Unless you’ve been in hibernation for the past year, you’ll be all too familiar with the latest health movement to take social media by storm, with fitness, food and even fashion bloggers hash tagging ‘#eatclean’ on their posts. Some might even follow up with ‘#trainmean’ to really make you feel guilty for sitting on the sofa eating those “2 biscuits” which somehow became a whole packet… (Absolutely no judgment here.)
‘Clean’ eating is essentially a diet that is free from processed foods, so to truly eat ‘clean’ your diet should consist only of wholefoods – foods that only contain what they naturally should. In theory, this sounds incredibly healthy, and simple too. How could a diet based around fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and grains not be healthy? But concerns about the sustainability of this diet and its restrictive nature have emerged, particularly with the growing influence that food and fitness bloggers are having on young people.
The health and fitness industry thrives off crazes like ‘#eatclean’, with us mere mortals buying every recipe book and trying every new gym class in the hope of acquiring the bodies of the super-toned fitness models who fill our Instagram feeds. Wellness queens such as ‘Deliciously Ella’, Madeleine Shaw and the Hemsley sisters all promote this wholesome way of eating and have capitalised from this movement, publishing books, making apps and opening restaurants. For those who enjoy health and fitness, this has been an exciting and positive movement.
However, other restrictive diets have stemmed from the wellness messaged preached by these health gurus, such as avoiding gluten and dairy. Interestingly, medical statistics show that very few people actually benefit from omitting these foods, emphasising how willingly we accept health and nutrition advice from so-called experts, often forgetting that a large Instagram following is not the same as a qualification in health and nutrition.
A ‘clean’ diet may by healthy in terms of its nutritional value, but is it balanced? Food should nurture our bodies, but our souls too – life would be pretty miserable if food wasn’t pleasurable as well as being satisfying. Known for her guilt-free approach to eating, Nigella Lawson has criticised the concept of ‘clean’ eating: “I despair of the term ‘clean eating’…it necessarily implies that any other form of eating and consequently the eater of it – is dirty or impure and thus bad.” And this is why ‘clean’ eating has attracted negative media attention recently, as it has been linked to a sharp rise in the development of ‘orthorexia’: an eating disorder characterised by a severe fear of foods deemed ‘unhealthy’, causing the sufferer to become anxious in social situations involving such foods and resulting in isolation.
The principles of eating ‘clean’ form the basis of a perfectly healthy diet, and wholefoods should form the bulk of what we eat, but an obsessive and extreme relationship with food could cause a lot more harm than the odd cookie or takeaway pizza.
Edited by Jess Shelton
Sources:
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https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s640x640/sh0.08/e35/130989…