Eating Clean Will Not Solve Any of Your Problems
Nobody brags about eating junk. A healthy diet includes vegetables and avoids too much sugar , and if you eat this way, you can be satisfied that you are eating “clean.” But you know what? Eating clean is a trap.
Of course, it’s nice to eat a couple of “clean” dishes. It doesn’t matter that there is no single definition of “clean”. I liked this word when I first heard it because I realized it meant unprocessed foods (fresh vegetables, homemade meals) and it was not linked to any particular theory, like eating low carb or low in fat. But the same ambiguity was used that was once its appeal. Everything can be clean now if it is sold by someone standing on the beach and it looks great .
This was probably inevitable. We’ve heard for years that diets don’t work; what you need to be healthy is a lifestyle change. So, combine this basically sane concept with our modern fascination with the all-round enviable lifestyle , and you’ve got an influencer ( instagrammer , movie star , supplement dealer , etc.) who can paint you a picture of this amazing person. you will if you eat what they eat.
This is how the call works: Each guru presents a simple idea based on forests of half-truths and collected data. Destroy one small support and the rest will remain standing. No one has time to debunk them all, and if you try you will look like a bastard. But from afar, this big idea seems to be a beacon of clarity in a confused world .
Here are some examples: you just need to eat nothing but vegetables . Or avoid most vegetables . Or eliminate gluten . Or, cut out dairy, grains, and sugar .
These are not variations on one basic idea of healthy eating; each one is a different trick masquerading as common sense. Bee Wilson writes in The Guardian that we were confused by the “dream of cleanliness in a toxic world” and “[we are] so relaxed that we will believe any master who promises us that we too can become clean and kind.”
However, this fantasy backfires when we look at foods, diets, and people that are not considered “clean.” Does this mean that other foods and the people who eat them are “dirty”? It’s not that quinoa is different from rice, or that sweet potatoes are different from regular potatoes . As Wilson points out, coconut sugar is much more expensive than regular sugar, but nutritionally nearly identical.
It’s the same with processed foods. This does not mean that processing is inherently bad . (Cooking is a form of processing, after all.) Twinkies, for example, are not “unclean.” They are just high in sugar and low in beneficial nutrients, so it makes sense not to eat too much of them.
Without the halo of pure eating, we go back to evaluating foods for their merits and figuring out if they fit into a diet that makes sense for each of us. Sorry if this is less romantic.