Clean Up Your Act

Celebrities are doing it and all the dieting books are toting it too, but what is clean eating and is it actually good for you?

Whether you are caught up in the annual January rush of recommitting to your health or are looking to continue to grow your dedication to your fitness, somewhere down the path you must have come across the ‘clean eating’ movement.

The Crux Of The Matter
It is a deceptively simple concept. It is not a diet that focuses on eating more or less of any specific thing; rather it is a lifestyle choice that asks you to eat better – i.e. whole foods, that which is either not processed or as minimally processed as possible.

Essentially, processed food covers anything which involves additions of any kind – everything from salt to flavour, even preservatives – changing the form of natural food through, say, stir-frying, and any foods with components manufactured in a lab which is all the stuff on the label you cannot pronounce.

In this vein, processed food includes everything from a churro to the jar of organic peanut butter in your cabinet, even the instant coffee.

The thing to keep in mind is that not all processed food is bad. In fact, often processing make certain foods more edible by removing toxins from them that can be harmful to us, or makes foods more enjoyable (kale!) by altering the flavour, or gives us access to food that are off-season through canning or freezing.

Though, while you may be munching on canned vegetables, pasteurised milk, or even instant oatmeal, these foods are not on the same level as items like sodas and doughnuts – what the experts like to call ultra-processed – and big no-nos in the eating clean movement.

“But they taste so good,” you say.

Well, the health problems associated with ultra-processed foods are ten-fold, with researches linking genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with cancer and infertility. In fact, studies have also shown these foods to be laced with chemicals that encourage your appetite rather than satiate it, pushing you to eat more and more. On top of everything, these highly-processed foods are also stripped of nutrients needed for overall health, leaving them of absolutely no use to you, in any way.

You have also, undoubtedly, come across a number of such products with new packaging sporting an overall ‘healthier’ look; less sodium, no trans fats, vitamin-enriched, and low cholesterol, to name just four, tricking you to believe that eating more of this is not as bad now because it’s healthier but all this does is convolute your perception.

So what do you eat? Well, unprocessed foods include fresh fruits and vegetables, dried legumes, nuts, and farm-fresh eggs while minimally-processed ones include unrefined grains (whole wheat bread and pasta for instance), frozen fruits and veggies, oils, and hormone-free dairy.

The health problems associated with ultra-processed foods are ten-fold, with researches linking genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with cancer and infertility.

Mind Over Matter
Many experts argue that calling the movement clean eating implies that any other kind of diet is unhygienic or dirty, and that if you are not eating ‘clean’ then you must be a sloppy and lazy individual who is making themselves sick.

They stress that the best way to living a healthy life is not to focus on a specific diet but to simply eat what you want, just in moderation, as you cannot always have a meal that is directly ‘farm to fork’.

Moreover, many have also pointed out that this eating trend focuses more on becoming thin in the mainstream media than it does on just eating well, and allows companies to take advantage of the ill-informed by promoting products which claim to be “clean” and “healthy” – cold-pressed juices are still a concentrated source or sugar and just because it is coconut oil does not make it any less of a saturated fat.

So perhaps the trick is not to waste too much time, energy, and money on figuring out the best diet for you and purchasing the “best” food, rather it is just about four main things:

1. Eat as many vegetables as you can
This does not mean to only eat vegetables or have them all the time. Simply, find more ways to introduce some leafy greens into your meals.

2. Think transparent over clean
Make sure your food is what it claims to be. A candy bar ought to be a candy bar and not disguised as a protein bar (looking at your Snickers and Mars.)

3. Not all packaged food is the enemy
Read the labels on the foods you buy. If it features a long laundry list of things you cannot even begin to pronounce, your odds are best at ditching it.

4. There is no cheating, just indulging
Stop thinking of a Mickey D meal as a cheat meal. This just leaves you with feelings of guilt, and do not think of it as a reward either because in the end, it is better for you to leave junk food out. Instead, just think of it as what it is, a meal, and just make sure that in the balance of food, you have more home-cooked meals than outside ones where you control what goes in the pan.