Quinoa? Acai? Chia? Flax?! 'Clean eating' is taking over every cook book shelf and celebrity instagram page. Here is Amy Buckle, currently a student studying photography, and her thoughts on the trending diets...
Is it me or is this just another label to add to the hundreds of others, the cabbage soup diet, the baby food diet, the juicing diet and the paleo diet, when does it end?
This new diet craze looks to be the latest inspiration for women to lose weight and feel healthier. A growing number of celebrities have begun to embrace 'clean eating' as part of their everyday lifestyle. Gwenyth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz and Nicole Kidman all promote the process of eliminating processed and refined foods, replacing them with nutritious whole foods instead. We are being constantly bombarded with ludicrous diet fads, which may well bring us weight loss initially but in the long run cause us nothing but misery. Pass me a raw kale chip, doesn't have quite the same ring to it as a biscuit or piece of cake does it?
Our health obsessed industry has once again introduced us to an extreme overhaul whereby counting calories has become a thing of the past. It's many benefits include fat loss, weight loss, increased energy, clearer skin and shinier hair, along with better sleep and mental well-being. This is nothing we haven't heard of before and doesn't take a genius to work out that eating healthily ultimately leads to better health.
Eating fruits and vegetables along with whole grains and unprocessed foods will of course optimise nutrition, the industry doesn't need to spend nor generate even more millions to tell us that.
Personally clean eating will be different for everyone because when you think about it what is clean? To a vegetarian meat is deemed unacceptable, to a vegan it's animal products, to those following specific diets it'll be certain food groups. We can't win. Whatever happened to the concept of everything in moderation?
We are being continuously brain washed with this notion that every food we eat is bad and the media is flooded with these contradictions over what is healthy and unhealthy. We are taught to believe and follow these trends that to me establish unhealthy relationships with food.
Experts believe this to be a diet that does more harm than good, causing long term health consequences. Queensland University of Technology's professor of public health and nutrition, Amanda Lee says that, 'Young women, who make up the largest sect of the clean eating cult, are particularly vulnerable to low-iron status or anaemia, which can come back to bite them later on when they try to fall pregnant.'
It's not easy being green and in my opinion it's about balance and moderation, making sure that every food group is implemented in order to achieve optimum health.
