How important is it to "eat clean"

lemurcat12

We need a new definition of food. Instead of clean or junk or whatever, we need a nice shiny word that means compatible with a particular person's health, calorie goals, and satiety signals. Someone invent a new term!

Individually Optimal?

Nah, sounds silly and too many syllables. Humans don't like too many syllables.

Healthy works for me. I try to eat a healthy diet. I try to eat in a way that meets my health goals. (I'd say "healthy and balanced," but some people can intentionally eat unbalanced (i.e., low carb, 80/10/10) and still be healthy and meet their goals, so I'll leave it out.

What everyone means by that will be individual, but that's fine.

I use the term "healthy and balanced" to mean "nutritionally adequate," not "equal macro ratios."

Yeah, I guess I do too. I can just see someone thinking a diet really low in some macro is being excluded by the term.

likitisplit

We need a new definition of food. Instead of clean or junk or whatever, we need a nice shiny word that means compatible with a particular person's health, calorie goals, and satiety signals. Someone invent a new term!

Individually Optimal?

Nah, sounds silly and too many syllables. Humans don't like too many syllables.

Healthy works for me. I try to eat a healthy diet. I try to eat in a way that meets my health goals. (I'd say "healthy and balanced," but some people can intentionally eat unbalanced (i.e., low carb, 80/10/10) and still be healthy and meet their goals, so I'll leave it out.

What everyone means by that will be individual, but that's fine.

I use the term "healthy and balanced" to mean "nutritionally adequate," not "equal macro ratios."

Yeah, I guess I do too. I can just see someone thinking a diet really low in some macro is being excluded by the term.

As long as you are getting the minimums within your calorie goals...and there is no minimum for carbs. While I would never do Keto, it's nutritionally balanced.

JCLondonUK

I don't want any vegetables, thank you. I paid for the cow to eat them for me.
Doug Coupland

;D

:bigsmile: :bigsmile: :bigsmile:

lemurcat12

As long as you are getting the minimums within your calorie goals...and there is no minimum for carbs. While I would never do Keto, it's nutritionally balanced.

Works for me! I'm probably overthinking the ambiguity, because I also have nothing against keto (except that I wouldn't enjoy it).

strassenkoenigin

From my experience it does not make any difference. The less you eat the more you lose. But I realized that I have an addiction problem to carbs. Especially bread. I love good bread and if I buy a loaf I usually eat the whole thing in no time. So I have to stay away from things like that. I am convinced that this is due to the way they grow flour, corn, soybeans etc. nowadays because when I was younger I did not have that problem.
But on the other hand I also like to eat fruit. And there is the same problem I tend to eat too much and go over my calorie goal.
In the past I found that for me the best way to lose is to go on a sort of mono diet of some healthy satisfying food and train myself to eat as little as possible. But that does not always work. I once went on a potato diet and the pounds just dropped off, but only because I did not put any butter or sour cream on the potatoes. So what I do now I change my diet every week, then it does not get too boring eating the same stuff.

jetlag

Except it's a known fact that these foods are created to manipulate our body and brain chemistry to find them most pleasurable.

Most food is created in an effort to make it most pleasurable. That's what learning to cook teaches you how to do. That's every bit as true about traditional home-cooked meals as marketed stuff, and most people will agree with me that really good home-cooked or restaurant food, cooked to their taste using fresh, whole ingredients (and, sure, butter) is much tastier and harder to resist than packaged stuff or fast food, I expect, although obviously taste is subjective.

It just sounds scarier if it's some big corporation doing that, vs. mom or Julia Child.

If anything, a lot of the additives in packaged food and fast food is because they are trying to make them tasty on the cheap, and as indicated above they still generally don't taste as good. Compare a frozen pizza to a pizza cooked at a really good local pizza place or home-cooked by someone with the right equipment.

If you are claiming that transfats or HFCS or whatever are as addictive as truly addictive drugs, provide the evidence. It's certainly not my experience.

Ignorance is bliss. I'd go into more details but you obviously don't care so fine. You're absolutely right in every way.

Ignorance definitely is bliss. Having survived an actual drug addiction, I can say, hand on heart, that anyone claiming food is as addictive as drugs is ignorant. Yes, they may be contrived to tick all the right pleasure boxes, but they are not addictive like drugs are. Ever seen anyone try and peel the skin off their own face because they can't get their hands on mars bar? No, me neither.

Nicotine is a drug, too, though, and I've never heard anyone claim it isn't addicting, yet some foods are definitely harder for some people to avoid than cigarettes.

Yeah, ex-smoker here, too. I can tell you first hand, the battle I had to quit smoking is nothing like the battle I have with not eating crisps. I did things to get cigarettes that I would never do to get a doughnut.

Lack of willpower and addiction are two very different things. I think that people think they're addicted to certain foods which give themselves a psychological free pass to overindulge in them. They can't help it, it's beyond their control. You may have a psychological dependence, but don't ever do yourself the disservice of claiming an addiction.

But anyone using that crutch isn't likely to see it for what it is because believing they're addicted makes them feel better about their weight and lack of control.