The Money Behind the Movement
Clean eating didn’t just happen overnight – it’s a carefully constructed marketing phenomenon that’s worth billions of dollars. The numbers are staggering: more Americans in 2022 vs. 2021 say they regularly buy products labeled as “natural” (39% vs. 33% in 2021) or “clean ingredients” (27% vs. 20% in 2021), and when asked about which types of diets or eating patterns they’re following, clean eating was the top choice, with more respondents saying they followed clean eating in 2022 (16%) than in 2021 (9%). What most people don’t realize is that few receive comprehensive and reliable nutrition education and are unable to discern between marketing ploys and good science. Companies have latched onto our fears and insecurities about food, creating an industry that profits from making people afraid of perfectly safe ingredients. The clean eating movement has essentially turned nutrition into a fear-based economy where the scarier they can make regular food sound, the more expensive “clean” alternatives they can sell you.
The Simplistic Black-and-White Thinking
Clean eating marketing implies that if food isn’t “clean,” it’s dirty, or that if it’s not chemical-free, it’s chemical-laden, but the truth is that foods don’t fall into black-and-white categories. This oversimplification ignores basic chemistry and biology. Water is a chemical. Vitamin C is a chemical. The apple you eat contains hundreds of naturally occurring chemicals, many with names you couldn’t pronounce if you tried. Even organic agriculture uses pesticides—most are natural, but some are manufactured. The clean eating trend has convinced people that if they can’t pronounce an ingredient, it must be dangerous, which is like saying if you can’t read Chinese, Chinese books must be evil. This black-and-white thinking has created unnecessary anxiety around food and led people to make nutritional decisions based on fear rather than science.
The Processing Paradox Nobody Talks About
Here’s what the clean eating gurus won’t tell you: some processed foods are actually healthier than their “natural” counterparts. Some processed foods are good for you, such as nut butters, canned light tuna packed in water and plain flash-frozen fruits and vegetables. Frozen vegetables are often more nutritious than fresh ones because they’re typically frozen at peak ripeness, preserving their nutrient content. Pasteurization – a form of processing – prevents deadly foodborne illnesses. Yet clean eating advocates often demonize all processing as if grinding peanuts into peanut butter somehow removes its nutritional value. Recommendations to avoid all highly processed foods are potentially harmful if they remove affordable sources of nutrients and will be impractical for most when an estimated two-thirds of current energy purchased are from processed or ultra-processed foods. The reality is that food processing exists on a spectrum, and much of it serves important purposes for safety, nutrition, and accessibility.
The Privilege Problem
Clean eating isn’t just expensive – it’s exclusionary by design. Healthy food options often end up on the plates of higher-income people because healthy foods are expensive, with Consumer Reports saying organic foods cost about 40% more than non-organic foods. The movement promotes shopping at farmers’ markets, buying organic everything, and spending hours meal prepping – luxuries that many working families simply can’t afford. The challenges of procuring and preparing minimally processed, scratch ingredients such as fresh vegetables, meat, and fish are significant because ultraprocessed foods tend to be easier and faster to prepare, and often are less expensive and more shelf stable than scratch ingredients. When nutrition experts preach about avoiding all processed foods, they’re essentially creating a class system where good health becomes a privilege of the wealthy. This ignores the reality that for many families, processed foods provide accessible, affordable nutrition that keeps them fed.
The Detox Delusion
Perhaps no aspect of clean eating is more scientifically bogus than the obsession with detoxing and cleanses. A 2014 review study found no evidence that detox diets eliminate toxins from the body or help with long-term weight loss, and even if you lose weight during a cleanse, a 2017 study found that most people actually gain weight when they resume eating normally, with cleanses potentially causing serious side effects including gastrointestinal problems, protein and vitamin deficiencies, dehydration, and electrolyte imbalances. You don’t need to purchase a product to cleanse your body because your liver, kidneys and gastrointestinal tract do a good job of detoxing it every day, and if you’re looking to rejuvenate your body, you should focus on eating more whole foods, drinking water and removing highly processed foods from your diet. The idea that your body needs external help to “detox” from modern food is not only scientifically unfounded but potentially dangerous. Your liver and kidneys are incredibly sophisticated organs that evolved over millions of years to handle toxins far more dangerous than food additives.
The Ingredient List Obsession
Clean eating has convinced people to become ingredient detectives, scrutinizing every food label like they’re decoding nuclear launch codes. Food companies are picking up on the trend, using language in their marketing like “food should be clean” and “don’t eat ingredients you can’t pronounce”. But here’s the thing: the length of an ingredient list tells you absolutely nothing about a food’s healthfulness. A homemade chocolate chip cookie might have twelve ingredients, while a banana has hundreds of naturally occurring compounds. Some people scan and compare nutrition labels so obsessively that they get caught up in the minutiae of nutrients, interpreting ‘less is more’ for calories, carbs, fat, and sodium, instead of focusing on healthy food choices and overall balance, making them feel food is something to be avoided rather than fuel that provides power, strength, and protection. This obsessive label-reading creates “paralysis by analysis” where people become so focused on avoiding certain ingredients that they lose sight of overall nutrition and enjoyment of food.
The Science They Ignore
While clean eating proponents cherry-pick studies to support their claims, they conveniently ignore the mountain of research that contradicts their philosophy. Research has shown that diets high in ultraprocessed foods are linked to more than 30 health conditions, with more exposure to ultraprocessed foods associated with a higher risk of dying from any cause. However, this doesn’t mean all processing is bad. Although the evidence suggesting that ultra-processed foods are bad for our heart and circulation seems to be growing, the type and quality of the research means it’s still not clear that we need to completely exclude them, with the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition concluding that because of limitations to the research available, caution is still needed when making dietary recommendations. The clean eating movement takes legitimate concerns about ultra-processed foods and extrapolates them to condemn all processing, ignoring nuance and context. Real nutritional science is messy, complex, and doesn’t fit neatly into Instagram-worthy sound bites.
The Flexibility Factor They Fear
The dirty secret of clean eating is that rigid dietary rules often backfire spectacularly. A leading dietitian says flexibility is more sustainable than a rigid diet plan, with the science pointing to a balanced approach. Eliminating foods from your diet is a common strategy for many popular diets, such as the ketogenic diet which cuts out carbohydrates, but though some people lose weight when they stop eating carbs, most gain the weight back. The clean eating mentality creates an all-or-nothing approach where one “unclean” meal triggers guilt, shame, and often complete abandonment of healthy habits. For many, diet culture has shaped their relationship with food throughout their lives, from parental influences of their childhood to the virality of social media today, and these beliefs can be deeply ingrained. Research consistently shows that flexible approaches to nutrition – where no foods are completely off-limits – lead to better long-term health outcomes and psychological well-being than restrictive “clean” eating patterns.
The Social Media Mythology
Instagram and TikTok have turned clean eating into a performative lifestyle brand rather than a genuine approach to health. One survey of over 1,200 young people ages 14 to 24 found that more than half were familiar with the term “clean eating” from social media, other online sources or their peers, with the hashtag #EatClean having more than 61 million posts on Instagram. But social media creates a distorted reality where beautiful people with unlimited time and money make complex, expensive meals look effortless. A licensed clinical nutritionist notes there’s enormous pressure to eat right, to look right, to fit in to this culture that never used to be like that. Competing news headlines and social media conversations have made healthy eating myths the norm and trustworthy information hard to find, with corporations and influencers making a lot of money off these myths. These influencers often have no formal nutrition training but present themselves as experts, spreading misinformation wrapped in aspirational lifestyle content.
The Real Health Consequences
The clean eating obsession isn’t just annoying – it’s actually harming people’s health in unexpected ways. Other interpretations of clean eating can lead to a rigid diet that bans entire foods or food groups like grains—especially gluten-containing grains—soy, legumes, and dairy. Any diet or eating program that eliminates an entire food group gets a red flag because you likely will miss out on vital nutrients. This restriction can lead to nutrient deficiencies, disordered eating patterns, and social isolation. People avoid social gatherings because they can’t control the food, spend enormous amounts of mental energy planning meals, and develop anxiety around eating. Food myths can affect our health in serious ways, with these misleading ideas potentially causing metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart issues, making evidence-based information instead of following trends a vital part of staying healthy. The psychological stress of trying to eat “perfectly clean” can actually be more harmful to health than eating a balanced diet that includes some processed foods.
What started as a well-intentioned movement to encourage healthier eating has morphed into something far more problematic – a fear-based industry that profits from anxiety and oversimplification. The bottom-line dietary guidance remains consistent, with Michael Pollan’s advice to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” working 70 years ago and still working today, leaving plenty of room for eating foods you love. Real healthy eating isn’t about perfection, purity, or following rigid rules – it’s about balance, flexibility, and making peace with food. Maybe it’s time we cleaned house on clean eating itself. What would you have guessed about how much this trend actually contradicts the science it claims to follow?
