Trendy diets that can leave you starved of vital vitamins
Want to know the secret to happiness, freedom from disease, a great body and a persistent feeling of superiority? the key, it seems, is being ‘clean’. ‘Clean eating’ is the latest buzzword in our increasingly health-conscious culture, sung from the rooftops by celebrities promoting their latest book, nutritionists, recipe bloggers and athletes.
this isn’t something so old-fashioned as just losing weight or calorie-counting; ‘it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle’, say its devotees.
Put simply, clean eating is choosing foods in their whole, natural state, avoiding processing and additives.
there is an emphasis on raw food, lots of fruit and vegetables, and often cutting out sugar, dairy, wheat or gluten — or all four — on the basis that they are poorly digested and responsible for many health woes, such as fatigue and irritable bowel, even cancer.
Instead, fans stock up on chia seeds and almond milk and guzzle green vegetable juices. at a time when nearly two-thirds of British adults are obese or overweight, this is the ultimate expression of self-control.
there’s no doubt that highly processed foods have played a major role in our obesity problem, and these diets are right to promote eating more fruit and vegetables.
But there is a dark side to eating clean: dietitians say the nutritional advice is too often based on bad science — and ‘clean’ diets are expensive and unsustainable.
and there are the potential health risks. a study published today by the British nutrition Foundation found one in ten teenagers is at risk of nutritional deficiencies, with half of teenage girls falling short on iron and one in five at risk of inadequate calcium.
THE CULT OF EATING ‘CLEAN’
Faddy diets are nothing new, but experts are very concerned by the current use of words such as ‘clean’ and ‘cleanse’, which, they say, attach a moral virtue to certain foods.
‘the big modern fears are obesity and cancer,’ says Jane Ogden, a professor of health psychology at the University of Surrey.
‘Food becomes the source of evil, but also our salvation: it enables us to feel more in control, to tell ourselves if only we eat these things, not the other things, we won’t die.’
Renee McGregor, a dietitian who works with athletes and people with eating disorders, adds: ‘What I don’t like about the term “clean eating” is that it seems to tell us we need to eat in a certain way to be pure.
‘actually, the body can detox itself successfully through the liver. you don’t need to drink green juices.’
Connie Weaver, a professor of nutrition science at Purdue University in the U.S., says people wrongly equate processed foods with junk food. ‘all processing means is altering the food from its original source to the form in which we eat it.
‘the degree of processing is not what defines if a food is healthy.’
Many healthy staple foods — such as yoghurt, bread and olive oil — are all highly processed, she says.
THE GLAMOROUS HEALTH GURUS
LEADING the clean eating brigade are glamorous food writers such as ella Woodward. Her blog, called deliciously ella, has five million hits a month and she has published the fastest-selling debut cookbook.
Others include Madeleine Shaw, and Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley, authors of the art Of eating Well.
all are glossy, toned and brighteyed and you can see why so many adhere to their health advice. But what’s not so clear is the scientific evidence such advice is based on.
Rather than degrees in medicine or dietetics, Woodward and Shaw both studied history of art and are now training in naturopathic nutrition at the College Of naturopathic Medicine in London.
yet becoming a registered dietitian requires science a-levels before an undergraduate degree, or a related science degree for post-graduates.
While experts have no concerns about ‘clean’ proponents sharing recipes or describing how they have helped them personally, they’re concerned by claims sometimes made.
‘did you know seven out of ten people don’t have the enzyme to digest dairy properly?’ asks ella Woodward in her recipe for almond milk, which she says is a rich source of vitamins a and d.
But registered dietitian Renee McGregor — who studied her subject for six years — points out: ‘there is no vitamin a or d naturally in almonds. Shop-bought almond milk is fortified with vitamins a and d. almond milk is also much lower in calcium than cow’s milk.’
and, says the NHS, just one in 50 people of north european descent has a degree of lactose intolerance.
‘SUGAR-FREE’ IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
WITH evidence mounting that sugar is to blame for spiralling rates of obesity and diabetes, many clean eating plans offer ‘refined sugar-free’ recipes, substituting honey, maple or agave syrup as a ‘ natural’ alternative to white table sugar.
In fact, these expensive products are different in name only.
‘Coconut sugar, honey, molasses or maple syrup — it’s all sugar,’ says Renee McGregor. ‘It doesn’t make the cake any healthier or change the calorie content. the body still reacts in the same way — it uses some and excess is stored as fat.’
Last year, TV presenter davina McCall was criticised for using such sweeteners in her book Five Weeks to Sugar Free.
CAN IT RUIN YOUR DIGESTION?
Renee MCGREGOR says she regularly sees clients with health problems as a result of a ‘clean’, ‘raw’ or ‘paleo’ diet. ‘I saw one woman who’d cut out dairy and grains, and cooked everything in coconut oil.
‘She felt awful, losing weight she didn’t need to and suffering serious gastrointestinal issues.
‘the coconut oil meant she’d massively increased her fat intake, which can be hard for some people to digest.
‘She also had no dairy in her diet, and, as she was pre-menopausal, her bone health was at risk, so she needed a good intake of calcium, which is hard to get elsewhere.’
ARE THE BENEFITS JUST IN THE MIND?
THE supposed benefits of extreme clean eating may stem from a placebo effect, suggest some experts.
‘If someone puts a lot of energy into “eating clean” or spends a lot on gluten-free foods, they’re going to want and expect returns,’ says Cynthia Bulik, a psychiatrist and expert in eating disorders at the University of north California.
‘they selectively focus on moments when they feel well and misattribute these to the absence of dairy, or absence of gluten, or clean eating.’
the benefits may also be due to the demands of clean eating. ‘these diets create so many rules around food that you can’t grab snacks,’ adds Professor Ogden, ‘and if you can’t grab snacks, you’ve got to cook from scratch more, so you eat fewer calories — it’s nothing special about the new foods you’re eating.’
EXPERTS’ CONCERN ABOUT ANOREXIA
One of the most worrying aspects of clean eating is how closely the language resembles that used by people with eating disorders, explains dr Richard Sly, an eating disorder researcher and clinician.
‘Many eating- disorder patients describe foods as making them feel dirty and unclean. It’s quite stark to see the same language used outside an eating disorder setting.
‘and that phrase, “this isn’t a diet, it’s a lifestyle” is a sentiment you hear often on a pro-anorexia website or message board.
‘It’s a massive barrier in trying to get someone better and into a normal balanced way of eating. they can point to these websites and articles and say, “But look, what I’m doing is normal and healthy.” ’
Sarah Mcdonald, 34, a healthcare researcher from the east Midlands, is recovering from anorexia and binge-eating since her teens.
‘When you’re trying to get over an eating disorder, the language we now use around food makes it very hard,’ she says. ‘My diet became incredibly restricted, yet I could now present it as being healthy.’
IS ‘GLUTEN-FREE’ AN EATING DISORDER?
BUT we may be witnessing the return to a more relaxed approach.
the hot health book for 2016 is the Feelgood Plan by dalton Wong, Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence’s London-based personal trainer, who criticises drastic diets (Lawrence herself called gluten-free diets ‘the cool, new eating disorder’).
as even ella Woodward herself wrote on her blog in October: ‘you just shouldn’t feel that you’re not healthy if you’re not specially raw, vegan, paleo, grain free, gluten free, wheat free or any of the rest of it.’
Ms Woodward declined to comment for this article. However shortly after Good Health contacted her publicist about the health claims on her website, the page containing her almond milk recipe was changed, removing the references to vitamin a, d and lactose intolerance.
When asked why the page had been changed — and whether the information was wrong — her publicist declined to comment.
For advice for eating disorders, visit anorexiabulimiacare.org.uk and seedeatingdisorders.org.uk.