Clean Eating

Can we improve our health by what we eat? Can we clean our body by what we eat?

Is Clean Eating another hyped diet fad with claims that don’t stand scrutiny?

Giles Yeo investigates the claims for a Horizon BBC documentary .

Clean Eating http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p…#diet #health #CleanEating #food

— Keith Parkins (@keithpp.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T23:24:45.717Z

Clean Eating #diet #health #CleanEating #foodwww.dailymotion.com/video/x8kuta5

— Keith Parkins (@keithpp.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T23:33:34.408Z

Hashtag #ckeaneating on Instagram, 47.3 million posts.

Bone broth aka stock. Nutritionous, excellent if under the weather, or to add to risotto.

Gluten free, yes if have genetic abnormality. A couple of a percent maybe gluten intolerant. A health benefit, gluten free? No.

A randomised clinical trial found that the problem was not gluten, it was ultra-processed food.

Look at the long list of ingredients for sliced white bread.

The long slow fermentation of sourdough bread breaks down the gluten (not zero gluten). Those with gluten intolerance can eat sourdough bread (but equally could be because not ultra-processed food).

Archeological sites show we have been eating grains for thousands of years. Long enough to have adapted.

Alkaline diet the realm of the loonies. Consume only alkaline foods to maintain the body in an alkaline state. Two problems. The body self-regulates, and that includes pH, which varies in various parts of the body according to function. The highly prescriptive regime of what to eat, includes acidic foods (work that one out).

Protein is protein is protein. It is broken down into amino acids, basic building blocks.

The worry is the influence of Instagram and now TikTok. People posting garbage, which gets regurgitated by failing Reach Group.

Every day, failing Reach Group, regurgitates nutritional click bait posted on Instagram.

I am bombarded with crap on social media, that is in addition to the click bait nutritional advice pumped out by failing Reach Group . 

High protein zero sugar cereals, protein powders, adulterated coffee with unproven health claims.

The average person on a varied diet consumes more than sufficient protein. Excess protein is not stored. It passes through or is converted to sugars and fat.

Coffee is healthy

• high in polyphenols
• high in fibre

An excellent documentary highlighting dodgy diet fads and ibuprofen health benefits.

Giles Yeo is a professor at Cambridge University looking at the genetics of obesity,  auhor of Calories Don’t Count.

Improve your health by eating 30 different plants a week (Five a Day dated): fruit, vegetables, seeds, pulses, legumes, herbs, spices, fungi. Also fermented foods: yoghurt, kefir, saukraut, kimchi, kombucha. Also dark chocolate and coffee.

What we eat matters

Counting calories does not work.

We can see different foods, each labeled 100 calories. But what we extract, will depend on the food, even the same food if processed differently.

100 calories a portion of chips. If we double the portion size, we will obtain double the calories, but it may not be 200 calories.

If we eat sweetcorn as corn on the cob, or sweetcorn milled into cornflour, we will extract more calories from the 🌽 cornflour.

A steak turned into mince, we will extract more calories from the mince, than we would have from eating the steak.

Counting calories tells us nothing of the nutritional value of the food we are eating.

We have all been there. We finish our meal, not  a mouthful more, we push our plate to one side, we are full, we are satiated. Then the waiter shows us the desserts. Somehow we have room for more, after all.

Sadly I see this all the time, overweight customers in a food supermarket with bad, really bad food choices. Do they know they are bad food choices? Or McDonald’s or KFC, tucking into junk food, washed down with a can of Coke.

Or maybe even worse, picking what is labelled healthy and believed to be healthy, a flavoured low fat yoghurt instead of a Greek yoghurt, an ultra-processed food chosen instead of the natural healthy food.

Is it a lack of willpower? Ultra-processed People devotes an entire chapter to answering that question.

Sometimes I am tempted to ask, why that choice?  I wisely hold my counsel.

The government is to blame for these bad food choices, for the promotion of ultra-processed food.

Treat ultra-processed food as tobacco.

• no promotion
• health warnings
• upf tax

From Grain of Truth Bakery I buy

• sourdough bread – healthy
• almond croissants – not healthy

Draw a graph of obesity from 1950s to today. A steady increase in obesity. A kink in the graph in the mid-1970s.  This curve is the same for different age groups, for different ethnic groups. In the 1970s the increased consumption of ultra-processed foods. In the US and  UK, for adults 60% of the diet ultra-processed food. For young adults and children 100% of their diet ultra-processed food .

In Brazil, type 2 diabetes was of academic interest only. The traditional diet beans and rice. The country flooded with ultra-processed food. Within ten years, an obesity epidemic.

https://twitter.com/keithpp/status/1886083047323541595?t=Q_GbuzcYsm0rROCrVR8r2g&s=19

Why Calories Don’t Count by Giles Yeo is a must read.