I heard that eating clean makes you feel better...
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Actually, hot sauces can be very ... I hate this word, but "clean". I have around two dozen different ones & have also made them myself from home grown peppers. Some are definitely witch's brews of food-industry chemicals from vats off the New Jersey turnpike, but others are 3-4 ingredient "natural" style hot sauces made out of vegetables, fruit, and a non-excessive amount of salt. The latter are usually habanero-based and often come from Trinidad, Belize, etc. Here is a "clean" 4-ingredient hot sauce from Yucatan that I eat by the barrelful.
https://www.hotsauce.com/el-yucateco-xxxtra-hot-chile-habanero/
As I understand the "clean" definition, being store-bought and in a jar rather than homemade makes something not clean, typically (the not processed thing). I agree with you that plenty of hot sauces have few ingredients and could be made at home if one had the skills, but same with lots of things that are dismissed as unclean. This is why the terminology is so silly.
I love hot sauces and have a great many.5 -
**SIGH*** First, I love hot sauce. I have a particular kind that is my favorite. I use mustard. I did not say all processed food is bad. Some foods were made (engineered) for sports performance, health ailmints, fortification. There are tousands of foods. Im not here to label, pick whats what. I am not talking about anyone or anything that others feel What I am sharing is for ME, What makes me feel good. What helps me have great reports from the lab tests and how I sleep, my energy. What clean eating means to me is eating things that make me feel good.
There are foods that do impact your health. There are foods that are relatively indiferent or even so enjoyable it makes it something great. Happiness is really what keeps us well.
I will say this again. From MY experience, when I decided to swap certain choices my health and eight improved. I can eat 200 calories of cake or 200 calories of whole grain oats and keep my calories where my goal would be. Sure, some days that cake could be what I want. Its usually not. The oats would keep me full longer, they would sit in my stoamch better and I simply prefer them. Oats, by the way are a great example of "processed" food that has benefits.
This whole question is asking when does eating "clean: make you feel better. I answered in the context of what my experience is. Period. The term "whole foods" I use to refer to vegetables, greens and foods from a garden or farm. I use protein powder because I like it, it helps complete certain needs and is convenient. I also love tempeh, tofu or edamame. Hemp tofu ( Tempt) by the way is awesome. Its hard to find, I g see t it from a local healthful store- market.
There are usually underlying causes for not feeling good, that diet alone won't chhange- until you identify the reasons. Then food can be used many times to assist in helping and healing. Food has been used for thousands of years as medicine. In Chinese medicine, sugar is sometimes what is needed to cure. What matters is your body and what it needs.
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The point was that the decision on whether a processed food is bad, in your words, seems totally arbitrary.
and I dont think the question was share what you individually like to eat, that has no universal application.
(cant see need for this defensive prefacing what you are saying with" I dont care if I get disagrees!" either)11 -
the question was also asking "if it made you feel better" I just used myself as an example to share how much a diet of vegetables, plants and less processed over all did make me feel better.
I can talk science if you want. Bottom line is - medically speaking- yes food that helps health is based on factual scientific evidence. It can make yo feel better.
" Eating a double cheeseburger and fries from McDonalds 3-4 times a week will increase longevity in people who have high blood pressure and reduced symptoms of depression " said no Health and wellness professional ever. "Switching to a mediterranean diet has profound affect on diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease' -yup. "Children with seazures have showed theraputic improvement with a low sugar and higher fat diet." yup
Bottom line, food matters.
The question was asking when does changing the diet make you feel better. It takes time and if it has more than just a food related reason then that needs to be undrstood. Eating the wrong clean foods doesnt help either.1 -
**SIGH*** First, I love hot sauce. I have a particular kind that is my favorite. I use mustard. I did not say all processed food is bad. Some foods were made (engineered) for sports performance, health ailmints, fortification. There are tousands of foods. Im not here to label, pick whats what. I am not talking about anyone or anything that others feel What I am sharing is for ME, What makes me feel good. What helps me have great reports from the lab tests and how I sleep, my energy. What clean eating means to me is eating things that make me feel good.
There are foods that do impact your health. There are foods that are relatively indiferent or even so enjoyable it makes it something great. Happiness is really what keeps us well.
I will say this again. From MY experience, when I decided to swap certain choices my health and eight improved. I can eat 200 calories of cake or 200 calories of whole grain oats and keep my calories where my goal would be. Sure, some days that cake could be what I want. Its usually not. The oats would keep me full longer, they would sit in my stoamch better and I simply prefer them. Oats, by the way are a great example of "processed" food that has benefits.
This whole question is asking when does eating "clean: make you feel better. I answered in the context of what my experience is. Period. The term "whole foods" I use to refer to vegetables, greens and foods from a garden or farm. I use protein powder because I like it, it helps complete certain needs and is convenient. I also love tempeh, tofu or edamame. Hemp tofu ( Tempt) by the way is awesome. Its hard to find, I g see t it from a local healthful store- market.
There are usually underlying causes for not feeling good, that diet alone won't chhange- until you identify the reasons. Then food can be used many times to assist in helping and healing. Food has been used for thousands of years as medicine. In Chinese medicine, sugar is sometimes what is needed to cure. What matters is your body and what it needs.
. .
Most people here are not saying that what one eats does not matter for health, or matter to how one feels. Quite the contrary.
OP said she was eating "eating clean", expecting to feel better, and feels worse. The main point by others posting is that "clean eating" really tells us nothing about how she is eating. "Eating for health" and "clean eating" are not clear synonyms (largely because "clean eating" has no standard definition). Her clarification suggested that she might have bought into some arbitrary and usually irrelevant myths (such as saying "not eating from pre-made packages").
It sounds like what you mean by "clean eating" is pretty sensible. It sounds a good bit like how I eat, frankly, and how I know some of the other "anti clean eating terminology" people in the thread primarily eat.
But other people, in other threads, have used the term "clean eating" to refer to superstition-filled, myth-based rules for eating that either are unrelated to eating for health ("no white foods", "nothing from a bag, box or can"), or in some rare particularly bizarre cases, that actually seem counter-productive to achieving good nutrition.
And yes, a lot of jokesters came out in this thread, to bring up the 5-second rule or washing veggies, because the term "clean eating", over time, has become a laughingstock, rightly or wrongly, because of the very odd posts sometimes seen about it, and because of people advertising their "clean diet" but eating in ways that realistically were nutritionally very questionable.
Sometimes there is an adaptation period**, but in general, someone who's started getting excellent nutrition should expect to feel better, eventually, if they came from a very nutritionally void way of eating.
Despite the hand-wringing about the standard american diet (SAD), most USA-ians are not seriously nutritionally deficient. There are some common things that are suboptimal: Not enough veggies/fruits, not enough fiber, a few micronutrients that can come up short, too many calories (this last a biggie). But a large number of people are eating well enough that I doubt they'll see a huge, short-term boost from eating reallyReally well, and maybe not even a long-term one.
And again, some rule-sets defined as "clean eating" by some people do not at all move a person any closer to getting better nutrition. If I avoid white foods, only shop the perimeter of the supermarket, eat zero added sugar, etc. (real example definitions), I can still be eating too few veggies/fruits, not getting enough fiber, be short on some micros, etc. Some of those rules provide zero help.
** Sometimes, a major dietary switch will go better if phased in, because there are adaptation issues. The commonest example is fiber. I was in a thread for a "10 veggie servings a day" challenge. A good thing, right?
Well, some participants went from negligible veggies daily, to 10+ servings, all at once and . . . got digestively stopped up, and very uncomfortable. Some of us more experienced big veggie eaters encouraged them to drink enough water, and eat some more fats, and . . . everything came out all right in the end. That's an adaptation example. People dramatically increasing fiber are better off not doing it all in one giant leap, often. Otherwise, "eating better" will make them feel worse, possibly much worse.
I'm inclined to agree with Wolfman, that for me being active is more material to how I feel than is how I eat (but I've never eaten appallingly terribly, in nutritional terms - just in calorie terms
).
Still, nutrition is important for health, and to feeling good. But nutrition primarily is getting enough of the important macronutrients (and in some cases ideally considering sources of them, like MUFAs/PUFAs, Omega 3/6 balance, etc.), fiber, well-rounded macronutrients (not just known vitamins & minerals in some tablet, but a range of antioxidants and other phytochemicals, ideally).
It doesn't matter what color the food is, it doesn't matter what part of the store it came from, it doesn't matter what sort of packaging it was in when we bought it, often it doesn't even matter how "processed" it is (it matters what the process was and did!), or how many syllables are in the ingredients (it matters what the ingredients actually are, of course). Someone who managed to get the right number of calories, macros, fiber and micros (or close) all from fast food - which I admit might be a challenge - can theoretically be in a better-nourished state than someone who eats "only foods from an animal or the ground", but who gets very inadequate protein, or no B12.
Nutrition matters. Arbitrary rules don't help. "Clean eating", as a term, is strongly associated with arbitrary rules, in practice.9 -
**SIGH*** First, I love hot sauce. I have a particular kind that is my favorite. I use mustard. I did not say all processed food is bad. Some foods were made (engineered) for sports performance, health ailmints, fortification. There are tousands of foods. Im not here to label, pick whats what. I am not talking about anyone or anything that others feel What I am sharing is for ME, What makes me feel good. What helps me have great reports from the lab tests and how I sleep, my energy. What clean eating means to me is eating things that make me feel good.
There are foods that do impact your health. There are foods that are relatively indiferent or even so enjoyable it makes it something great. Happiness is really what keeps us well.
I will say this again. From MY experience, when I decided to swap certain choices my health and eight improved. I can eat 200 calories of cake or 200 calories of whole grain oats and keep my calories where my goal would be. Sure, some days that cake could be what I want. Its usually not. The oats would keep me full longer, they would sit in my stoamch better and I simply prefer them. Oats, by the way are a great example of "processed" food that has benefits.
This whole question is asking when does eating "clean: make you feel better. I answered in the context of what my experience is. Period. The term "whole foods" I use to refer to vegetables, greens and foods from a garden or farm. I use protein powder because I like it, it helps complete certain needs and is convenient. I also love tempeh, tofu or edamame. Hemp tofu ( Tempt) by the way is awesome. Its hard to find, I g see t it from a local healthful store- market.
There are usually underlying causes for not feeling good, that diet alone won't chhange- until you identify the reasons. Then food can be used many times to assist in helping and healing. Food has been used for thousands of years as medicine. In Chinese medicine, sugar is sometimes what is needed to cure. What matters is your body and what it needs.
. .
So you define "eating clean" as "eating in a way that makes you feel better". So, eating in a way that makes you feel better will make you feel better.
I agree.
This goes back to my first reply: identify what makes you feel worse in order to take steps toward feeling better. Eggs make me feel bad physically, so by that definition, they're unclean. Nuts make me feel bad mentally because I usually overeat them, so they're unclean. Ice cream every now and then (usually only in the summer) makes me feel good and I'm not really tempted to overeat it, so it's clean. I'm all for customizing your diet to your needs and wants.
By your definition, almost everyone who replied to this thread is a clean eater. We have vegans, vegetarians, omnivores, and we have people like me who think instant ramen is one of the cleanest foods on earth because it's portion-controlled and satisfying and had saved my calorie allowance more than once during big projects when I had to work extreme hours. Many of those who replied have found a way to balance their food intake in a way that helps them feel better mentally and physically, but there are so many variations of what makes people feel better that you can't really make a consistent set of rules under a single term.
The problem with nebulous terms is that everyone interprets them the way they want. When you have a name (especially one that carries moral connotations) you expect a certain set of rules that frame that name. If they don't exist you make them up (generic "you"). If someone else asks you, you tell them your own set of rules which may or may not be a good fit for them. They may feel tempted to follow those rules (or even make up their own rigid rules) because "clean" sounds better, purer, and more moral than simply "eat a diet that helps you meet your physical, mental, and social needs". The latter does not give you a set of rules, and you know that any rules you have for yourself are flexible and can be bent or changed if something changes.7 -
AnnPT77 EXcellent answer, thank you.
amusedmonkey- same So (basically) we are in agreement. My answer did not articulate the way It should have, my first answer was based on reactions from previous posts. It probably ws further fueled by the 3 on line courses for continuing educaton based on Clinical Integrated medicine, Science of Natural remedies and recent interventions.
In my profession I have daily doses of peole coming to me with thier interpretations which again are just like you are describing- some big new thing that is the latest psuedo science, marketing, etc. Unfortunately good intentions and enthusiasm leave a person in same place, stuck or totally an advocate. I am actually glad to read there are people in this group who do more than just count calories ( which do matter too...lol)
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AnnPT77 EXcellent answer, thank you.
amusedmonkey- same So (basically) we are in agreement. My answer did not articulate the way It should have, my first answer was based on reactions from previous posts. It probably ws further fueled by the 3 on line courses for continuing educaton based on Clinical Integrated medicine, Science of Natural remedies and recent interventions.
In my profession I have daily doses of peole coming to me with thier interpretations which again are just like you are describing- some big new thing that is the latest psuedo science, marketing, etc. Unfortunately good intentions and enthusiasm leave a person in same place, stuck or totally an advocate. I am actually glad to read there are people in this group who do more than just count calories ( which do matter too...lol)
I totally agree with you. People are prone to swinging to extremes (in any direction). Attaching labels such as clean eating would only facilitate that. It also pushes people to think in terms of single foods, single macros, single ingredients, or even single meals. This makes things harder for them instead of looking at their diet as a whole and flexibly balancing it.
As an example, these are the macros of my breakfast today:
If you look at it without seeing the foods many will think it has to be a junk meal. If you get 50 clean eaters in a room and show them that screenshot you will hear at least one of the following:
- My entire day's worth of carbs in one meal?
- Look at all the sugar!
- That's too much fat for one meal
- How is it healthy to eat this much saturated fat?
- You had TRANS FAT???
These are the foods that I had for this meal:
Depending on the person's definition of clean eating you will probably hear at least one of the following:
- You eat full fat dairy?
- You eat white bread?
- Dairy is not good for you
- Cabbage is a cruciferous vegetable and those are not good for you
- Feta has too much sodium
Here is the nutrition of this one meal, which makes up less than 1/5 of my daily calorie allowance:
Less than 1/5 of my calories and more than 1/3 of my nutrient needs. I'd say I can afford white bread. I can also meet my nutrient needs and afford chocolate or ice cream or whatever else people consider "bad". I don't have high blood pressure so I can afford sodium, not to mention that this is one meal. I'm perfectly capable of looking at it and thinking "maybe I should have less sodium for lunch and dinner".
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the question was also asking "if it made you feel better" I just used myself as an example to share how much a diet of vegetables, plants and less processed over all did make me feel better.
I can talk science if you want. Bottom line is - medically speaking- yes food that helps health is based on factual scientific evidence. It can make yo feel better.
" Eating a double cheeseburger and fries from McDonalds 3-4 times a week will increase longevity in people who have high blood pressure and reduced symptoms of depression " said no Health and wellness professional ever. "Switching to a mediterranean diet has profound affect on diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease' -yup. "Children with seazures have showed theraputic improvement with a low sugar and higher fat diet." yup
Bottom line, food matters.
The question was asking when does changing the diet make you feel better. It takes time and if it has more than just a food related reason then that needs to be undrstood. Eating the wrong clean foods doesnt help either.
Except you are arguing against a strawman here - nobody was saying food doesn't matter or that it doesn't help health.
Nobody at all.
Of course people who eat a very nutrionally poor diet are likely to have health issues and of course if you have a medical reason to avoid something, do so.
Nobody disputed that.
That doesn't change what I said about your definition of what processed foods fit into clean eating seems rather arbitrary and what feels better for you individually " using myself as an example" does not have universal application - ie not much relevance for other people, like OP, for example.
And I don't think there is any such thing as 'the wrong clean foods' - mainly because, as already pointed out, the term clean foods is so arbitrary and no foods are wrong anyway ( barring allergies etc)
The dosage matters and the overall diet matters - but individual wrong foods - nope.
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paperpudding wrote: »The point was that the decision on whether a processed food is bad, in your words, seems totally arbitrary.
and I dont think the question was share what you individually like to eat, that has no universal application.
(cant see need for this defensive prefacing what you are saying with" I dont care if I get disagrees!" either)
Yeah, if so, anyone who eats in a way that makes them feel good -- which is probably most of us in this thread -- gets to define their diet as clean. Yay, we are all clean eaters.
Again, I think in reality the only purpose people have in using the term is to try to claim that their diet is superior than others, to virtue signal in some way.
Maybe saying one eats a nutritious diet also does that to some degree, but it ALSO is based on some real and explicable reasons. I can explain why I think one diet is more nutritious than another, if that's in fact true. You can't do that with the "clean" thing. The usual definition is "not processed" and typically that's just false. And I still see zero value in NEVER eating a cookie (but eating protein bars) vs. occasionally having a cookie within the context of a great overall diet, assuming you feel good doing the latter, and I don't believe that just having an occasional cookie would make the vast majority of people feel like garbage or whatever is claimed by those touting clean eating as superior.5 -
Bottom line, food matters.
The question was asking when does changing the diet make you feel better. It takes time and if it has more than just a food related reason then that needs to be undrstood. Eating the wrong clean foods doesnt help either.
Nope -- no one here has denied that diet matters. The question was whether "eating clean" as defined by whatever "clean eating guru" was making the claim, since invariably people who decide that eating clean is magic are reading articles from someone pushing a particular way of eating "clean."
If you look back at my first post in this thread, as well as those of others, we all said that we thinking eating a nutrient sufficient and healthy diet often affects health, and none of us pretended that would be a controversial opinion that garners lots of dislikes. (And as I noted, it is in fact true that there are those who will claim the McDonald's burger as "clean" so long as you avoid the bun and ketchup). That's because it fits their preferred way of eating and what they claim are the "bad" processed foods (this would be from an anti carb POV).)
You seem to me to be claiming that if one cares about nutrition one uses the term clean, and anyone who doesn't doesn't care about how they eat or having a healthful diet, and that false. I find that on average those with the best understanding of nutrition don't use the term clean and also understand that diet is about including certain foods in the diet for sufficient nutrition, not overeating, and moderation with lower nutrient foods -- not all or nothing thinking such as that any diet is good if you don't eat whatever the bad foods are (as defined by the clean eater) and any diet that includes any of them is bad and harmful.8 -
This is why it's usually best to just set a calorie target, hit it consistently, and exercise if you can. Most everything else is debatable.
One person's processed food is another person's revered staple that's enabling them to stay on track and lose 30 or 50 or 100 lbs, which dwarfs the ingredients list on a label as far as health impact is concerned.8 -
This is why it's usually best to just set a calorie target, hit it consistently, and exercise if you can. Most everything else is debatable.
One person's processed food is another person's revered staple that's enabling them to stay on track and lose 30 or 50 or 100 lbs, which dwarfs the ingredients list on a label as far as health impact is concerned.
So true! And that's why the base of the "healthy nutrition" pyramid is/should be appropriate caloric balance and activity/exercise!5 -
Yesterday's evening meal - clean or unclean?
Homemade dish of pasta and sauce. Homemade = clean? Perhaps.
White pasta (shock horror!) - it's a white starchy carb therefore unclean, came in a package from the wrong part of a store = unclean, unclean. And of course it must completely negate the whole grains I had earlier in the day because that's the evil power of white carbs!!!! I fully expect to die sometime today. And of course I'll die heavier despite the overall calorie deficit for the day because.... Erm, because something scary written on the internet?
Tomato based sauce. Tomatoes = clean but sorry they came in a can from wrong part of the store. Two unclean ticks of course tip the balance. Filthy, filthy tomatoes.
Lentils - peas so clean, single ingredient so doubly clean. But again they have been processed, packaged and found in the wrong part of the store. Three unclean ticks to two clean ticks must completely negate all the nutrition in lentils.
Courgettes, carrots, mushrooms, onion, celery, garlic. Yep all those are clean. Or are they as the celery and mushrooms had some packaging? Surely that packaging must have somehow changed the contents? At least they came from the right part of the store though. Does mixing a load of single ingredients together now exceed the limit on ingredients in a sauce to qualify as clean. Also if someone can't pronounce courgette does that make it unclean too?
Parmesan cheese. Far too tasty and enjoyable to be clean, definitely processed and salty as well. Pretty sure salt is regarded as unclean despite being an essential electrolyte.6
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