Clean Eating: A Dangerous Trend?
“Food becomes the source of evil, but also our salvation: it enables us to feel more in control, to tell ourselves if we only eat these things, not other things, we won’t die.”
Clean Eating is a mainstream phenomenon that has over 23,894,748 posts on Instagram under the tag ‘clean eating’. A trend completely different to the standard healthy eating, that has recently exploded and is becoming increasingly popular due to its endorsement by some of the most influential lifestyle bloggers appears at first to be completely harmless. However, could this new trend have an uglier truth? Simply put, it appears so. Clean eating can prove to be extremely dangerous both mentally and physically. Today, social media sites …show more content…
Often social media bloggers who promote this trend are influential members of society with an online following of hundreds and thousands meaning that they have a huge influence and they can easily make an impression on a large group of people especially young, vulnerable teenagers who are already under the constant pressure of ‘looking good’. However, these so called ‘famous’ bloggers that are constantly glamourizing the clean eating trend have virtually no medical knowledge meaning they are most definitely not qualified to sell the so called greatness of this trend. It seems that they are brain washing their followers with information with no scientific proof. Essentially to famous bloggers, clean eating has become a business rather than something helpful, with the wellness industry estimated to be worth £2,000,000,000,000 globally. Ella Woodward is an example of a persuasive advertisement for the clean eating brigade. Her blog ‘deliciously Ella’ has around 5 million hits monthly, and her book was the fastest selling debut cookbook on record . These figures clearly state her success. However, graduating from the university of St Andrews with a degree in history proves that she has no real background on what she now makes an …show more content…
So just why do we follow medically inaccurate advice? Despite the minor occasions in which good advice is given by these bloggers, they are masked by the vast inaccuracies and pseudoscience. Clean eating is overwhelmed by medical myths. First of all, clean eating is claimed to purify and detox the body, however the function of the liver is to detoxify the body, meaning a diet is not needed for this, and as long as you have a functioning liver your body will detoxify itself. Natasha Corret, owner of Honestly Healthy and wellness blogger, promotes and evangelises the Alkaline Diet; a diet based around the idea that the foods you eat can alter the acidity or alkalinity (the pH value) of your body. However, there is no credible scientific evidence to support this theory at all as in fact it is not our diet that affects the pH of our bodies, instead according to Tanis Fenton, PhD, adjunct assistant professor of community health services at the University of Calgary states “Our lungs and kidneys are constantly regulating our pH.” With medical evidence proving these wellness bloggers wrong, it seems unthinkable that we even consider to follow this clean eating trend.
Instead of focusing on the extremism of clean eating , we should listen to our own bodies. We should not be being consumed by a trend that is of a danger to our bodies
“Food becomes the source of evil, but also our salvation: it enables us to feel more in control, to tell ourselves if we only eat these things, not other things, we won’t die.”
Clean Eating is a mainstream phenomenon that has over 23,894,748 posts on Instagram under the tag ‘clean eating’. A trend completely different to the standard healthy eating, that has recently exploded and is becoming increasingly popular due to its endorsement by some of the most influential lifestyle bloggers appears at first to be completely harmless. However, could this new trend have an uglier truth? Simply put, it appears so. Clean eating can prove to be extremely dangerous both mentally and physically. Today, social media sites …show more content…
Often social media bloggers who promote this trend are influential members of society with an online following of hundreds and thousands meaning that they have a huge influence and they can easily make an impression on a large group of people especially young, vulnerable teenagers who are already under the constant pressure of ‘looking good’. However, these so called ‘famous’ bloggers that are constantly glamourizing the clean eating trend have virtually no medical knowledge meaning they are most definitely not qualified to sell the so called greatness of this trend. It seems that they are brain washing their followers with information with no scientific proof. Essentially to famous bloggers, clean eating has become a business rather than something helpful, with the wellness industry estimated to be worth £2,000,000,000,000 globally. Ella Woodward is an example of a persuasive advertisement for the clean eating brigade. Her blog ‘deliciously Ella’ has around 5 million hits monthly, and her book was the fastest selling debut cookbook on record . These figures clearly state her success. However, graduating from the university of St Andrews with a degree in history proves that she has no real background on what she now makes an …show more content…
So just why do we follow medically inaccurate advice? Despite the minor occasions in which good advice is given by these bloggers, they are masked by the vast inaccuracies and pseudoscience. Clean eating is overwhelmed by medical myths. First of all, clean eating is claimed to purify and detox the body, however the function of the liver is to detoxify the body, meaning a diet is not needed for this, and as long as you have a functioning liver your body will detoxify itself. Natasha Corret, owner of Honestly Healthy and wellness blogger, promotes and evangelises the Alkaline Diet; a diet based around the idea that the foods you eat can alter the acidity or alkalinity (the pH value) of your body. However, there is no credible scientific evidence to support this theory at all as in fact it is not our diet that affects the pH of our bodies, instead according to Tanis Fenton, PhD, adjunct assistant professor of community health services at the University of Calgary states “Our lungs and kidneys are constantly regulating our pH.” With medical evidence proving these wellness bloggers wrong, it seems unthinkable that we even consider to follow this clean eating trend.
Instead of focusing on the extremism of clean eating , we should listen to our own bodies. We should not be being consumed by a trend that is of a danger to our bodies