โCleanโ broke out. Like โpumping ironโ in the ’70s, โjuiceโ in the ’80s, and โswoleโ and โdieselโ this centuryโand letโs not forget the most muscular pose, struck by athletes after touchdowns, dunks, or almost any big play in almost any sportโโeating cleanโ was a bodybuilding thing that went mainstream. What makes this one different is the wider public changed its meaning, sparking a backlash. How did โcleanโ grow too big for its own good?
CLEAN EATING: THE BREAKOUT
Subcultures have their own lingo, separating those whoโre in from those whoโre out. Sometime in the mid-’90s, I added โcleanโ to my vocabulary as a verb or adjective meaning to eat like a dieting bodybuilder (essentially high-protein, low-carb) and soon thereafter realized no one outside my swole tribe knew what I meant when I used the word to refer to meals. You mean washed food?
A decade or so later, โcleanโ made a jailbreak. It began with the best-selling The Eat-Clean Diet in 2007, the first of a popular series of Eat-Clean books by Tosca Reno, who was very familiar with the bodybuilding subculture. Her husband was the late Robert Kennedy, publisher of MuscleMag, as well as Oxygen, Reps!, and, eventuallyโbut of courseโClean Eating magazine, which is still in print today.
Tosca Reno carried over much of the bodybuilding definition: a focus on lean protein and complex carbs (as well as weight-training and supplements), but she also prophesized for whole organic foods, writing things like this: โWe live in a chemical soup experiment. Processed foods have undermined our health, especially sugars, which are deadly anti-foods that have no place in our body.โ
There it wasโthe redefining. Since then, โcleanโ has gone from hardcore fitness to softcore wellness, a smart marketing strategy, for sure, because thereโs a lot more people in the latter category. Cookbooks, plans, podcasts, YouTube videos, more every year. Itโs become the catchall term (#eatclean) for any and all healthy or natural nutrition.
How mainstream is it? Panera Bread adopted the slogan โ100% of our food is 100% clean.โ The National Heart Association released an infographic of its healthy eating tips with the title: โSo You Want to Eat Clean?โ Thereโs even an Eating Clean for Dummies book, which is a sure sign โcleanโ has reached such a level of saturation this genie can never fit back in the protein shaker.
CLEAN EATING: THE BACKLASH
The problem with going so big is the term doesnโt just stretch to include organic everything. It also includes a lot of quackery and dubious claims. And therein lies the backlash, well, that and the fact that itโs perceived as elitist: farmerโs market over supermarket. (A 2015 Consumer Reports study found organic foods cost, on average, 47% more than non-organic.) Vice published the viral hit โEating Clean is Uselessโ; Good Housekeeping upped the ante with โWhy Clean Eating is Total B.S.โ (Seems like those titles shouldโve been reversed. Who knew Good Housekeeping was so edgy?)
The Vice screed, by Michael Easter, leans heavily into the elitist critique, and it also argues that not only are organic foods no better for weight loss (calories being calories), but even the purported health benefits are dubious. (A meta-study concluded that organic foods are not significantly more nutritious than their counterparts, but they โmay reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.โ) โThere are, of course, plenty of valid reasons for supporting clean foods,โ Easter states, โranging from concern over the treatment of animals to supporting local farmers. But those concerns have nothing to do with health and weight loss, clean eating’s big sales pitch.โ
Nutritionist Jaclyn London in Good Housekeeping also calls out the elitism: โThe implication is that if you’re not โeating clean,โ what you eat otherwise is dirty, lazy, or unhygienic, and that’s simply not true.โ And as for benefits: โMore and more marketers refer to their food products as โclean.โ But if your product is 90% full of a trendy version of oil or sugar, it’s still not providing consumers with healthful, educated choices. Don’t believe me? Agave is no better for you than any other version of sugar; coconut oil is still a mostly saturated fat (even when your kale salad is doused in it); cold-pressed juice is still a concentrated source of sugar (and not very nutritious); and that vegan chocolate pudding is still dessertโnot breakfast.โ
Bee Wilsonโs โWhy We Fell for Clean Eatingโ in The Guardian goes further, highlighting the consequences of orthorexiaโan unhealthy obsession with healthy eating, a relentless pursuit of food โpurityโ which can cause extreme anxiety and nutrient deficiencies or excesses. โโClean eatingโ was different,โ Wilson writes, โbecause it established itself as a challenge to mainstream ways of eating, and its wild popularity over the past five years has enabled it to move far beyond the fringes. Powered by social media, it has been more absolutist in its claims and more popular in its reach than any previous school of modern nutrition advice….[I]t quickly became clear that โclean eatingโ was more than a diet, it was a belief system, which propagated the idea that the way most people eat is not simply fattening, but impure.โ
CLEAN EATING: THE ORIGINAL
This has all gotten way out of hand. A bodybuilding term which meant simply eating lean as opposed to eating junk has now been marketed and hashtagged into a catch-all word for organic, natural, and, often, vegan. Clean food has gone from literal to slang to literal again, so that most people now treat the term as a reflection of actual cleanliness, of a sortโno chemicals, no processing, often no animal productsโa synonym for purity.
Itโs probably too late in the #eatclean era to turn back the clock. Still, the meaning never altered in the muscular community from which clean came. It still means eating lean protein, complex carbs, and veggies (whether or not theyโre organic) and, in order to better reveal abs, avoiding things like white flour, sugar, and saturated fat (even if the foods laden with them are marketed as โorganic,โ โall-natural,โ โpure,โ or โclean,โ or theyโre sold at Panera Bread, Tender Greens, or Whole Foods Market).
โEating cleanโ is eating to lose or minimize bodyfat.
Its antonym, โeating dirtyโ is pizza cheat day.
If the world outside our gyms is going to keep running with that other squishy meaning with its overreaching claims, thatโs up to them. But like โshredded,โ โnatty,โ โdialed in,โ and โfreak,โ โeating cleanโ will mean what itโs always meant in the bodybuilding subculture, and if that confuses the uninitiated, so be it. Either youโre in or youโre out.
