Food fads - they've been about forever, but with the advent of social media they've never been more visible. And the more high profile the fads get, the more heated the opposition to each one becomes. It's starting to feel as though the latter part of this decade is going to be the time when food turned nasty...
For years there has been "opposition" and snobbery inside the question of food, and eating. From Weightwatchers -v- Slimming World - right through to the current "Clean eating - good, or evil?" debate, people love to disagree, and with food being a subject close to many of our hearts, it's not surprising that it can provoke strong feelings. Equally there have and will always be people who are keen to promote an extreme for whatever reason - Cabbage Soup Diet to Atkins - if you particularly want to eat in a particular way, you can probably find a "diet" that will suit your requirements - whether it's good for you is another question!
One thing that the current clean eating trend has in common with nearly every other diet out there is that it persuades us to see foods as either "Good" or "Bad" - but is it healthy to teach people to demonise foods like this? I like a pomegranate seed as much as the next girl, and I'm even partial to a bit of kale here and there, but equally I also thoroughly enjoy the occasional bacon sandwich on packet white, Gooey bacon, brie and Cranberry ciabbata, or packet of good old Walker's Ready Salted. Are any of those things going to kill me? No, if they're eaten occasionally, rather than on a daily basis, probably not. Do they make me happy? Yes - damn right they do, and that in itself means that eating them occasionally has one great big fat (sorry!) benefit right there. Sure, I have food "principles" - I'll only buy free range eggs for example - and would rather go without than eat battery ones, and I've not eaten McDonalds food since news of their political leanings in the 1980's became public knowledge, but generally speaking, I'm not going to be storming around telling you that your choice of breakfast, lunch or dinner is in some way inherently evil, and neither should anyone else be doing so.
A quick google on the question of Clean Eating turns up a lot of different, and much conflicting, information - and yet some of it is pure common sense and may well provide a key to why so many people have sworn that they've successfully lost weight on one of these plans. Learn about proper portion sizes - well, yes! I'd be the first to acknowledge that I'm not always the best with that, but it is logical to only eat the right amount of whatever you put on your plate. Read Labels, says another one - educating yourself about what is in the foods that you're buying can never be a bad thing, surely, but how many of us really question the stuff that finds its way into what we eat? Some of it is a bit less practical "Eat 5 - 6 small meals every day" - well, yes, great in principle, but for the majority of us with 9 - 5 jobs, that's not really all that user-friendly, is it! Then there's the confusing; "Drink half your bodyweight in ounces of water each day" - well that's brilliant, but what measurement are we using for the body weight?! "Avoid all calorie dense foods containing no nutritional value" - not actually that easy to find a food with no nutritional value at all, calorie dense or otherwise... My personal favourite "avoid chemically charged foods" - well that puts the Kibosh on the 2 - 3 litres of H2O they say you should drink a day, huh? Interestingly nearly everything I found on a quick image search for "principles of clean eating" on google seemed to originate from the US - and I'm always inclined to be suspicious of a nation that is too busy to say the "ed" on the end of mash when they talk about potatoes.
How about we all jump off the "fad" bandwagon and ditch the "diets" and start actually thinking about what we choose to put in our mouths with a bit more logic? Make the bulk of your food across a week healthy - and eat it in sensible quantities. Eat slowly, actually taste your food, and stop eating when you start to feel full. Think about the amount you put in against the amount of energy you've expended in the day - a busy day where you've done some exercise will need more calories replaced than one in which the limit of your exertion is reaching for the remote control. Listen to what your body tells you - do you know we're actually born without a taste for particularly sweet things - the desire to "eat sweet" is gained as we grow up, probably because mostly we're taught to regard sweets as a treat - not a criticism at all, that's just the way things are. Interestingly I've found that the less sweet stuff I eat, the less I want. Of course I have the odd slice of cake or bit of chocolate, but generally speaking I very rarely crave those things. Since I've been thinking more about the refined sugars I eat, there is no question that I have wanted sweet stuff less even than I did before, and that certainly does suggest that those sorts of cravings can be "cured" at least in part. If you're thinking about a particular diet or eating plan that tells you to cut a particular foodstuff out completely, ask yourself whether that is sustainable in the long term, and if not, whether in fact you'd do better to follow a different path. Thinking about changing to a way of eating which we can take forwards as a lifestyle choice, not just plan to follow as a "diet" might actually enable us to break the yo-yo dieting habit for good - after all, if the food we're putting on our plates looks appetising and makes us look forward to eating it, it stops feeling like a hardship, doesn't it! Given a choice between feeling deprived, and feeling fulfilled, I know which I'd choose!
Robyn
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