The Problems With Clean Eating

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Although "clean eating" sounds innocuous enough, it actually isn't.

Sure, some people view it as just "eating healthily", which of course makes perfect sense. However, the "clean eating" space is full of unnecessary food phobia, extreme food avoidance and exaggerated health claims based on very tenuous scientific justification.

If we care about peoples health, we should be giving accurate health based advice for everyone. A lot of "clean eating" diet books do the opposite of that, by adding extra barriers to healthy eating like only eating organic foods or avoiding anything with grains, gluten, dairy, sugar, soy etc.

On top of this, given the strict nature of food avoidance, based on whether a food is "clean" or not, there are concerns that this type of healthy eating advice is crossing an ever blurry line into disordered eating, specifically something called orthorexia.

Healthy eating, of course yes, I want to promote this.

"Clean eating", not so much.

Tell me what you think. :)

References:
- Is #cleaneating a healthy or harmful dietary strategy? Perceptions of clean eating and associations with disordered eating among young adults
- The Dirt on Clean Eating: A Cross Sectional Analysis of Dietary Intake, Restrained Eating and Opinions about Clean Eating among Women
- The stigma of clean dieting and orthorexia nervosa
- “It’s Healthy Because It’s Natural.” Perceptions of “Clean” Eating among U.S. Adolescents and Emerging Adults
- [Orthorexia or when a healthy diet becomes an obsession]
- Disentangling orthorexia nervosa from healthy eating and other eating disorder symptoms: Relationships with clinical impairment, comorbidity, and self-reported food choices
- Role of food processing in food and nutrition security
- Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake