As well as Jennifer Bowden’s columns in the NZ Listener and here at listener.co.nz, subscribers can access her fortnightly “myth busters” column, in which she explores myths around food and nutrition. This week, she questions whether clean eating is all that clean.
I never thought Nigella Lawson and I would be on the same page with healthy eating advice. Don’t get me wrong, she loves chocolate, and so do I. But her tendency to ladle sugar and cream into her food creations does not scream “doyenne of nutrition advice”. Yet the views Nigella has expressed on clean eating are absolutely on point.
So, what does the latest research on clean eating reveal?
Clean eating is defined as choosing whole, minimally processed foods while limiting the consumption of artificial or processed foods. These eating practices are centred around the goals of healthy eating and improving nutrition.
Mainstream nutritionists and dietitians also encourage people to eat more minimally processed, whole foods, because food processing often results in losses of dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals.
But one fundamental problem with clean eating proponents is their assumption that foods are either clean or not. Food processing is not a black-and-white matter - processed or unprocessed - instead, foods exist on a spectrum from unprocessed and minimally processed at one end to ultra-processed foods that are linked to various health risks.
Imagine life without minimally processed foods like fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, pulses, packaged grains, flour, nuts, milk and chilled or frozen meat. Indeed, many processed foods like butter, vegetable oils, honey, salt and spreads like peanut butter are foundational for our food lives.
Some “clean eating” gurus also encourage followers to ditch dairy, gluten and grains, or to detox and cleanse their bodies, without considering the wider nutritional impact of these actions. Moreover, clean eating websites offer recipes for followers, but a 2018 study published in Nutrition found these recipes were no healthier than other online recipes.
Researchers analysed 86 clean eating recipes from five food categories: breakfast, snacks, treats, desserts and smoothies. Less than 10% of clean eating recipes met the World Health Organisation’s fat and sugar intake guidelines.
In fact, foods published online with clean eating claims contained the same amount of energy, sugar and sodium as foods without those claims. Thus, the researchers concluded that “clean eating claims are potentially misleading for consumers who may believe these foods are healthy alternatives, potentially undermining people’s efforts to eat a healthy diet.”
Added to these problems is the moralising of clean eating, as highlighted by Nigella Lawson: “Clean eating necessarily implies that any other form of eating – and consequently the eater of it – is dirty or impure and thus bad. It’s not simply a way of shaming and persecuting others, but leads to that self-shaming and self-persecution that is forcibly detrimental to true healthy eating.” Amen, Nigella.
The dictionary definition for “clean” is: “Something free from dirt, marks, or stains; or morally uncontaminated; pure; innocent.” Thus, consciously or unconsciously, the clean eating paradigm moralises foods and the eater and implies that food that does not meet the clean eating requirements is dirty or immoral.
It is destructive to ascribe moralistic and emotive values to food, yet clean eating continues to grow in popularity unchecked, noted a 2022 review in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. The proof of clean eating’s harm is in the proverbial pudding. A 2022 study in Body Image found that women aged 18 to 30 years who regularly viewed fitspiration and clean eating content on Instagram were more likely to have symptoms of disordered eating and internalise a harmful thin-body ideal.
The clean eating trend is misleading and potentially harmful to health and wellbeing. Food is neither good nor bad, and you are neither good nor bad based on what you eat. Some foods are more nutritious than others and most of us choose how to balance our intake of both, unconsciously recognising that food is about more than energy and nutrients.
Indeed, food is central to our lives and many celebrations – Christmas, birthdays, barbecues, shared family meals. So, let food, whether nutritious or not, bring us together rather than separate us from family meals and celebrations through guilt and shame.
