THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT CLEAN EATING

It might be time to step away from the matcha smoothie bowl (#eatclean) and the green juice (#juicecleanse), and take a long, hard look at your notas-healthy-as-youmay-think diet.

Our obsession with cutting out certain foods may be causing long-term health problems

According to Harvard Health, a cup of skimmed milk has more than three times the calcium of a whole head of iceberg lettuce.

IN January, a spinach and baby marrow shortage in the UK (swiftly named ‘The Courgette Crisis’ by

The Guardian) sparked a social media frenzy. One tweet read: ‘First #Brexit, then #Trump, and now what appears to be a national courgette shortage! What is this waking nightmare? #nothinglefttolivefor’.

There’s no denying that ‘eating clean’ has reached fever pitch worldwide. A quick Instagram search for #cleaneating brings up more than 30 million posts of perfectly garnished zoodles, smoothie bowls topped with fruit in every colour of the rainbow, and tall glasses of freshly squeezed juice. ‘A plate of kale is the new Rolex,’ says James Duigan, celebrity personal trainer and author of the

Clean and Lean cookbook series. ‘Now, more than ever, people are interested in clean eating – it’s become sexy, covetable and aspirational.’

Clean eating is also big business. CNBC reports that in the US, Whole Foods Market sales increased to $3,7 billion in the second quarter of 2016, driven by America’s ‘insatiable appetite for organic, healthy food’. Euromonitor International, meanwhile, predicted that the global market for ‘organic, functional allergenfree and betterforyou foods’ will reach a record

$1 trillion this year.

A NOT-SO CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH

The notion of clean eating started off with the best of intentions. The idea was to cut down on processed, preservativeladen food and go back to eating the stuff your gran would recognise: real, whole food such as fruit and vegetables (lots), wholegrains, responsibly reared meat, fish, nuts, seeds and oils. You’re supposed to know where your food comes from and prepare it yourself so you know what goes into it. Sounds sensible so far, right?

But the idea of what constitutes clean eating has morphed. It now cuts out entire ‘bad’ food groups, such as dairy and grains. And although it is true that some people have a problem with lactose, for the rest of us cutting out dairy might lead to longterm health issues. The National Osteoporosis Society in the UK recently warned that ditching dairy means we lose a valuable source of calcium, which is especially essential in early adulthood. ‘By the time we get into our late twenties it is too late to reverse the damage caused by poor diet and nutrient deficiencies; and the opportunity to build strong bones has passed,’ says Professor Susan LanhamNew, clinical advisor to the National Osteoporosis Society.

We do get calcium from other sources, but we would need to make a real effort and consume a lot more to get the same amount provided by a little dairy. According to Harvard Health, a cup of skimmed milk has more than three times the calcium of a whole head of iceberg lettuce.

Business Insider calls the obsession with clean eating ‘a ticking time bomb’ because of the longterm osteoporosis risk. Women are particularly vulnerable, since osteoporosis affects half of all women over the age of 50. The National Osteoporosis Society’s research shows that four out of every 10 people in the 18 to 24 age bracket has tried a restrictive diet, and since bone development generally stops at around the age of 30, this is particularly alarming. This age group was also more likely to be getting nutritional ‘advice’ from blogs, vlogs and other social media, which is not always accurate. ‘Social media is rife with people who, quite frankly, don’t know what they’re talking about,’ says Prof LanhamNew. ‘Without urgent action to encourage young adults to incorporate all food groups into their diets and avoid particular “clean eating” regimes, we are facing a future in which broken bones will become the “norm”.’

Another food group that’s considered bad is anything containing gluten, even though only an estimated 1% of the US population has celiac disease and cannot digest gluten. For the rest of us, glutenfree doesn’t necessarily equal healthy. ‘Be wary of buzzwords and question everything – even if it says glutenfree, if it’s rammed with sugar and chemicals it won’t be good for you,’ says James Duigan.

Acclaimed Australian dietician Jo McMillan recommends not cutting

out carbs completely, especially if you have no problems digesting grains. ‘It can be very hard to meet fibre requirements by cutting out carbs (potatoes, carrots, wholegrains, rice) and the knockon effect can mean increased risk of bowel cancer, constipation, bad breath, sluggishness, a lack of energy, reduced brain power to concentrate or be creative, and a limited ability to exercise to intensity,’ she says. McMillan even makes an environmental argument for eating grains. ‘We need to be eating fewer animal foods and more plant foods, but by cutting out grains it becomes difficult for us to get enough nutrients,’ she says.

A RAW DEAL

Another myth touted by clean eaters is that vegetables are best eaten raw. ‘It’s often assumed that eating raw veg is more nutritious because nutrients are “lost” when food is cooked,’ says nutritional therapist SallyAnn Creed. But this is not always the case. ‘The cell walls of certain vegetables are so hard that they have to be cooked to release the nourishment they offer. If you cannot digest food, you won’t derive any benefit from it at all.’

Carrots, for instance, need to be cooked to make the betacarotene more bioavailable. Raw garlic can irritate the stomach, whereas cooked garlic is full of cancerfighting flavonoids and selenium. You need to cook spinach to benefit from the folate inside. Onions only release their valuable phytochemicals when they are cooked in fat. If you’re eating tomatoes raw, you’re only getting about 4% of the lycopene you could get if they were cooked.

And, if you are worried about raised cholesterol levels, take note: ‘When vegetables like beetroot, carrots, eggplant, okra, green beans, asparagus, and cauliflower are lightly steamed, the veggies bind better to bile acids than when eaten raw,’ says Creed. ‘The liver employs LDL cholesterol to produce bile, which mops up some of the circulating LDL in the bloodstream.’

CLEANSING RITUAL

Going on a 10day juice cleanse to rid your body of toxins and jumpstart your metabolism? You may want to rethink this as well. You and Gwyneth, who wrote that she felt ‘pure and happy and much lighter’ after her threeweek cleanse back in a 2009 Goop post. (Lightheaded, you mean?)

‘Let’s be clear,’ says Edzard Ernst, professor emeritus of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University. ‘There are two types of detox: one is respectable and the other isn’t.’ The only legitimate detox is the medical treatment given to people recovering from drug addiction. ‘The other,’ he says, ‘is the word being hijacked by entrepreneurs, quacks and charlatans to sell a bogus treatment that allegedly detoxifies your body of toxins you’re supposed to have accumulated.’

According to Ernst, there are no toxins steadily building up in your body – if there were, you’d be seriously ill or dead. ‘The healthy body has kidneys, a liver, skin, even lungs that are detoxifying as we speak,’ he says. ‘There is no known way – certainly not through detox treatments – to make something that works perfectly well in a healthy body work better.’

By extracting juice from nutritious fruit and veg, you’re simply leaving behind the pulp and skin, and stripping it of nutrients and fibre. The juice also has a much higher concentration of sugar. It’s also bad for the environment. ‘The leftover pulp is more often than not dumped into landfill by big juice companies,’ writes Sarah Wilson, author of I Quit Sugar. ‘There it rots away, producing harmful greenhouse gases.’ Just eat the fruit and veg – with the skins – instead.

ORTHOREXIA

Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson believes our obsession with eating clean is masking a larger psychological issue. ‘People are using certain diets as a way to hide an eating disorder or a great sense of unhappiness with their own body,’ she told the JW3 Speaker Series. ‘There is a way in which food is used to either selfcongratulate – you’re a better person because you’re eating like that – or to selfpersecute.’

A fixation with eating healthily may well have very unhealthy repercussions. Mary George, speaking on behalf of the eating disorders charity Beat, explains: ‘When taken to extremes, it becomes a pathological fixation called orthorexia. The term orthorexia nervosa, coined in 1997 by Dr Steven Bratman, refers to a pattern of healthy eating that crosses over into eating disorder territory – ‘ortho’ means correct; ‘rexia’ means desire. This type of disordered eating is often described as ‘a disease disguised as a virtue’, says Mary George. It can lead to malnourishment or the development of anorexia nervosa or bulimia.

McMillan agrees. ‘Clean eating implies there is also dirty eating, and unless you’re eating food from the floor, dirty eating is not the correct term for bad food. I think “clean eating” implies a layer of judgement over the foods we choose to eat. It makes you think – are cleaneaters therefore cleaner people? It has become a moral term that makes me uncomfortable. Healthy eating is a much better term for eating well.’

Blogger and author Sarah Wilson has started distancing herself from some of the extremes of eating clean and is aligning herself with a new mantra: #JERF: ‘Ditch the processed junk and Just Eat Real Food.’