What is Clean Eating?

As I've been roaming the internet in the past couple of days, I've seen the term "clean eating" more times than I can count. I honestly had no idea what this meant. Do you have to put your food in the dishwasher before eating it? Or take a shower before eating your food? It was kind of driving me crazy, so I looked it up. Clean eating is just another one of those many diets, like vegans and paleo eaters. I have never payed attention to these diets because they are always so extreme, and I believe in moderation. Clean eating, however, is much more reasonable.

Courtesy of Feminspire.com

Essentially, the idea of clean eating is to eat foods as close to their true form as possible. So, no ultra-processed foods, or refined grains, or sugar. Wait, what is ultra-processed? This word is good to know if you want to be food-savvy. I'm sure you all hear about "processed foods," and how they are all bad for you, and thats true in a general sense. But, If you want to get really knit picky, processed food is anything not in its 100% completely natural state. For example, steaming your broccoli and mashing your potatoes makes them technically "processed" foods. It's nearly impossible to avoid all processed foods, because almost everything we eat is processed- we cook it, we mash it, we juice it, and we grill it. So, ultra-processed foods are what we usually called processed foods- the Marie Callender's Frozen Pot Pie, the jelly Donut that you had for desert, and the Big Mac you had on your way home from work. So, no, clean eating isn't cutting out everything that is cooked, or altered from its original state. It's cutting out ultra-processed foods as much as possible.

Another thing to know is how to tell if something you're eating is ultra-processed. The key is to look at the ingredients list. If there is anything that you can't pronounce, or don't know what it is, or sounds like some sort of awful chemical (like thiamin mononitrate), it's most likely ultra-processed. So don't eat it. Another useful tip is when you go grocery shopping, stay on the edges of the grocery store- where the meat, the fruit, the dairy, and the vegetables are. Unless you have a really weird grocery store, it'll probably be laid out like that.

A few other points of clean eating are to eat five to six times a day, and drink a lot of water. If you look at my post on water, you will know exactly how to do that. Now for the eating five or six times a day, this is just the best way to have energy all day long. If you eat six small meals a day, you will burn calories all day, and your body wont ever think that you are starving- because then it stores more fat. So, just eating six small meals a day can help you lose weight. Another part of clean eating is to try to eat local foods, and organic foods. This is just generally better for your body and better for the environment.

Now you have the whole lowdown on clean eating, and you can show off to your friends. Have fun.

~Mia