Common Sense Where Art Thou!?!

"I thought if I had one bite or sip of something 'bad' like candy, bread, 'processed' food or 'toxins' like alcohol, it would unravel all of the 'progress' I had made and taint my spotless health routine."
"I was able [after direction from a therapist and nutritionist] to walk back my rigid thinking around what I'm 'allowed' to eat, eating and exercising on a certain schedule, and defining  healthy as being thin, toned, and free of 'bad' food in my body."
Hannah Matthews, 30, writer

Photograph: Alexandra Iakovleva/Getty

But not before this woman, who had fixated on the "eat clean" and "clean eating" movements geared to directing people concerned over their physical image -- their health profile, their weight and presence on social media sites as virtuously knowledgeable about what constitutes food choices that harness a healthy outlook to one's future -- placed her own health in jeopardy. The movement that insists sugars, gluten, processed foods and anything falling into the category of delicious should be one's guide in healthful eating had captured her entirely.

She became so hyperconscious that, in the process of following all these instructions to the nth degree she developed, she now believes, orthorexia, a designation characterizing someone unhealthily food-obsessed; which is to say 'healthy' eating dominating their every thought of food, ensuring that no type of food that normal people sometimes crave must ever pass their lips. Ms. Matthews' devotion to this restricted diet and exercise routine found her malnourished and developing heart problems.

When she took the direction of a health therapist and the advice of a nutritionist, learning how to restore a normal relationship with food, her health took a turn for the better. She began to train herself to think more deeply and less compulsively about her approach to food with the understanding that this represented a life-and-death issue for her, to reform her compulsion to refuse to eat anything forbidden and focus solely on the approved food items.

A backlash has arisen in the United Kingdom to the paradigm of clean eating; influential cookbook writers who had once helped to popularize 'clean eating' are now creating a distance between their professional profiles and the trend that has led to disordered eating and unhealthy food habits. British writers and chefs have begun to raise red flags about taking clean eating too seriously. The author of cookbook Flavour: Eat What You Love, Ruby Tandoh, has spoken out on the clean eating issue as a "bad fad".

She has criticized clean eating for its part in "precarious health claims and a trend-driven food press, all underpinned by an unaltering disdain for fat bodies." Swearing on the properties of coconut oil, of spiralized zucchini noodles and raw vegan juice serves to deprive the body of fibre through the exclusion of pulp, pointed out British food writer and historian, Bee Wilson. "We are once again living in an environment where ordinary food, which should be something reliable and sustaining, has come to feel noxious", she wrote.

"They're marketing these diets based on pseudo-science, and that's what I have a problem with."
"Judging by my Twitter feed, it's [the clean eating movement] only gaining steam. We live in a random post-truth world, driven by social media, and it permeates a lot of fad diets and the pseudo-science of Gwynneth Paltrow."
"Telling people to eat a little less of everything isn't going to make me a million bucks on Instagram".
Dr. Giles Yeo, geneticist, University of Cambridge, BBC presenter of Clean Eating: The Dirty Truth documentary

A study focusing on the issue of clean eating based on recommendations to cut out whole food groups like dairy concluded that adherents of clean eating are at a higher risk of weakened bones leading to the potential of osteoporosis and fractures. A more recent and smaller study of over 100 people found that those declaring themselves a "clean eater" leave the impression they are neurotic and unlikeable.

Michael Pollen, author of In Defense of Food appeals: "Eat food, not too much -- mostly plants". At a time when most people are aware that processed food diets are unhealthy and whole foods represent an antidote to fast food and processed food as a healthy alternative, combined with the fact that fresh fruits and vegetables and whole foods are more accessible in a wide range of types and prices ensures that the choice is there and is attainable.

As in all matters of reason and reasonableness, moderation is the key. Eat well, choosing whole foods, focusing primarily on fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products, fish, extra virgin olive oil, and poultry - all in reasonable, moderate amounts for optimum health outcomes. Supported by regular exercise of a recreational variety, including walking.