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Wednesday 10 August 2016

Joanna Blythman Behind the headlines: Clean eating

The current trend for an ‘all-natural’ diet has been heavily criticised as faddy – even unhealthy. But Good Food’s Joanna Blythman finds much to applaud.

I feel I must defend the ‘clean eating’ advocates – the Hemsley sisters, Ella Mills and so on. Do they need any help, you might ask, given that they have massive Instagram followings and sell cookbooks by the shedload? Perhaps not, but, they have been getting it in the neck recently, accused of offering unsubstantiated nutritional advice and even promoting unhealthy eating.

Admittedly few, if any, have serious nutritional credentials. Further criticism is that with their covetable good looks, these super-slim, stylish women promote an unrealistic, unattainable lifestyle – even eating disorders. And critics take issue with the word ‘clean’, with its underlying, unconscious implication that other food is therefore ‘dirty’.

Nutritional gospel


When it comes to nutrition, we’ve been encouraged to defer to our elders in white coats, not young women. Arguably, though, our eating habits went seriously wrong when we started paying too much attention to the so-called experts, rather than following the wise advice of our mothers and grandmothers. Twenty-five years of writing about food and health has taught me to be deeply sceptical about official nutrition gospel, even if it comes from a host of professors on a scientific committee. Similar authorities once told us that it was dangerous to consume more than two eggs a week, and advocated eating spreads that turned out to contain artery-clogging trans fats.

Now, the dietetic community is riven by infighting as high-profile medics challenge the current public health eating guidelines. While they slug it out, clean eaters have performed at least one public service: encouraging us to avoid processed food with additives and engineered ingredients, and to cook instead with food that is as natural and close to its origins as possible. They have also aired the increasingly credible idea that industrialised food is making us fat and sick. I applaud them for this, and for urging us to let good food be our first and foremost medical remedy.

Back to basics


And isn’t it useful that clean eating writers have gone back to square one with ingredients? Surely the drive to ask, ‘Is there a more nutritious ingredient that I can use instead?’ is progressive? I used to make millionaire’s shortbread with condensed milk, plain flour, lots of sugar, and so on. But now I much prefer my cleaner lookalike recipe that uses oats, dates, peanut butter, raw cacao and coconut oil. Of course, I can’t endorse every idea the clean eaters come up with. Some of them strike me as being more sensible than others. So as in everything to do with advice on food and eating habits, I use my common sense and listen selectively to what they have to say.


Graham 

9 comments:

The Happy Whisk said...

Personally, I love wholefoods. They are yummy.

Galina L. said...

Really? Oats and dates concoction instead of wheat and condensed milk is a clean eating? I doubt such diet may stop an obesity epidemic.

Galina L. said...

I do think that a "clean eating" is too small a change.

Anonymous said...

The "Latest in Paleo" podcaster said last week there is no evidence anywhere that oats are bad for you, he is attending the upcoming Ancesteral Health Symposium and will be one of the most popular speakers there.

Lowcarb team member said...

Anonymous said...
The "Latest in Paleo" podcaster said last week there is no evidence anywhere that oats are bad for you, he is attending the upcoming Ancesteral Health Symposium and will be one of the most popular speakers there.

Unless your a diabetic that is, oats = high blood sugar!

Graham

Galina L. said...

" there is no evidence anywhere that oats are bad for you". It is a too broad statement. I think that oats are better than wheat for very healthy people, however, oats contain too much carbohydrates for the people with insulin resistance. Graham, it is not necessary to have diabetes to benefit from oats avoidance. Many non-diabetics have abnormal blood sugar levels eating carbohydrates like morning porridge. I used a glucosemeter to convince my mom to stop eating oatmeal. She has a normal fasting BS, but in one hour after a stillcut oatmeal without any sugar her BS was 9.3 mmol/L , and she was hungry in two hours. It is known now that oats are bad even for horses, especially old ones, because starch in oats is very easily digested , causing a spike in a blood sugar which leds to the development of equine metabolic disorders.

Anonymous said...

I think UK grandmothers (older generation) had bread on the table at every meal, that's not considered clean eating nowadays yet clean eating people keep referring to grandmothers! On a recent radio 4 food programme broadcast about UK eating habits history they interviewed a Chinese gentleman named Wing Yip who opened a chain of Chinese restaurants in northern England in the 1950s,he could not believe it when the locals kept asking for bread & butter with their meals! In one of his busier restaurants he had to hire a local lady whose sole job (stuck in a cubby hole) was to butter bread for the customers! I'm in my late 70s and remember a big plate full of bread and butter was always on the table at mealtimes either at home or the relatives.

Lowcarb team member said...

Galina L. said..

Graham, it is not necessary to have diabetes to benefit from oats avoidance. Many non-diabetics have abnormal blood sugar levels eating carbohydrates like morning porridge

Couldn't have agreed more Galina, also the official advice to pre diabetics encourages them to include porridge

Graham

Galina L. said...

@Anonymous,
That is why I don't like an odd terminology like "clean eating"- everybody defines it differently. I did't say that bread was poisonous. It is just not an optimal food most people still could consume without too much problem while eating a traditional diet. I grew up at socialistic country, we didn't have a fast food and cooked everything from a scratch, (i still do), people in a general crowd were thin, but that people were not immune to civilization-related illnesses (cancer, caries, cardiovascular deceases, diabetes). My normal weight father died from a heart attack at 51. From my experience I can tell that a traditional diet is better than a modern one, but worse than a no grain no sugar eating. My mom (a traditional cook) definitely benefited from a low carbohydrate diet she was convinced to start at least 3 years ago. She lost 20 lbs immediately, her blood pressure normalized, since she started eating more animal fat and eggs she became immune to seasonal viral infections, which was very important for somebody who just turned 79 years old. I remember how mom forbade me eat anything without a bread when I was a child, and it was considered a splurge to eat more than one egg. We used starches to stretch meat more, also butter and eggs. Now we don't pity money which are spent on food - a health is more important.