'Clean eating' may be a potential health risk

February 10, 2016  10:49

Want to know the secret to happiness, freedom from disease, a great body and a persistent feeling of superiority? The key, it seems, is being 'clean'.

'Clean eating' is the latest buzzword in our increasingly health-conscious culture, sung from the rooftops by celebrities promoting their latest book, nutritionists, recipe bloggers and athletes.

This isn't something so old-fashioned as just losing weight or calorie-counting; 'it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle', say its devotees.

Put simply, clean eating is choosing foods in their whole, natural state, avoiding processing and additives.

There is an emphasis on raw food, lots of fruit and vegetables, and often cutting out sugar, dairy, wheat or gluten - or all four - on the basis that they are poorly digested and responsible for many health woes, such as fatigue and irritable bowel, even cancer.

Instead, fans stock up on chia seeds and almond milk and guzzle green vegetable juices. At a time when nearly two-thirds of British adults are obese or overweight, this is the ultimate expression of self-control.

There's no doubt that highly processed foods have played a major role in our obesity problem, and these diets are right to promote eating more fruit and vegetables.

But there is a dark side to eating clean: dietitians say the nutritional advice is too often based on bad science - and 'clean' diets are expensive and unsustainable.

And there are the potential health risks. A study published today by the British Nutrition Foundation found one in ten teenagers is at risk of nutritional deficiencies, with half of teenage girls falling short on iron and one in five at risk of inadequate calcium.

Faddy diets are nothing new, but experts are very concerned by the current use of words such as 'clean' and 'cleanse', which, they say, attach a moral virtue to certain foods.

'The big modern fears are obesity and cancer,' says Jane Ogden, a professor of health psychology at the University of Surrey.

'Food becomes the source of evil, but also our salvation: it enables us to feel more in control, to tell ourselves if only we eat these things, not the other things, we won't die.'

Renee McGregor, a dietitian who works with athletes and people with eating disorders, adds: 'What I don't like about the term "clean eating" is that it seems to tell us we need to eat in a certain way to be pure.

'Actually, the body can detox itself successfully through the liver. You don't need to drink green juices.'

Connie Weaver, a professor of nutrition science at Purdue University in the U.S., says people wrongly equate processed foods with junk food. 'All processing means is altering the food from its original source to the form in which we eat it.

'The degree of processing is not what defines if a food is healthy.'

Many healthy staple foods - such as yoghurt, bread and olive oil - are all highly processed, she says.

With evidence mounting that sugar is to blame for spiralling rates of obesity and diabetes, many clean eating plans offer 'refined sugar-free' recipes, substituting honey, maple or agave syrup as a 'natural' alternative to white table sugar.

In fact, these expensive products are different in name only.

'Coconut sugar, honey, molasses or maple syrup - it's all sugar,' says Renee McGregor. 'It doesn't make the cake any healthier or change the calorie content. The body still reacts in the same way - it uses some and excess is stored as fat.'

Renee McGregor says she regularly sees clients with health problems as a result of a 'clean', 'raw' or 'paleo' diet. 'I saw one woman who'd cut out dairy and grains, and cooked everything in coconut oil.

'She felt awful, losing weight she didn't need to and suffering serious gastrointestinal issues.’

The supposed benefits of extreme clean eating may stem from a placebo effect, suggest some experts.

'If someone puts a lot of energy into "eating clean" or spends a lot on gluten-free foods, they're going to want and expect returns,' says Cynthia Bulik, a psychiatrist and expert in eating disorders at the University of North California.

'They selectively focus on moments when they feel well and misattribute these to the absence of dairy, or absence of gluten, or clean eating.'

The benefits may also be due to the demands of clean eating. 'These diets create so many rules around food that you can't grab snacks,' adds professor Ogden, 'and if you can't grab snacks, you've got to cook from scratch more, so you eat fewer calories - it's nothing special about the new foods you're eating.'

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