The Problems With Clean Eating
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ก.พ. 2021
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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
"Ewww, you're drinking protein powder!"
"You're eating wheat powder."
"Yea but..." -leaves the kitchen-
My son has Crohn’s and the most direct book we’ve read has been Breaking The Vicious Cycle, which outlines the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Thankfully he’s been able to remain symptom free without drugs while only on the diet. Passing this along for others.
As someone who was huge on the clean eating hype circa 2012 to 2014, I was literally just thinking how after a few years of hype then dying out, it seems to be making a comeback and then saw this video lol! My opinion is that I love the baseline idea of healthy, less ultra processed, eating but (my past self included) people latch on to ideologies and just take it too far. I now try to keep my ultra processed food products lower, because there is so much conflicting research on how these foods affect the body, but I draw the line at fearing food over some HFCS or MSG, and I hate when people claim it can cure cancer or some 💩 like that.
THANK YOU! This kind of thinking destroyed me.
Enjoyed this. Mabye I'm making myself look foolish here, but: I hate to cook, so I eat a lot of sandwich meat--but here's the thing, I pick a brand that doesn't use GMO's, doesn't contain nitrates, or the other unhealthy elements that are associated with processed meats. But I still hear, "Hmm...a large part of your diet consisting of processed foods, I don't think that's good for your body." But...why? Again, there are very good reasons not to eat the average sandwich meats because they contain those GMOs, nitrates, etc. But if the brand I'm using doesn't contain any of that, then what exactly is the risk? I'd be happy to change my eating habits if there was a good reason for doing so, but so far, no one's really giving me a satisfactory answer. It makes me think it's a needless demonization of "processed" product.
That is a great question my friend and I think it highlights a very key discussion point.
Food processing covers a whole spectrum of procedures ranging from the more obvious like pasteurisation of dairy products to the less considered like cooking, preserving, mincing and milling. When looking at long-term observational data on processed foods, they don't really have the ability to untangle questions like this because they can only rely on survey data.
For example, imagine 1000 people filling out a survey on what they eat, if there is a association between X disease and Y food group, you can conclude a correlation but not necessarily a causation. Within that food group, you can't really get into the specifics. "Processed meat" will end up being a bit of an umbrella term, are the burgers people are eating high or low fat? Are they cooked in a certain way, which may have it's own health risk like charring the meat vs not overcooking it?
This is where we have to look at other data to try and fill in the blanks. To try and use a single example, a review of processed meats and colorectal cancer (PMID 18444144) concluded that epidemiological (long-term survey style) data suggested a link between processed meats and colorectal cancer but they could only come up with some best guesses to the mechanism.
"Several hypotheses, which are mainly based on studies carried out on red meat, may explain why processed meat intake is linked to cancer risk. Those that have been tested experimentally are (i) that high-fat diets could promote carcinogenesis via insulin resistance or fecal bile acids; (ii) that cooking meat at a high temperature forms carcinogenic heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; (iii) that carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds are formed in meat and endogenously; (iv) that heme iron in red meat can promote carcinogenesis because it increases cell proliferation in the mucosa, through lipoperoxidation and/or cytotoxicity of fecal water. Nitrosation might increase the toxicity of heme in cured products. Solving this puzzle is a challenge that would permit to reduce cancer load by changing the processes rather than by banning processed meat."
To answer your question, I don't think anyone can really answer definitively, health risks are not a very easy thing to study and a lot of it may be based on best guesses. :)
Well I think most people, when they think of 'processed foods', are not thinking about stone ground whole wheat flour or green tea. It's usually the ultra processed, calorie dense, not naturally occurring foods find in the middle area of the grocery store in boxes. Pop tarts, sugary cereals, frozen pizzas and such. Things humans never ate until the advent of the 'food' industrial complex, not really FOOD but food-like products. I find calling things like whole wheat flour and green tea 'processed', while technically true, to also be a little pedantic. We all know that's not what most people are thinking when that term is used.
I think clean eating as eating mostly single ingredient foods.
Are there any resources you would recommend for someone who is a binge eater trying to lose the weight they gained?
For me is fruit, vegetables, high protein meat and fish, oath, protein, creatine, milk, cheese it is clean enough
I don’t comment often. I must say I like most of your material, but not this video.
I’m reminded of comments you have made on other videos in reference to exercise. That just because there are conflicting best practices or maybe one is not doing it perfectly, doesn’t mean MOST Americans couldn’t do a little more.
I feel like this video, like those of influencers with agendas (not you), dissuades people from eating healthier. Some of these claims do have well documented science behind them.
For example, eating fewer processed foods will reduce your intake of preservatives. Preservatives have been evidenced to negatively impact your microbiome; not surprising given they’re anti-microbial. Many dyes found in processed foods are endocrine-disruptors. etc.
It would be like me dissuading people from exercising because the best routine is not well defined and that there is conflicting information. People can overdo clean eating just like they can overdo exercise but it doesn’t mean that MOST Americans shouldn’t try to eat a bit less processed food.
You should always wash your food Ben
You even recycled the "green tea doesn't grow on trees" joke :')
I tried to think of a better example of a unanimously “healthy” food but it turns out I had no better ideas haha
@@BenCarpenter at least the houseplant should've made a come back!
@@sdegueldre haha, good memory, my friend! I am currently in an Airbnb in Mexico, I don't have a spare house plant for me to use!
Damn it really thought I was clean eating, I'm joking, sometimes people take terms too far
better eat Clen.
even people too hyper focused on restricting calories (which is legit way to lose weight) have a high risk to develop eating disorders. The best way to live in my opinion is to just listen to your hunger cues and not abuse it and not neglect it either. Just be normal , eat normal and you likely won't gain any significant weight like most normal people. We need to stop being hyper focused on food. We don't live to eat , we eat to live.
Preach