The problem of the term "clean food"

When I was about 10 years old, I was at a party, my friends and I sitting cross-legged on the living room rug looking at the birthday girl's mother celebrating the cake. While she was distributing shares, she told us all: "Not for Julie, because she is too fat." It was my first public shame (and far from the last). I sat awkwardly while my friends ate their cake in silence, looking at me with pitiful pity as I tried not to cry.

I was the only member of my family in good health, active, essentially without junk food, obviously heavy. During my life, I have spent more physical and emotional energy trying to give my body a socially acceptable size, to the detriment of anything else. The number of basic calories has become as deeply rooted as basic mathematics. Going from diet to diet for decades, I was constantly looking for social situations and the inevitable food they brought, approaching life from the point of view of risk management and harm reduction: how would we go about I during the holidays / a movie / the weekend? without eating more than I should? Would it be strange to bring this frozen entry Jenny Craig to my boyfriend's house for Sunday dinner? Who do I drop while eating this biscuit? It's hard not to believe that your body is a physical manifestation of poor judgment and lack of self-control. But I'll tell you this: guilt is a terrible motivator.

And yet, a buzzword that keeps eating healthy continues to be "clean" – with its virtuous connotations, it certainly plays into all the usual guilt traps we have around eating. And even though the food culture has evolved since my first trips to Weight Watchers in the 80s, calorie counting is no longer the main activity and the goal is that it does not matter how much it is. is visibly shifted to health and strength – the guilt and shame associated with eating has not dissipated. As long as people have the freedom to choose what they eat, food is classified as good or bad: fresh fruits and vegetables are just right, while desserts, snacks and sweets are guilty and sinful pleasures. Although specific diet programs have been adopted and we imagine ourselves progressive in the field of well-being, more and more extensive, guilt remains widely accepted as a normal reaction to food: we say that we are "bad" to eat a cookie, then there is "cheating" – how many of us generally talk about moving away from an intentional diet.

So what is healthy eating? It is an amorphous term applied to a wide range of dietary beliefs, popularized by increasingly influential social media personalities, which does not have a set of clearly defined rules. Clean is an abstraction so wide and so culturally intertwined with ideas of purity and kindness, it's an easy selling point, whether it's promoting the keto, the paleo or an instant pot. Who would not want to be absolved of all the guilt associated with food?

Some "clean" cookbooks include meat, but naturally, vegetarians and vegans do not. Some who tout "clean" avoid wheat, gluten or all grains, legumes, dairy products and sugar. Interestingly, sugar appears in different forms. The list of sweeteners approved by Clean Eating magazine includes cane sugar, honey, maple syrup, date sugar, coconut sugar and xylitol. There are programs based on raw foods and other strictly alkaline ingredient compounds. The last book of Gwyneth Paltrow, The clean plate, which promises to help readers clean, detox and "press the reset button" – all the dubious concepts typically associated with "clean" – does not contain red meat, gluten, processed foods, sugar, caffeine , dairy products, nightshades, peanuts or soya.

The key idea – a well-meaning idea, steeped in common sense, practical enough to go back to the basics to make it easy to buy – is to avoid heavily processed foods. But most cookbooks, whether they are clean or not, usually call for whole foods. "I do not like the phrase" healthy eating "; I do not like his association and his ambiguity, "says Raj Bhardwaj, a Calgary family doctor and columnist for Radio-Canada, who talks weekly about medical issues. "The idea of ​​eating healthy is embedded in all these completely pseudo-scientific concepts that have no scientific proof."

Although weight loss programs were originally designed for people wanting to lose weight, diets claim to treat virtually all diseases, from gastrointestinal disorders to eczema to insomnia. The number of Canadians dedicated to specific dietary practices is increasing – and according to a recent study from Dalhousie University in Halifax, 32% of us are engaged in some sort of structured diet. "Who is a candidate to use this program? All those who live a modern life, eat a modern diet and live in the modern world, "writes New York cardiologist Alejandro Junger in promotional material for his book Clean up: the revolutionary program to restore the body's natural ability to heal itself.

The shift from a temporary diet to an all-encompassing lifestyle may reflect a general desire for a structured belief system – a set of rules that allows people to define themselves. Suggest that there is a way to eat "clean" or moral, sanitary, flawless, relies on the existence of the reverse: a sinful, corrupt and impure approach to food. When what we choose to eat is classified as good or bad, the label does not apply to the food itself, but to the person who eats it. A donut or a cupcake is neither good nor bad in itself – it must be eaten to make an impact – it becomes eating what is virtuous or shameful. We are what we eat and all that.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global welfare sector is worth about US $ 4.2 trillion, with healthy eating, nutrition and weight loss sectors accounting for more than US $ 702 billion. North America is responsible for the largest market share. And yet, this same industry, especially with regard to weight loss, had a tiny success rate. Studies consistently show that about 5 to 10% of people who try will manage to lose weight without retaking it. If there was another product that was failing so dramatically almost all the time, it would certainly carry, but the weight loss industry continues to thrive largely because it rests on the customers who blame themselves and on their own shortcomings, rather than on the scheme they've bought in. The industry thrives on guilt. It is not surprising that the marketing terms we associate with healthy eating – such as "natural" and "clean" – are sufficiently ambiguous to fit our own subjective definitions and ideals. In summary, when we adopt ideas such as healthy eating, we feel we are making the right choice, a choice for which we do not have to feel guilty.

The reaction against healthy food intensified in 2015, when Nigella Lawson criticized this concept. This implies that "any other type of meal is dirty or shameful," she told BBC radio 4. "I think that food should not be used as a means to persecute myself and I really think that we have to look to get pleasure and revel in what is good rather than thinking" Oh no, c & rsquo; Is dirty, bad or a sin "or that" eating is virtuous ". … I do not like people who think they are better themselves for the way they eat … I do not think so [food] should always be a status symbol. "

In 2017, a story in the Telegraph proclaimed "clean" had reached its inevitable peak. Yet the word continued to gain ground, used by food evangelists who promised miracle cures in exchange for a dedicated food rigor. Look for "clean" on Amazon and there are more than 8,000 results in the recipe book category. The use of the #cleaneating hashtag has increased by 60% over the last two years and has been used more than 43 million times on Instagram (with #eatclean and other similar tags in the same stage), under the same name. impulse of attractive celebrities and influencers such as Paltrow, with his charisma, his numerous subscribers and his personal experiences that surpass the professional expertise.

To eat is at the heart of our being; it's a very personal thing that reflects our tastes and feelings, our environments, our cultures and our past. We use food to celebrate, socialize and comfort. Our eating habits are learned and it is detrimental to encourage a broad and confrontational food culture that turns the act into a moral issue. Characterizing certain people as healthy, strong, and just in terms of what they eat invites discrimination against others, who are in turn perceived as weak, lazy, or morally corrupt. And when physical appearance is viewed as a tacit indicator of a person's health or eating habits, a whole subset of our community is stigmatized.

There is nothing virtuous – or anything unscrupulous – in a bowl of quinoa or a chocolate cake. If eating or not eating certain things works for your body or belief system, eat them or do not eat them. Understanding and accepting that all bodies work in different ways, with varying tastes, appetites, energy levels and satiety – and that kindness can not be bought – is the only way for all of us to eat our cake and eat it.

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