“What’s on the menu?” I ask the gent paying for two cans of organic tinned black beans. I see him a lot at the deli where I work, most often with armloads of chia seed, nutritional yeast and bottles of coconut amino.
“I’ve just been on a seven-day water fast,” is his reply. “This’ll be my first meal.
I was an early adopter to the practice of clean eating. In fact, so early was I that the concept as it’s now known didn’t as yet exist: the year was 1999, I was a budding martial artist-cum-food writer with an appetite for perfection and a hunger for untasted ideology.
In other words, I wanted to be informed by a system of beliefs that owed nothing to my family collective. This isn’t uncommon; ideological experimentation is part of what defines young adulthood, particularly.
Clean eating was the new philosophy that I chose.
My ideas on clean eating weren’t as sophisticated as those : I knew nothing of theories on eating, was more than a decade away from becoming a catchphrase, and the general public didn’t know of existence.
The modern take on clean eating goes under the microscope in Clean Eating: The Dirty Truth, as Dr Giles Yeo investigates the health trend, cooking with Ella Mills of and investigating some of the extremes of the movement - available now on :
What I did know that cutting out grains, dairy and sugars made me feel ‘clean’. It made me feel light. And it made me feel healthy.
But the real lure in all of this was that to have an established ideology to frame my consumption made me feel in control.
Seven-day water fasts aside, there is not a lot that is at first glance harmful about the current models of clean eating. As systems of consumption, clean eating models appear to not only answer the current great of ill health as caused by diet, but also contribute to discussions around food sustainability and environmental management, imbued – as these diets are – with thoughts on ethical animal husbandry, and organic and biodynamic farming practices.
When clean eating becomes troublesome is when it ceases to be focussed upon health and begins to wrap itself around identity.
And this is because allowing what I eat to define what I am causes a twofold problem.
Firstly, it places far too much emphasis on what I put in my mouth as being a determinant of how well placed I am in my life. This is where I can fall in to that dirty cycle of a day of clean eating equalling the idea of me as a successful person, and a day of non-clean eating equalling the idea of me as someone not strong enough to resist failing.
Secondly, it places a VERY tight box around my own growth. Making diet dogma is as restrictive as making religion dogma – by doing so I approach all new concepts from this set perspective which is an enormous weight of importance to give to a very basic need.
In this way, clean eating itself is not the problem but how we approach it can be.
The commercialisation of clean eating on social media channels means we’re not always driven to eat in this way because we want to live longer with less disease, but because we want to buy in to what looks like a youthful and slim and beautifully lit reality
From anyone’s perspective, the fundamentals of clean eating are inarguable as it relates to better health: this idea of more vegetables, no processed foods, cooking from scratch and knowing where your food comes must be the surest recipe for healthy consumption.
However the unfortunate truth is that the commercialisation of clean eating on social media channels means we’re not always driven to eat in this way because we want to live longer with less disease, but because we want to buy in to what looks like a youthful and slim and beautifully lit reality where our curated plates will provide access to an Insta-glamorous life.
Being aware of the seduction of this pitfall means that I no longer subscribe to the idea of clean eating in the same way that I once did.
I don’t tie myself in knots in order to ensure that every morsel and every meal adheres to a specific philosophy. I no longer feel evangelical about my ability to steer clear of certain food groups. Nor do I fear the repercussions of failing to eat a certain way all of the time.
Instead I have found other ways to define myself that have nothing to do with what I put in my mouth.
By doing this – by framing my identity in other ways – food has become food.
And because food has become food I can think about it differently. It carries no hidden psychological or spiritual or philosophical message.
Now, I choose to eat mostly plants and lots of spice and plenty of whole grains and a little local meat because it fuels my activity in a way that appeals to my palate and allows me to be physically well.
This is food’s purpose. And I’m happy to keep it simple.
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