sliding into smaller jeans is quickly surpassed
by heightened paranoia and hyper-vigilance,
clinging to the new low weight.
Diehard ‘clean’ eaters may develop
anxiety about social situations and spiral into
social isolation.
“Over time, the lack of social connection
can contribute to low self-esteem and isolation
- and it can cause tension and arguments in
relationships or irritation from co-workers
or loved ones who are tired of hearing about
what you ate and why,” McMahon says.
McGrice says the idea of foods as clean
or dirty is unhelpful and unnecessary. “It
attaches moral judgements to food. And
if people do let their hair down and enjoy
an apple danish or a handful of crisps at a
party, they may then spend hours punishing
themselves with guilt and recriminations and
additional exercise, because they literally feel
they are now unclean or tainted. This leads to
unnecessary stress and distress, may kickstart
even more restricted eating and destroys the
enjoyment of eating, which should be one of
the greatest pleasures in life.”
Holistic dietitian and personal trainer
Kate Callaghan (theholisticnutritionist.
com) followed a ‘clean’ paleo diet for years
before querying its impact on her health and
wellbeing. “My eating had definitely become
‘disordered’,” says Callaghan. “I was eating
enough kilojoules to lie around in bed but not
to support a proper life that involved working
and a high level of exercise. I didn’t do that
intentionally – it came about from following a
low-carb, high-fat diet.”
After years of ‘getting away with it’,
Callaghan had a wake-up call. “My female
hormone production dropped so low that
I stopped getting my periods, which was
stressful because it might mean I had become
infertile,” she says. Hypothalamic amenorrhea
is commonly caused by underrating and
over-exercising. It took almost a year of more
relaxed eating to remedy. Her cycle returned - albeit on erratic schedules – and her nails,
skin and hair regained their vitality.
“My skin has gone from being dull and
really dry to being clear, supple and wrinkle
free. The whites of my eyes are crystal clear
and I no need to take regular naps throughout
the day.”
Callaghan’s ‘dirty clean’ has few rules but
emphasises eating every three hours to top
up nutrients, maintain energy and prevent
triggers for under- or overeating.
Attesting to quite how fluid the term
‘clean eating’ is, author of Clean Up
Your Diet Max Tomlinson describes its
characteristics as minimising additives
and maximising micronutrients.
“Cleaning up your diet means
thinking about what you put into
your body, and its effects on you,”
says Tomlinson. He says the ‘purity’
of a food is a factor that can impact
healthfulness of food beyond
reductionist discourse. His line of
thinking would argue that a discussion
about the health merits and risks of
consuming red meat needs to qualify
the cut and source.
“I would rather you ate a home-
made quarter-pounder, containing
100 per cent organic, lean minced
beef, fresh, organic herbs, and
immune-boosting organic onion (with
a free-range, organic egg to bind
them together) than a chicken breast
from a battery-farmed, no-organic
hen, which is likely to be severely
nutrient-depleted,” Tomlinson says.
According to Tomlinson, greaterpurity – which is yet another term
without definition – translates to
easier digestion.
“Pure foods are free from the
additives and chemicals that in
modern processed foods place such
a strain on the organs of elimination,
such as the liver and kidneys,” he
says. They are also rich in essential
micronutrients (vitamins and minerals,
plant nutrients called phytonutrients,
and other beneficial organisms, such
as probiotics, or healthy bacteria).
And not all packaged foods are off
limits. Frozen peas and other vegies
can be as good or better than fresh
produce as they are snap frozen
when fresh. Canned beans are good if
they’re rinsed.
While there are no hard, fast rules
and enforcing strict protocols will
only end in frustration, author of The
Chemical Maze Bill Statham says a
good guiding principle is to favour
shorter ingredients lists, don’t eat
anything you don’t recognise and
avoid numbers where possible.DIRTY
CLEAN