Capitalism works hard, but the wellness influencer chastising you for not eating “whole foods” while simultaneously selling their protein powder works harder.
I used to work in the addiction recovery space and we were starting to move away from classifying urines as clean or dirty because of the moral stigma attached to those words. Instead we were told best practices were to say “negative for x” or “positive for x.” Hopefully the wellness space can do a similar shift and start talking about high fiber content or low protein, etc. instead of words that have moral connotations
I hate that term too. If I don't eat "clean" am I eating dirty food? WTF is that? Yes, eating foods that are less processed are good for you, but are foods with multiple ingredients dirty? It's such a judgmental term that leads to shame for not eating "clean." Shame never helped anyone's health.
Every time someone talks about "clean" eating, I ask how I know if my food is "dirty." When they say "unprocessed food is the only clean food" I have to point out that ALL produce is processed in some manner (with the possible exception of U-Pick and some farmer's market produce). Then I ask if frozen berries are "dirty." How about canned beans? Tofu? Literally all baked goods? Literally all cheese? It doesn't stop the so-called-influencers but hopefully some people see my comments and it starts to make them think.
Spot on.. Especially on clean eating. For what it's worth, I wrote about what how this obsession influenced me and those around me here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-146429994
I used to work in the addiction recovery space and we were starting to move away from classifying urines as clean or dirty because of the moral stigma attached to those words. Instead we were told best practices were to say “negative for x” or “positive for x.” Hopefully the wellness space can do a similar shift and start talking about high fiber content or low protein, etc. instead of words that have moral connotations
Agreed!
I hate that term too. If I don't eat "clean" am I eating dirty food? WTF is that? Yes, eating foods that are less processed are good for you, but are foods with multiple ingredients dirty? It's such a judgmental term that leads to shame for not eating "clean." Shame never helped anyone's health.
Every time someone talks about "clean" eating, I ask how I know if my food is "dirty." When they say "unprocessed food is the only clean food" I have to point out that ALL produce is processed in some manner (with the possible exception of U-Pick and some farmer's market produce). Then I ask if frozen berries are "dirty." How about canned beans? Tofu? Literally all baked goods? Literally all cheese? It doesn't stop the so-called-influencers but hopefully some people see my comments and it starts to make them think.
Spot on.. Especially on clean eating. For what it's worth, I wrote about what how this obsession influenced me and those around me here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-146429994
I really thought this was going to be about martinis 🤦🏻♀️