Clean eating has no scientific basis and isn’t even effective.

Focussing on "clean eating" is a fool's errand at best and wildly dangerous at worst.

We all know clean eating works. How could it not? It’s simply telling you to eat healthy foods and avoid unhealthy foods. What could possibly be wrong with that?

The first thing we should consider is what exactly is clean eating?

To use a definition that appeared in research published in The Lancet, “The quest for clean eating involves consuming a “sensible” diet rich in fresh foods and low in refined processed products and sugar. This movement has been perpetuated by countless (unqualified) wellness expert bloggers and celebrities endorsing their cookbooks and eating plans, and 39 million Instagram posts assigning the clean eating hashtag to pictures of lean bodies sipping green smoothies” (Staudacher, 2018). This is a workable definition and the one we will use from here — what can we say about clean eating at this point?

There is no scientifically agreed upon definition of clean eating.

I’ll say that again.

There is no scientifically agreed upon definition of clean eating.

This should be a major red flag. However, the fact that there is no real definition doesn’t negatively impact our perception of clean eating. Research published this year in Nutrients asked 1266 college aged students questions assessing knowledge of clean eating. 71% characterised “clean” eating as a healthy approach and only 6% flagged it as unhealthy. We have already made up our minds that clean eating is the right choice. I mean come on, it’s clean!

We have a strange dichotomy here. One one hand we have our intuition telling us that clean eating is the only correct choice for healthy eating — it has to be right, how else are you supposed to be making progress unless your diet is “clean”? On the other hand, the principles of clean eating are far from evidence based.

Clean eating seems like it's healthy, and that’s a huge problem. A recent review showed that patients with IBS or coeliac disease had a 44% greater prevalence of disordered eating practices when undertaking a diet (Ambwani, 2020). When we are using our own judgment to apportion our diet into good and bad, it has the potential to spiral out of control. That spiral may result in two things, the first being Orthorexia Nervosa — an eating disorder that involves an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. The other being avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID). Patients with ARFID tend to identify a short list of “safe” foods, refuse to reintegrate other foods into their diet and are at risk of malnutrition. Unlike Orthorexia Nervosa ARFID focuses on the FEAR OF NEGATIVE OUTCOMES associated with eating bad food.

I know at this point at least some of you are still in disbelief, it seems so fundamental that I must be wrong. My point is that “clean eating” means something different to EVERY SINGLE PERSON. You literally cannot say that clean eating is good or bad, because we all have different definitions.

So we can continue chasing our idealistic version of clean eating, when it doesn’t actually exist and it isn’t even effective, or approach dieting in a different way. I know which of these I want to do.

I will start by taking the most evidence-based action we can take to manage our body composition.

Calorie control

Every single successful diet has one thing in common. They manage your energy. It doesn’t matter who is endorsing this new diet, if it has been proven to work for a given demographic then it simply must control your calories in some way. If you still think calories aren’t important in a diet then you’re basically saying eating 10,000 calories and 10 calories per day are in effect the same. Slight exaggeration but you get my drift.

Research led by Dr Traci Mann from the University of Minnesota reviewed every randomised, controlled study on diet strategy with a follow-up period of at least two years they could find. In 2013 they found that across all diets participants lost weight, but in the ensuing 2–5 years they had gained it all back except for an average of 2.1 pounds. The non-dieting control group gained 1.2 pounds by comparison over the same period (Mann, 2013).

In 2–5 years, the only improvement that dieting itself has over doing absolutely nothing is a swing of 3.3 pounds of body mass. To give you some idea how small that is, to gain 3.3 pounds of fat in 5 years would require that you only eat a surplus of 6.71 calories every day. That’s six point seven one calories, or an extra 12.5 mls of your daily protein shake for 5 years.

So after all that effort, the dieters have nothing of value to show for it. The dieters were undertaking a multitude of diet strategies —some were following a set of rules they were given and others were relying on their own intuition to separate foods into good and bad.

I’m trying to show you that it doesn’t matter what the dietary rules are, whether you are following someone else’s or you are concocting those rules in your head — it’s not worth five years of mental anguish to be 3.3 pounds lighter than someone who did nothing. It’s absurd that we’re fighting this fight by going from 8 week challenge to 30-day detox repetitively and wondering why our results aren’t where we wanted them to be.

So we have a choice. Continue chasing clean eating and other short term dietary strategies when clean eating doesn’t actually exist and our idea of it isn’t even effective, or do something different.

Put your effort where it matters, like this guy.

I’ve made my choice.

“It is our choices, Harry, that show who we truly are. Far more than our abilities” — JK Rowling

About the author (not her, me):

Nikki Thomas — My mission is simple: To empower people through fitness education to take their lives into their own hands, for FREE, forever. I want to spread my message to as many people as I can, so join me on the following platforms

Instagram/Facebook/TikTok/Twitch/Patreon/Twitter: @QEDfitness

LinkedIn: Nikki Thomas

The QED Framework — How to Make ANY Diet Work for You will be available in e-book format soon, for FREE, for everyone on all platforms where good, FREE e-books are found.

References

Ambwani, S et al 2020, “It’s Healthy Because It’s Natural.” Perceptions of “ Clean” Eating among U.S. Adolescents and Emerging Adults, Nutrients, vol. 12, iss. 6

Mann, T 2013, Why Do Dieters Regain Weight?, Psychological Science Agenda,

Staudacher M, Harer K 2018, When Clean Eating Goes Dirty, Nutrients, vol.3 iss. 10, p668.