
Eating Clean is Useless - prostoalex
https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvwb4/eating-clean-wont-make-you-any-healthier?utm_source=vicefbus
======
trabant00
A little straw man here, a little twisting of the meaning of clean there and
voila: trying to eat healthy is classist and racist.

Junk food is being marketed at poor uneducated people. Yes! That is even more
reason to fight it, not find escuses to indulge in it. And if you are really
into social justice and the like, that yoga guy and the whole white middle
class is not the enemy of the poor black guys. They are not the owners of junk
food mega corporations, nor do they pass laws to subsidize corn syrup.

If you want to "stick it to the man" stop buying his horrible products.

"Fuck you white middle class yoga guy, I'm eating all the Nestle shit I can
find, take that!" \- how dumb is this?

~~~
sapote
Agreed. I'm surprised at the support for this article...

I somehow got downvoted for saying that growing one's own food is a great
alternative to the narrow perspective the article is pushing.

~~~
Toine
Most people prefer to find justifications for their generally poor diet
choices (ie eating Lucky Charms every day) rather than being objective. Food
is really an emotional thing for most of us.

------
fuwafuwa
All of our fitness and nutrition advice is troubled by the cargo-culting,
marketing-driven, personal-religion factors: if I go to a yoga class I spend a
lot more time and money to get effects roughly similar to doing a high school
gym class stretching regime each morning and evening. I paid $14 yesterday for
the experience of a burger with a fancy name and an overly sweetened bun that
was ultimately less satisfying than Burger King. If I buy and use supplements
marketed by a bodybuilder, or try to follow their training program as printed
in a magazine, I'm not going to look like the bodybuilder, and I will probably
overtrain, because they weren't using the supplements at all, they were using
a PED stack to train harder, eat more, and recover faster without overloading
their system. Worrying about my body weight, BMI, or aesthetics is similarly
Quixotic in that my body will prefer to stay in a certain range regardless of
how I eat or train, and the numbers I can consistently improve tend to be
"weight and reps" or "time and distance", while aesthetics and vanity numbers
are much harder to aim towards.

To wit, it's more important to develop your own feedback loops for each of
these things. There are serious concerns with fitness and nutrition in the
U.S. but they aren't necessarily because it's impossible to get at the good
stuff: it's just that eating beans and rice and oatmeal, making a habit of
stretching and bodyweight exercise, and studiously logging one's training are
all unfashionable, implicitly discouraged by most workplaces, and not well
served by market forces.

~~~
brucephillips
> implicitly discouraged by most workplaces

What do you mean?

~~~
fuwafuwa
Long "crunch" work hours with little or no enforced break, laissez-faire
approaches to lunch and break room snacks, occasional encouragement to drink
alcohol, lengthy car commutes to office parks, heavy preference towards in-
person over remote. These are just some of the things workplaces do to
lifestyle that are too small to be a topic for regulation but big enough to
impact lives.

------
0xbear
Non-GMO and organic is mostly BS of course, but it's a fact that refined carbs
are cheap and plentiful, so the poor consume proportionally more of them. They
simply can't afford fruit and meat. This is in part because of the infinite
shelf life of processed carbs, and in part because they're heavily subsidized
by the government. Also, government dietary guidelines still push people
towards relatively high carb diets, and snacking is encouraged from
kindergarten and up, causing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The point
being, the nutritional situation in the US is a clusterfuck, and GMO and
organic stuff are kind of orthogonal to rectifying it.

~~~
skrebbel
> They simply can't afford fruit and meat.

Maybe this differs per area, but in most places i know, fruit is significantly
cheaper than processed snacks. I can eat 4 apples for the price of one Mars
bar.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I've been hearing similar things for a time now, like e.g. poor people eating
at McD because it's cheaper to get a caloric and macronutrient-full meal there
than to assemble it from fruits and stuffs.

This disagrees with my daily experience in Europe, so I conclude it's a US-
specific thing.

~~~
Swizec
> This disagrees with my daily experience in Europe, so I conclude it's a US-
> specific thing.

It is. Having lived in both places, it's astounding how expensive good food is
in the US and how cheap crap food can be. $1 for a single apple or for a McD
burger? Tough choice.

Add to that the fact that most of the US poor are time poor as well. Working 3
jobs and/ot commuting 3hrs per day doesn't leave a lot of time to prepare
meals.

~~~
AjithAntony
Agreed. In my midwest small town, the $1 apple isn't even the good apples.
Bananas are preposterously cheap though. I'd still rather east two double
cheeseburgers or two breakfast burritos than 5-6 bananas.

~~~
Swizec
> I'd still rather east two double cheeseburgers or two breakfast burritos
> than 5-6 bananas.

Probably healthier to eat two double cheeseburgers than 5-6 bananas too.
Bananas are really really really packed with sugar.

14 grams per 100 calories (banana) versus 7 grams per 440 calories (McDonalds
double cheeseburger).

Now whether it's healthy to eat 800 calories for breakfast ... eh, probably
not. But that's a different problem. Also depends on what you intend to do all
day. Physical labor? Eat away. Sit at desk? Maybe try a quarter of a double
cheeseburger instead :D

~~~
brucephillips
A double cheeseburger may have only 7 grams of "sugar", which is defined by
the FDA as a mono- or di-saccharide, but it has 29 grams of carbs, most of
which is white flour, which is almost as unhealthy as sugar.

~~~
Swizec
A single banana has 27 grams of carbs. Most of which is pure sugar.

So I dunno. Bananas are not the best example, great after and pre workout, not
thaaaat great as something you'd eat all the time.

------
struppi
"100-percent organic, locally sourced, non-GMO, and free of antibiotics"

Even if it does not have an effect on your health, three of those four
(100-percent organic, locally sourced, and free of antibiotics) are at least
good for the environment.

The fourth (free of antibiotics) is maybe even good for your health, in the
long run: Over-use of antibiotics by farmers (not using them to cure sick
animals, but to make animals grow faster) seems to be a big problem (creating
resistent bugs)...

Edit (after reading a comment): I left out non-GMO here because I have ready
about some evidence that - at least some GMOs - can be better for the
environment and for your health.

~~~
bpodgursky
100-percent organic is often bad for the environment because it takes more
land to grow the same food.

It often takes more energy to grow food locally (greenhouses and fertilizer)
than transported food.

Antibiotic-raised foods grow faster and thus have better caloric ratios, and
less farmland per pound of beef.

~~~
jjawssd
This makes intuitive sense but I have never seen good evidence for it. I
personally do not believe that:

    
    
      - organic food is bad for the environment 
      - organic food is less space efficient to grow
    

I do believe that:

    
    
      - organic food may have lower crop yields

~~~
bpodgursky
Uh...

> \- organic food is less space efficient to grow > \- organic food may have
> lower crop yields

These are the same thing. If you have to generate X calories, and you generate
fewer per acre, then you need more acres of crop.

~~~
jjawssd
Think outside the box. Think 3D agriculture. Aeroponics.

~~~
Banthum
But if you're willing to do that for organic you're also willing to do that
for non organic.

------
Underqualified
To me eating clean means avoiding preprocessed food, the author is taking a
much more extreme view which to me feels like a straw man.

If someone is used to junk food and switches to more fruit, veggies, lean meat
and fish, I'm pretty sure they'll start noticing a difference after a little
while. I know it worked for me (n=1).

~~~
avenius
Agreed, I've always considered "clean" to mean non-preprocessed food.

n=2

~~~
pliftkl
This is the long standing definition, which has been used in the athletic
community for much longer than it has in the "wealthy yoga mom" community
described in the article.

------
loeg
This article seems to be making the implicit claim that "clean eating" refers
to eating organic products. On the other hand, I've always understood the
expression to just mean eating healthy, especially including plenty of
vegetables. Has the meaning changed or have I just always misunderstood it?

~~~
eBombzor
I was confused the same way. I think the article should replace "clean" with
"organic\non-GMO."

------
kneel
'Clean eating' is suppose to be about eating minimally processed foods. You
can eat plenty of GMO produce and mass produced meat and still eat 'clean'

------
Jeaye
The most appealing benefits of organic foods, in my household, are not to do
with our own health. Instead, we adopt the practice under the information that
organic farming is more sustainable and better for the environment. Top three
search results for "organic food better for environment."

[http://www.fao.org/organicag/oa-faq/oa-
faq6/en/](http://www.fao.org/organicag/oa-faq/oa-faq6/en/)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/is-organic-
agr...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/is-organic-agriculture-
really-better-for-the-
environment/2016/05/14/e9996dce-17be-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html)

[http://www.thechicecologist.com/green-living/food-
drink/is-o...](http://www.thechicecologist.com/green-living/food-drink/is-
organic-food-really-better-for-the-environment/)

Regarding it being a "rich [white] people thing," either way, that may very
well be, in practice. Is caring about sustainable farming and the
environmental impact of our savage resouce consumption also a rich white
people thing?

~~~
kirrent
On the other hand, if you search "organic food worse for environment" you get
results which explain why organic farming is less sustainable. Your search
results are dependent on your query so if you search "vaccination schedule bad
for children" don't be surprised when you get some highly placed anti-vax
stuff.

In any case, assuming you eat a diet typical of an organic shopper with far
less meat and more vegetables compared to the general population then organic
farming is merely as carbon intensive and uses only 40% more land. If you buy
organic but have a pretty normal diet then it's even worse. Is it a rich
person thing? Switching to organic for everyone would require massive
deforestation worldwide and probably still wouldn't get us enough arable land
so not only would the price of food go up, we'd likely be hit with large food
shortages that would probably disproportionately hit the developing world.
Yeah, it's a rich person thing. They're the people who can afford organic and
they're fine when food shortages come along.

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Nordborg/publicat...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Nordborg/publication/316871522_Carbon_footprints_and_land_use_of_conventional_and_organic_diets_in_Germany/links/59340791aca272fc553cb695/Carbon-
footprints-and-land-use-of-conventional-and-organic-diets-in-Germany.pdf)

------
Mikeb85
While the article is somewhat correct in that 'clean eating' is useless, what
the hell is up with every single US News outlet literally stirring up racial
tensions?

Back to the clean eating part - all my ancestors that I know of (grandparents,
great-grandparents) at relatively unhealthy food. Tons of butter, lard, and
carbs. True, it was natural-ish, they all grew up on a homestead, but far from
the 'clean eating' ideal.

As for the racial tensions, WTF? Does every single article in every single
outlet have to bring it up? All this does is make it worse in my experience.

~~~
Banthum
They don't want to solve the problem, they want to exploit the problem.

A lot of media/activist/political activity makes a lot more sense through this
lens.

------
jjawssd
To me "eating clean" means eating mostly vegetables by volume and mostly fat
and protein by weight. For instance typical ketogenic/paleo diet. Eating
"dirty" is theoretically doable. If one prototypical example of eating "dirty"
is having a standard supermarket cake slice or mound of cereal and milk to
fulfill daily caloric needs, then it is actually harder to maintain a "dirty"
diet. Satiety becomes an unattainable goal. We simply cannot handle the
insulin spikes well. We get hungry and cravings are more intense with such a
diet. It is essentially impractical. It may also explain why there are so many
obese in the world. "Eating clean" can be used as a marketing term to get
people to fork over huge bucks for an oversold concept. But fundamentally,
"eating clean" the way I define it is very cheap, tasty, and pragmatic.
Especially for losing weight and maintaining a low weight.

~~~
edejong
"Eating dirty is theoretically possible".

I think you mean "hypothetically", unless you have some references to
scientific research?

~~~
jjawssd
Sorry; my English is poor.

------
Toine
Clickbait title leading to poorly written article by a mid 30s man-child
wanting to justify eating Lucky Charms everyday because he left mom's house
too soon.

"Eating clean is useless" is such a terrible statement to make, especially
today. You want to eat crap, good for you, but don't try to avoid feeling bad
about it.

------
siliconc0w
I have a pet theory that food ideology is/has replaced conventional religion
for a lot of folks. There is a need to feel 'virtuous' in our daily lives and
since we gotta eat it's a convenient place to go. So we get all these strange
ideologies and dogmas which don't seem to make us much healthier physically
but maybe helps fills in some accumulated spiritual decay.

------
sapote
This article smacks of narrow-minded contrarianism for its own sake.

The cheapest thing one can do -- and healthier than the option of eating Lucky
Charms daily -- is to grow one's own food. The space requirements are actually
tiny -- it's possible to grow all of one's own veggies in something like 300
sq ft of space (in a mid-latitude region) and all one's own calories in
something like 800 sq ft of space. It's cheaper to do it without sprays too,
so you end up organic by default. I'd recommend interested folks check out ...
Grow More Vegetables ... by John Jeavons and One Circle by David Duhon for how
to do space-efficient veggie gardening.

Edited to add: I should have mentioned: I'm opposed to the fad diets that the
article is attacking as much as I am to the contrarian posture the article
takes. Growing food and eating it, and eating a variety of such homegrown
foods with a mix of other things, seems sensible to me, and it's also cheaper
than either highly-processed industrial food products or fad-oriented yuppie
foods.

~~~
Banthum
This is only a cheap option if you consider your own labor to be free.

Plus don't forget about the seasonality of the crops, the effort of
preservation, etc.

~~~
sapote
It is free. The time you spend in the garden is time you would have otherwise
spent exercising in some other form and (to a lesser extent) shopping.

~~~
saosebastiao
Im glad you've found something that works for you, but you must understand
that you have quite the unique circumstance there. There is no gardening out
there that would ever be able to replace the exercise that I do...gardening is
extremely mild cardio at best. And 300-800 sqft of sun-exposed space _per
person_ in the city where I live would undoubtedly cost an order of magnitude
more than I currently spend on food.

If it were really that easy to grow one's own food, industrialization would
have never happened.

------
sprayk
Is there a single definition of "clean"? The author has one definition which
seems based on items commonly found on labels, like "non-gmo" or "certified
organic", that gives consumers an easy way to feel good about what they are
about to eat. The commenters here, however, seem to each have their own
different idea. Is it keto? Is it organic/"chemical-free"? Can someone point
me to one single definition of "clean" eating that isn't just what you feel is
"clean"?

If there is, how does it line up with the author's definition? How does the
actual definition fit with the content of the article?

If there isn't one definition, I'm sort of with the author on this one.
"Clean" is whatever labels the consumers use to feel superior through what
they are eating.

------
mc32
I eat organic fruit and vegetables mostly to avoid synthetic chemicals, and
because you have more heirloom varieties which can offer better taste, but I'm
not a vegetarian, so I'm okay with the blood meal and bone meal that goes into
the product.

~~~
qyv
What is the basis of the idea that organic pesticides and herbicides are
safer/better than synthetic ones?

------
usharf
In respect to value, at least, bio/organic (real, not just misleading
labeling) is suppose to be free of pesticides, and that's actually a good
thing... I'm sure.

Regardless, I don't think even the WHO suggests there's a preference to
organic food, but clearly indicates the danger of food contaminated with
pesticides.

Even if most pesticides are now forbidden in most developed countries, we can
see that in the USA legislation and regulation is being again "relaxed", which
is not a good thing.

------
svaha1728
"And for 30 years I've somehow not only survived but thrived. "

At 30 years of age, your habits haven't caught up to you yet. A 30-year-old
smoker could make the same claim.

------
Qantourisc
Possible problems with GMO: \- Harder to digest proteins \- Possible new
allergies for some people (because if slightly different proteins, or mixes
from other plants) \- Plants with build in pesticide \- Patents \- Plant
monoculture \- Plants that grow faster and are cheaper, but not optimized for
taste.

Is the above list inherit to GMO's: no. Do I know if the GMO I am eating is
suffering from this: no. As such until I get detailed information about your
GMO, I prefer to avoid it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Wait, you listed some hypotheticals, said they don't necessarily apply, and
still concluded they do?

But what do I know. I'm a food contrarian - if I see two items, one labeled
"no GMO" and one without such label, I pick the latter...

~~~
brucephillips
> and still concluded they do?

When did they do this?

~~~
TeMPOraL
The way I read that comment was:

\- [list of possible problems with GMOs]

\- Are they inherent to GMOs? No.

\- Do I know if a given GMO has them? No.

\- Conclusion: I will avoid GMOs.

------
nunez
Finally. So true. "Eating clean" is probably one of the best marketing
campaigns in history; billions of dollars spent on products that make you feel
healthier, but in reality, don't amount to shit.

It's all about calories in, calories out and macronutrient composition (carbs,
fats, proteins). That's literally it.*

* Unless you seriously train for a sport, in which case the little stuff (eating time, micronutrients, # of meals, etc) matter.

------
yellowapple
I never understood the hate toward GMOs themselves, considering that genetic
modification is practically the definition of agriculture as it's existed for
thousands of years. Granted, we relied on artificial selection instead of,
say, CRISPR, but still.

I do understand the hate toward companies like Monsanto, however. Hating all
GMOs because of some unethical company peddling them seems heavy-handed and
broad-stroked to me, though.

~~~
kirrent
I'm always interested in people's perceptions of Monsanto considering that to
me they seem like an entirely pedestrian and boring GM crops company with a
couple of cool products. Perhaps you could explain why you dislike them and
think they're unethical?

~~~
yellowapple
I don't like their intellectual property policies. Suing small farmers because
their crops were inadvertently exposed to patent-encumbered Monsanto pollen
is, suffice it to say, a dick move.

Monsanto is basically to agriculture as Oracle is to IT.

~~~
kirrent
Perhaps you could link me to an example where that happened? Probably the most
famous cases of Monsanto suing farmers were Bowman v. Monsanto and Monsanto v.
Schmeiser. In both cases the infringement was entirely purposeful.

Schmesier's case is one where the seeds were initially blown onto his property
so that may be what you're referring to. From Wikipedia:

As established in the original Federal Court trial decision, Percy Schmeiser,
a canola breeder and grower in Bruno, Saskatchewan, first discovered Roundup-
resistant canola in his crops in 1997. He had used Roundup herbicide to clear
weeds around power poles and in ditches adjacent to a public road running
beside one of his fields, and noticed that some of the canola which had been
sprayed had survived. Schmeiser then performed a test by applying Roundup to
an additional 3 acres (12,000 m2) to 4 acres (16,000 m2) of the same field. He
found that 60% of the canola plants survived. At harvest time, Schmeiser
instructed a farmhand to harvest the test field. That seed was stored
separately from the rest of the harvest, and used the next year to seed
approximately 1,000 acres (4 km²) of canola.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_plaint...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_plaintiff)

~~~
yellowapple
Sorry, mixed up seeds with pollen.

Regardless, to me that's a distinction without a difference. Suing a farmer
because he used seeds that blew into his property is still a dick move. Too
bad the Canadian courts don't seem to agree (though considering that the
Supreme Court decision was a 5-4 split, I'd argue that the legality of
contaminating someone's field with genetically-modified seeds and then suing
farmers for using those seeds or the products thereof is still very
contestable, and for good reason).

------
smegel
Link doesn't work in Australia. Just get redirected to
[https://www.vice.com/en_au](https://www.vice.com/en_au).

Yet this works: [https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/d385ak/eating-clean-is-
us...](https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/d385ak/eating-clean-is-useless)

------
coconut_crab
I thought the article was talking about eating food contaminated with dirt
reading its title. Which I happen to agree with, small doses of bacteria do
wonder for my immune system. It turned out to be an article of counterargument
against antiGMO and organic food though.

------
ithought
The best evidence for eating healthy are girls who do yoga.

------
x40r15x
I am sorry but GMO is actually bad for you.... Monsanto tried to spread gmo
corn in France, they tested it on rats for a year and the rats developed
multiple tumors the size of an egg.

~~~
WatchDog
I assume you are referring to this article[1]? Looks like there were numerous
issues with it and it was retracted by the journal it was published in.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair)

------
gpsx
I think the author researched this article after selecting his position rather
than vice versa. He keeps claiming health benefits have not been shown to be
true. He goes so far as to say: "...organic produce tends to have more
antioxidants—but those differences haven't been shown to improve health
outcomes." Maybe, but I'm pretty sure they do. In my experience being around a
good number of athletic people, the ones who look really good, as in others do
double takes or give gratuitous compliments, are not the ones work out the
most but instead the ones who eat the best.

