What exactly is "Clean Eating"?

Sharon_C

To me, the answer to the OP's question means Paleo diet.

If it wasn't available to cavemen, I shouldn't be eating it. With a few exceptions though.

I mean we all know Fruity and cocoa Pebbles were available to certain cavemen. And of course they had Greek Yogurt too.


Basically you go around the outer aisles of your grocery store for most of your diet needs.

Produce, Bacon and eggs, cheese, meats, fish, and of course beer.

Mmmmm. Fruity Pebbles. I just polished off a box of that this week.

Oh, and bcukshot500, just wanted you to know that both my husband and I own Jeeps. So my other ride is a Jeep too!

Jayma375

Love this answer!!!

I was told it was washing your cookies before eating them.

vismal

I do low carb and no sugar ...that's my definition of clean eating

So no fruit...seems healthy and reasonable....:grumble:

GertrudeHorse

Clean eating = adhering to the 2 second rule.

chadya07

thankfully, liquor is found on the perimeter of safeway and wine on the perimeter at trader joes. i am set. clean eating!

dammit though, my avocado has a label on it.

and i have a bag of sugar in the kitchen with only one ingredient in it.

sounds like i am eating sugar with a spoon while chugging a bum jug of carlo rossi.

and maybe i will use that avocado as a facial mask since i cant eat it.

Elsie_Brownraisin

thankfully, liquor is found on the perimeter of safeway and wine on the perimeter at trader joes. i am set. clean eating!

dammit though, my avocado has a label on it.

and i have a bag of sugar in the kitchen with only one ingredient in it.

sounds like i am eating sugar with a spoon while chugging a bum jug of carlo rossi.

and maybe i will use that avocado as a facial mask since i cant eat it.

Best smoosh that bacon you were planning on having on your avocado bagel into your nostrils too. It will remove the toxins that have accumulated in your spleen from all those years of dirty food.

EvgeniZyntx

It's nonsense.

However...

lemonsnowdrop

Here's how I look at clean eating:

You sit down to breakfast. There are two pitchers you can choose from to fill your glass. One pitcher contains:

water
high fructose corn syrup
Less than 2% of the following:
concentrated juices of apple and orange
vitamins C, E, and A
citric acid
natural flavors
pectin
canola oil
modified corn starch
yellow dye #5
yellow dye #6
sucralose
sucrose acetate isobutyrate
sodium citrate
potassium sorbate
sodium hexametaphosphate
calcium disodium EDTA

The second pitcher contains:
orange juice.

Which one would you want to fill your glass with?

Now it's time to serve yourself some cereal. There are two choices again. Choice number one contains:

Rice
Sugar
Hydrogenated coconut and palm kernel oils
salt
natural and artificial flavor
red dye #40
yellow dye #6
turmeric oleoresin
blue dye #1
yellow dye #2
blue dye #2
BHA (preservative)

Choice number two contains:

Rolled oats
Toasted wheat germ
oat bran
walnuts
raisins
sunflower seeds
honey

To me, clean eating simply means eating actual food.

I hope you make your orange juice at home with that statement: http://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-juice/

lemurcat12

@ OdesAngel -- I use seasoning...no dressing. Seasonings have one ingredient.

not necessarily true. Depends on whether you buy only whole seasonings and grind them yourself. A lot of seasonings actually contain fillers, and no they aren't listed on the label. Anything below a certain percentage does not have to be listed. So maybe you aren't eating as clean as you think.

Buy from a reputable company that grinds their spices and mixes their seasonings in small batches and you will not have any fillers.

Or just plant a pepper and herb garden and grow your own.

Nice idea but few people have the $ to build a specialized greenhouse that has different climate controlled sections that recreates the proper conditions to grow cinnamon trees, peppercorns, ginger plants, nutmeg trees (which also produce mace), cardamom plants, etc. Herbs and vegetables like peppers grow well in temperate climates like where I live but the only spices I can grow around here are dill seeds, poppy seeds, anise seeds, and mustard seeds.

I can't grow saffron but that doesn't stop me from planting what I can in my patch of dirt. Cost to construct said patch of dirt = $0

Yes, so do lots of people, including me. That doesn't mean there's any rational reason to limit myself to the spices I can personally grow or gather, as you seemed to be suggesting.

SunofaBeach14

"Clean eating" is like porn vs art: It's hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Exactly!!! ^^^^^this^^^^^^

Perfect simile as it's arbitrary nonsense, and such reasoning is laughed at by intelligent contemporaries and will be by future generations

lemurcat12

I prefer the term whole foods rather than clean foods. It makes sense to me to try to eat whole foods, but that doesn't mean you can't blend a bunch of whole foods into a recipe. And to me, it doesn't mean that you can't have a few healthy tortilla chips made from whole food ingredients. The one thing I'm debating with myself about though is if oil qualifies as a whole food.

The important thing is that YOU feel good about what you choose to put into your body. I think as people grow older, or if they face a serious health issue, they tend to pay more attention to the foods they choose. They raise the bar on what is healthy. It's great to share our ideas about what works for us, or read books about what works for others, but in the end, you have to find the level of whole, or the level of clean that is sustainable for you and makes YOU feel good about your choices. It's not necessary to try to "get on board" with anyone else's philosophy.

I generally agree with the second paragraph. Even though I've gotten rid of my own former (non weight related) obsession with "natural only" (the need to give up tomatoes in a can and such IMO silliness) and as a result have a somewhat more jaded view on some of this, I do find that for me a focus on eating healthy (for the most part) and food quality and easier weight loss go together. Especially the food quality bit, as I enjoy cooking and food culture generally (but then that also means that I dislike the "food is just fuel" aspect of the "clean" POV that you find so often). When I started this I was largely getting back to a way I've mostly eaten since I learned to cook years ago, so it was never about not eating "that junk" that I perceived myself to be eating or learning to shop in a different part of the store. Maybe for a lot of people that was their issue, but it wasn't mine, so I didn't feel like I was changing my diet to something radically different.

But that aside, just as I started with goals about exercise that I knew I could meet even if the scale disappointed me, and which would make me healthier whatever my weight, I also started with ideas about eating healthy that I planned to follow and that I knew would be worthwhile independent of the scale. Among other things, this is a motivator--it's much easier to enjoy what I'm doing and not see it as just deprivation (not being able to eat as much as I might like at times), when it's connected with an overall healthier diet that does make me feel better (even if for me that's more from moderation than because I was ever eating foods that made me feel bad).

What I think is a shame about the "clean eating" diet and how it is used on MFP--and I'd be happy to have someone who thinks focusing on that term and on being "clean" vs not address this--is that it seems exclusionary in a rather pointless way. I'm never going to identify as a clean eater for a couple of reasons. First, because I do eat stuff like yogurt (yes, I care about the specifics of my yogurt, for those who want to claim it probably has HFCS in it or whatever, so that's not the issue, it's that yogurt is packaged and processed). Thus, it simply seems hypocritical, a lie, to claim I object to "processed" foods and it blows my mind how many people who eat more processed stuff than me, even, make this kind of claim. It would embarrass me to do so even if I for some reason wanted to identify as a "clean" eater rather than disliking labels. Second, and perhaps more important, I don't think having some ice cream when I have calories or eating pizza or baking a pie on rare occasion or the like, as part of my overall healthy diet is something to feel guilty about or to aspire to stop. I care about a healthy diet and eating whole foods, but for me this is not an all or nothing, and I just don't think that's any more something I need to do than becoming a vegan.

Just as I still respect vegans and am interested in stealing their better recipes, however, I don't care if your POV is that you should exclude even homemade pie or ice cream (or olive oil!) from your life. What I find a shame is the idea that as a result the only people you accept as caring about health or being worthy of discussing healthy eating ideas with are those of a similar POV. My guess is that a huge percentage of the active posters here care about health and eat lots of foods that even the "clean" eaters would enjoy, so why self-segregate and seek out only clean eaters to share ideas about cooking with?

I see tons of new "clean" eaters who ask super basic questions like how to cook without relying on packaged stuff or who seem not to incorporate veggies even though they are excluding flour or sugar or the like, and I find it hard to believe that not talking to people who regularly cook from whole foods--even if they also eat sugar or flour--is really the smartest thing to do. (That this comes with preening about having a superior diet is also annoying, but that's a separate thing.) I mean, you can talk about how you do dinner with someone or ideas about what makes a healthy day without being contaminated by their cookie consumption. I eat ice cream, but that doesn't actually affect what my dinners look like. I don't use it as a topping on my chicken.

So I really don't see the point of all the clean/non clean, except that "clean" people seem to want to claim that's the only way to care about health or food quality, and that's just not so. I care about food quality and yet eat ice cream and want to experiment with whether protein bars work as pre long run foods in the morning. People have a mix of ideas, after all.

Of course, what puzzles me even more are people who admittedly don't eat "clean" in that they say they don't exclude anything, but just try to eat "healthier," but who still want to use the term. There's some bizarre appeal to this term that I don't understand. Maybe it's a desire to be part of a group or a new convert's sense that most others are in some sinful wilderness involving 24/7 Twinkie consumption because they used to be? Dunno.

lemurcat12

We also call it "perimeter shopping". If you only buy food walking along the perimeter of a typical grocery store (milk, meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits), than it's "clean". I rarely get anything else. Maybe once every couple months we get some basic stuff from the isles (grains, salt, sugar, spices)... And we rarely go to restaurants since we do not like their food. But I am a very good cook and our family is spoiled I think

I love how all restaurants can be written off as one. I frequently think people who do this, or who assume restaurant food must be low quality or just something they can do better at home, haven't really been to a variety of restaurants.

But I certainly don't care if people don't want to eat at restaurants. I just don't get why they are per se "unclean."

I get most of my food not from the perimeter, but from farms, but I don't see why that makes it "unprocessed." Dairy in particular (especially from a supermarket) is processed. Fish is probably frozen and maybe farmed. Meat is processed, especially if you go for stuff like lean ground beef or deli stuff. Baby carrots have been discussed. I don't disagree that this is a good way to shop--although I think it's a bit precious that it deserves some kind of special name--but the idea that perimeters=good, dried beans or canned tomatoes or frozen veggies (in the case in the middle, you know)=bad is rather arbitrary.

I get the idea from comments like this that people aren't really following the argument and think that non "clean" eaters don't eat vegetables or get their meat from, I'm not even sure where, from cardboard packages pre made?

lemurcat12

Here's how I look at clean eating:

You sit down to breakfast. There are two pitchers you can choose from to fill your glass. One pitcher contains:

water
high fructose corn syrup
Less than 2% of the following:
concentrated juices of apple and orange
vitamins C, E, and A
citric acid
natural flavors
pectin
canola oil
modified corn starch
yellow dye #5
yellow dye #6
sucralose
sucrose acetate isobutyrate
sodium citrate
potassium sorbate
sodium hexametaphosphate
calcium disodium EDTA

The second pitcher contains:
orange juice.

Which one would you want to fill your glass with?

Neither. Orange juice is processed in a way I disapprove of (for my diet, I don't care what others eat). Even though there are processed foods I think are good and a ban on processing is bad, I will never choose to drink juice vs. eating the whole fruit. So I'd have an orange.

However, I will note that it's unnatural and thus if one is to be consistent unclean, dependent on big business and processing, blah, blah, that I can even get an orange, since I live in Illinois where we can't actually grow them locally.

Now it's time to serve yourself some cereal.

Interesting. Another example where neither can possibly be, by the usual definition, "clean," as both are highly processed. Cereal is, IMO, not a food I choose to eat but again I don't claim (like clean eaters) that it can't be part of a healthy diet. I do like steel cut oats on occasion (and other foods rather similar to cereal, like pasta--which doesn't have lots of weird additives, for the record, not the stuff I buy or normal pasta at all, IMO). However, that is precisely why I'd be a huge hypocrite to call myself a "clean" eater (among other things) and it's hilarious this is the example given.

To me, clean eating simply means eating actual food.

Too bad the way "clean" is usually defined (unprocessed), you don't do it. (And if processing makes food "unreal," maybe it's not "real" either, who knows.)

I certainly believe that I only eat real food (does anyone not?). Why would I eat something else? But I also know that there are always going to be people who claim that, say, canned tomatoes cease to be real, so why even go there?

Anyway, I am going to stop procrastinating my run now, so will shut up about this for a while!

Running_down_a_dream

Just eat foods that don't have T.V. commercials and you will be fine.

Alluminati

Just eat foods that don't have T.V. commercials and you will be fine.

Lol. Wow.

ComingUntrue

I consider clean eating as a food with just one ingredient. For an example, Chicken, beef, tuna, spinach, lettuce, almonds, rice, potatoes, etc...

^^^^

Alluminati

I consider clean eating as a food with just one ingredient. For an example, Chicken, beef, tuna, spinach, lettuce, almonds, rice, potatoes, etc...

^^^^

So if you cook together chicken, spinach, and seasoning does that make unclean? Cause now it's not one ingredient anymore.

SunofaBeach14

I consider clean eating as a food with just one ingredient. For an example, Chicken, beef, tuna, spinach, lettuce, almonds, rice, potatoes, etc...

^^^^

So if you cook chicken, spinach, and seasoning does that make unclean? Cause now it's not one ingredient anymore.

It's worse than if the food touches each other on the plate, which is nightmare inducing. This is why Koalas and Panda Bears are jacked. They mostly only eat one food.

bwogilvie

I consider clean eating as a food with just one ingredient. For an example, Chicken, beef, tuna, spinach, lettuce, almonds, rice, potatoes, etc...

^^^^

????

So chicken is "clean," and potatoes are "clean," but you make a chicken-potato stew and all of a sudden it's no longer clean?

dayone987

The problem is, clean eating means different things to different people, but usually it means cutting out all junk food, including the pasta you mentioned. Essentially it is eating only whole foods. And suprisingly its not that expensive if you dont try and buy the organic foods, just stick to single ingredient foods and you should be on the right track.

care to elaborate on how pasta is junk food?

Perhaps, you don't understand what pasta is?

Additionally, maybe you don't understand what a 'single ingredient food' is?

Just questions.

It's not junk food, but pasta is heavily processed.

My box of pasta states one single ingredient (durham wheat semolina)