Eating "Clean": Is It Healthy?
You know the recent diet trend of "detoxing," "cleansing," or eating "clean"? I certainly do. It's causing quite a stir, because these ideas are based on false premises. First, there is no set definition of what "clean eating" actually means. Second, you can't detoxify your body through a diet. And juice cleanses? That's a form of starvation! The idea of "clean" eating also imposes certain values onto the foods that we consume. If some foods are clean, that inherently means that other foods are dirty. The clean eating craze also discounts issues of class and access, cultural foods, people's individual tastes, and health issues.
In addition, the clean eating craze is producing a new eating disorder. It's called orthorexia, and the obsessive focus is in the perceived virtue of the food itself. Recognizing this eating disorder is tough, because it seems like people are trying to find the healthiest way to not only eat, but also to live. That's not to say that the typical American diet is fine the way it is right now - it most certainly is not. However, we need to stop assigning foods value, and oversimplifying food classifications with the labels of either "clean" or "dirty." There are much better, safer ways to go about learning how to eat in a way that promotes optimum health, and much of it is about balance and variety. As we think about how to make our bodies healthier through an improved diet, we also need to remember that in order to live a truly healthy life, our minds need to be healthy, too.
To read more about the "clean" eating debate, read these two articles:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/08/clean_eating_is_a_bad_label_with_no_real_meaning_for_your_diet_plan.html
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/30/were_clean_eating_our_way_to_new_eating_disorders/
Image found: https://www.pinterest.com/nekonyan/fruits-and-vegetables/
