the DIRT on #EATCLEAN
U.K.-based wellness bloggers who once popularized #cleaneating are distancing themselves from it. Sarah Treleaven asks, Should Canadians follow suit?
Look up # eatclean and # cleaneating on Instagram and you’ll find morethan 80 million posts — and counting. Each image is more carefully curated than the last, but they all extol the same virtues: ditch added sugars, gluten, processed foods and the like, and you, too, can be effortlessly sunkissed and carefree.
It’s a hashtag that 30-year-old writer Hannah Matthews took to heart. What started as simple browsing becameall-consuming: at first, she decided to eat “clean” as a way to deal with personal anxiety and maintain weight loss, but soon she found herself edging towards an increasingly risky and restrictive lifestyle.
“I thought if I had one bite or sip of something ‘ bad’ like candy, bread, ‘processed’ food or ‘toxins’ like alcohol, it would unravel all of the ‘progress’ I had made and taint myspotless health routine,” says Matthews.
Hyperconscious of every morsel she put in her mouth, Matthews developed what she believes is orthorexia. It’s not recognized as a clinical diagnosis, but it’s a designation coined in 1996 to characterize someone who has become unhealthily obsessed with healthy eating. Matthews’ approach to diet and exercise eventually left her malnourished; she lost her period and developed heart problems. When a concerned friend stepped in, Matthews realized she needed help. She sought out a therapist and nutritionist to learn how to reorient her relationship with food.
Later, she wrote an essay for SELF describing her recovery, which included a more mindful, but less compulsive, approach to food. She recalled: “I was able to walk back my rigid thinking around what I’m ‘allowed’ to eat, eating and exercising on a certain schedule, and defining healthy as being thin, toned, and free of ‘ bad’ food in my body.”
For Matthews, rejecting the clean- eating paradigm wasn’t just intensely personal. It had become a matter of life and death.
She is not the only one questioning the now- ubiquitous clean- eating paradigm. In the U.K., a backlash to clean eating has been brewing over the past couple of years. More and more clear- skinned, shiny- haired U.K.-based wellness bloggers and cookbook authors, such as Ella Mills and the Hemsley sisters, who once popularized clean eating, are trying to distance them- selves from the term as the trend is increasingly linked to disordered eating or unhealthy habits.
Prominent British writers and chefs have been particularly active in raising red flags about clean eating. Celebrity cookbook author Nigella Lawson has referred to the trend as “smug,” and noted it’s become fashionable cover for disordered eating.
For more than a year, Ruby Tandoh, author of cookbook Flavour: Eat What You Love, has been calling out clean eating as a “bad fad”, criticizing the movement for being part of “precarious health claims and a trend- driven food press, all underpinned by an unfaltering disdain for fat bodies.”
Bee Wilson, a British food writer and historian, has also criticized the movement, taking on coconut oil, spiralized zucchini noodles and pricey raw vegan juice diets that deprive your body of fibre by excluding pulp.
“We are once again living in an environment where ordinary food, which should be something reliable and sustaining, has come to feel noxious,” she writes.
A London-based blogger, Bella Younger, has started a clean-eating parody account, mocking the most popular aspects of the diet: Deliciously Stella. (“There was so many avocados on Instagram,” she told one reporter.)
In addition to food writers, scientists are also asking questions about some of the claims made by some of the clean eating movement’s loudest voices — particularly that gluten or grains are harmful, that labelling beef soup as “bone broth” somehow makes it magical, and that alkalinity should have any relevance to what you put in your mouth. In the BBC documentary Clean Eating: The Dirty Truth, presenter Dr. Giles Yeo, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, debunks these claims.
“They’re marketing these diets based on pseudo- science, and that’s what I have a problem with,” says Yeo.
To some, clean eating might seem like a sensible call to eat more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed foods. But for others, it’s just another punitive and anxiety-producing measure, largely imposed on women and completely detached from actual wellness, personal contentedness or most dietary science.
Onestudy showed adherents of clean eating — particularly those who cut out whole food groups like dairy — are at a higher risk of weakened bones, leading to osteoporosis or fractures. Another recent, much smaller study followed more than 100 people and found the act of declaring yourself a “clean eater” in fact makes you appear less likable — perhaps an indication that more people are tiring of being constantly fed instructions on how sucking down lemon water will cleanse them and help them become more virtuous.
While science is undeniably our friend, it’s no wonder we reach for magic beans from time to time. Food is indeed something we can control, but only to a point. We’re told we’re not supposed to eat fast or processed foods, and our portion sizes are apparently shameful.
We’re told we’re supposed to enjoy food, to use it to bring the whole family together and even draw personal comfort, but not to the point where we deviate from a narrowly prescribed body image. While common sense should prevail — the advice offered by Michael Pollen, author of In Defense of Food, is appealing: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” — there is an enormous volume of conflicting messaging. Our food supply chains are increasingly dubious and far from transparent, and there are questions being raised about whether increased sugar consumption is slowly killing us. Clean eating, while potentially destructive and seemingly adjacent to joylessness, appeals to some because of the clarity in its restrictions — which, even if damaging, create a moral food universe that simply divides items into easy-to-follow “good” and “bad” categories.
While some in the U. K. are starting to ask questions, celebrities and food influencers in North America are seemingly still enamoured with clean eating. The term continues to be ubiquitous, and has served as a gateway to newer clean beauty and even clean sleeping trends.
Despite the concerns, Yeo believes the clean- eating movement is here for the long haul.
“Judging by my Twitter feed, it’s only gaining steam,” he says. “We live in a random post-truth world, driven by social media, and it permeates a lot of fad diets and the pseudo-science of Gwyneth Paltrow. Telling people to eat a little less of everything isn’t going to make me a million bucks on Instagram.”
For Matthews, she’s taken a step back from hyper-monitoring her food consumption, as well as from friends who do so, either in real life or on social media.
I thought if I had one bite or sip of something ‘ bad’ like candy, bread, ‘ processed’ food or ‘ toxins’ like alcohol, it would unravel all of the ‘ progress’ I had made ...