Eat Clean??

Raccoons wash their food.
Raccoons are never overweight.
Therefore, eating clean = normal weight.

WINNER

Raccoons wash their food.
Raccoons are never overweight.
Therefore, eating clean = normal weight.

WINNER

Okay the ONE fat raccoon on the planet. You're feeding him unclean food, admit it! He's living in your crawl space.

Check out the book "It Starts With Food" by Dallas & Melissa Hartwig. It is a fast read and very, very interesting. I'm on day 25 of the Whole30 program and I can't even begin to list all of the great things clean, healthy eating is doing for me.

If you aren't into getting the book you can look around their website, which is really helpful as well: http://whole9life.com/

Good luck!

Let's ask the question...what is "clean?"...and this will confuse you. it is intended to, so that you may question the concept of a "clean" food, and maybe form your own opinion on rather if such a thing exists. For the sake of argument, let's say we're concerned only about weight loss...which I assume is your main driving motivation for living healthy. Healthy is also a very fickle concept...as people with ripped six pack abs may be quite unhealthy all together.

Is a strawberry clean? most people would say yes (let's not get into whether the strawberry is organic).

Is a grain of whole wheat clean? again, most people would say yes.

So I grind up the strawberry into jam, I grind up the wheat into flour, bake it, and wrap it around the jam. It's now a pop tart. Is this clean? most people would say no.

Why?

Because pop tarts have added sugar. And the flour is bleached and enriched..ergo "Processed", and preservatives are added for shelf life (preservatives do not have any relevance to weight loss, generally).

Sugar is made of sugar cane, or corn, or any sort of thing that can taste sweet. Are these foods clean? What about the sugar derived from them? Is that clean? Then, what about natural organic honey...is that cleaner than high fructose corn syrup?

The overwhelming answer is no. Your body in absence of your ability to cognitively categorize foods into "clean" vs "dirty" cannot tell the difference between sugar from bee honey and sugar from processed corn. In fact, their chemical make-ups are almost identical.

So the pop tart, full of clean and non clean things, are processed indiscriminately by your body, and partitioned into its various components. If you eat a no sugar added whole wheat strawberry pop tart with no preservatives, you are getting the sugar from the strawberries, the fiber from the whole flour, and the vitamins and nutrients that are associated with those two foods.

If you eat a pop tart that is a regular pop tart, you get the sugar from the strawberry, some more sugar from corn or sugar cane, no fiber from the flour, but flour nonetheless, and all the vitamins and nutrients associated with those foods.

So then, there's not really any clean foods are there? There are just foods broken down, enriched, processed into parts of their whole self, metabolized by the body in their distinct parts as well.

Eating clean = unprocessed foods. I am a fan.

My interpretations of eating clean is: eating as much fresh, local, self-prepared food as possible. Very little from a box, bag or package. Mostly it's meat, veggies, fruit & nuts. Food that hasn't been "processed" per se.

Its not pointless, thats pretty ignorant! Clean eating in its simplest form is eating natural food (like we would have eaten before all this proccessed food came about). Eating natural food is 100% better for you than eating processed food. Granted 100 cals of fruit and 100 cals of chips will make up the same calorific content, but the health benefits and nutrients of fruit massively outweigh the proccessed food. I try to eat as clean as I happily can, ie I will allow myself things proccessed treats as eating clean be a little dull in the snack department. This is an example of my day when I am "kind of" clean eating... and TBH its quicker than making things like pasta etc!! I suffer from IBS and since ive cut out complex carbs and sugar this has massively improved my digestion and bloating!

Breakfast:

Porridge Oats made with unsweetended almond milk, banana and Manuka Honey
Green Tea

Lunch:
Chicken Breast/Prawns
Steamed Mix Veg (Brocolli, Carrots, Spinach, Baby Corn and Kale as an example)..usually mixed with cayenne pepper
Cottage Cheese
Lots of water

Afternoon "Snack"
Beef Jerky or Veg Stick/Fruit

Dinner:
Salmon Fillet/Steak/Mince
Lots of steamed or stirfry veg mixed with spices
Sweet Pototo Mash/Fries
or
Pepper/Mushroom stuffed with lentils/Quinoa

Snacks:
Yoghurt with fruit
Nuts
Hot chocolate (1 scoop of belgian choc protein powder or cocoa and almond milk)

Its works for me, but not saying its gospel!! Hope thats helps

Wait, I thought it meant to clean your plate?

This whole eating "clean" thing really bothers me. It sounds like a religion or cult or something. If you say you don't "eat clean" some people look at you like you're a three headed monster. Just stay within your macros and you'll be fine. Who cares if you eat canned soup or something out of a box. If you like it, and it fits with your calorie budget for the day, GO FOR IT!

In terms of weight loss alone - it totally doesn't matter. At all. But if you're interested in a healthier lifestyle, then I definitely think it's worth it (as long as you can afford it).

I've seen people lose 100+ pounds on diets like Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem - and sure, they lost a LOT of weight, but they end up with high blood pressure from all that salt. And migraines from the preservatives and artificial color/flavors. But they're probably a whole lot healthier, in terms of medical risk, at the lower weight with those fairly manageable issues than they were when they were morbidly obese. So make your decision based on what's right for your body, priorities and wallet.