoothies and bars where you can just eat any regular food that meets your overall calorie needs.
“Gut Health”
It’s true that the microbes that live in our gut are essential to our health, and sometimes we suffer negative consequences when their little ecosystem is disrupted.
But this is an area of active research, and scientists still haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what makes one person’s gut “healthy” and another’s “unhealthy.” And we definitely don’t know enough to say that you just have to eat this or that and your gut microbes will be happy.
“Processed”
Like “clean”, the term is used primarily to demonize cheaper or more widely available food and to make what’s on the speaker’s plate more virtuous in comparison to him.
Even the most scientific attempts to define what exactly qualifies as “processed” food tend to run into philosophical problems as well as nutritional problems. The NOVA classification considers spirits to be more processed than wine, but does that really make wine healthier for you? He also considers canned vegetables to be processed while frozen vegetables are not, among other dubious distinctions.
“Volume”
The idea behind eating lots is that some foods are more satiating than others. So eat a salad or soup, volumetricians would suggest, because both salad and broth will make you feel full without delivering many calories.
This may be true, but they also don’t provide many of the proteins, vitamins, or other nutrients our body needs. And while you can fool your stomach for a few minutes, your body is too smart to be fooled in the long run. An hour after this simple salad, you’ll be hungry again—and this time, maybe you should give yourself some protein, fat, and higher-density carbs.