Your food is no cleaner than mine

If however you just think eating animal products isn't terribly healthy, then doing so occasionally isn't really a big deal at all.

As for the difference between trying to follow a lifestyle plan and actually following it, isn't the whole point of just about any lifestyle plan that you adapt it to YOUR lifestyle? That inherently means you're going to change things around a bit and make it work for you; there is no 100% right or wrong way to do it. Plus, again, this is about food and health not morality, so not having a perfect day isn't a big deal. Do all IIFYMers or moderation eaters have perfect days every day, or do they occasionally go over or not meet their macro/calorie goals? If so, does that mean they're not actually following their diet?

If however you just think eating animal products isn't terribly healthy, then doing so occasionally isn't really a big deal at all.

As for the difference between trying to follow a lifestyle plan and actually following it, isn't the whole point of just about any lifestyle plan that you adapt it to YOUR lifestyle? That inherently means you're going to change things around a bit and make it work for you; there is no 100% right or wrong way to do it. Plus, again, this is about food and health not morality, so not having a perfect day isn't a big deal. Do all IIFYMers or moderation eaters have perfect days every day, or do they occasionally go over or not meet their macro/calorie goals? If so, does that mean they're not actually following their diet?

If someone eats a piece of cheese and says, "I'm vegan but not for moral reasons" it's likely a vegan will just say, "You aren't vegan." It doesn't really matter why you're eating the cheese. It's cool, eat the cheese, but you aren't vegan. I believe that we are that way because people claiming to be vegan while eating the office birthday cake contributes to a lot of confusion, questioning, and comparisons (so and so will eat it), and error about what really is vegan.

Yes, lifestyle plans are somewhat adaptable. But at some point, it becomes silly to call yourself something you aren't. (Again, the difference between "I'm a clean eater" and "I aim for a clean diet.") I see people say "Eat in moderation or IIFYM" but I don't really see them label themselves as such. (I attempt to follow IIFYM but know that it's a guideline for me, not something I'm strict about or something I could honestly claim as my lifestyle.)

By the rules on this board, I could call myself Paleo because more than 20% of my diet is not made up of tofu or legumes. Seems silly to do so if I actively allow for 20% of my calories to be from tofu or legumes, though.

Can we just roll this **** so it stops appearing on my recent posts?

Right TennisDude.

Someone who's not Paleo telling me I'm not Paleo is just about as valid as someone who's not a clean eater telling a clean eater their diet isn't clean.

But, sometimes it's good to have something to argue about, and diet theories are relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things.

(I will now patiently await someone to search my journal and see that I ate OMG PIZZA!!! this week!)

Make sure to point out that PIZZA is NOT paleo.

You do realize that by and large the only people who talk about dirty food are those who are against clean eating right? I've never heard any clean eater talk about food being dirty; most don't get close to even judging other people's food choices. Most of the clean eaters I know or those like me who subscribe to the idea of clean eating don't think of clean as being a moral judgment or of other foods are dirty. Usually clean is used in these contexts to mean not possessing things that individual doesn't want to put in their body - therefore, the opposite to clean isn't dirty, it's things they just don't want to put in their body. At worst the opposite of clean eating is eating 'undesirable' things, but since it's more or less defined individually, I hardly see how that's prblematic. Food is always desriable or undesirable on an individual basis - just because I hate celery because it tastes icky to me, and therefore its undesirable and I don't want to eat it, does that somehow affect you and your relationship with celery? If it does, that's a problem with you, not with me.

People all have different views on what is healthy or unhealthy, and what they want to put in their body. If someone wants to chose not to put animal products, or processed food, or pesticides, or GMOs into their body, why do you care? Its their personal food choices, and you shouldn't get to judge them for it, even if what you're judging is how they describe their eating style.

I think it's argumentative to try and say that labelling something clean MUST mean that anything else is dirty, and that it's ridiculous to judge a way of eating on nothing more than its name. Naming conventions aren't about being perfectly descriptive, they're about being catchy. If you have to get all philosophical to find a good argument against a person choosing to eat clean, I think you're really reaching. That, and clean's a perfectly acceptable way of describing most of these food plans. They're based largely on eliminating undesirable (defined by each individual or individual plan) elements from our food and diet - that's one meaning of clean.

It can't be forgotten that words have many meanings or slightly different meanings depending on context. Yes, in some contexts clean and dirty have moral connotations; in others, they really really don't. Reading those kinds of things into this context is quite beside the point and actually rather inappropriate. I'd say that to anyone on either side of the debate, but honestly, I've only ever seen it from clean eating bashers.