Eating Clean

As opposed to accountants and whatever it was that Chandler Bing did for a living, people are interested to hear about my career as a dietitian.  At social events, the conversation often turns to nutrition.  They want to know about what I do at work or my thoughts on what Dr. Oz said last week.  It's all fine by me, since I love to talk about my job.

A few weeks ago, at a Bastille Day party (any excuse to enjoy cheese and wine!) the topic of conversation did just that.  It started as a discussion of nutrition policy (since I was with a group of lawyers), then the dialogue moved to a more general discussion about nutrition.  As we were analyzing the benefits and pitfalls of popular diets, a friend asked if I had to chose one diet, what would it be.

If you read my philosophy of eating, then you know I'm generally not in favor of diets.  People are much too individual for one plan to work for everyone.  Each person has their own cultural and personal food preferences, schedules, and frankly, prioritize health differently.  On a biological level, whats healthy for one person may not be healthy for another.  As humans, we thrive on a variety of diets. 

Given my distaste for diets, you might assume this was a difficult question for me to answer.  But I knew right away, if I had to choose one theory of eating above all others, it's eating clean. 

Eating clean is the practice of eating a diet based on real, whole foods and avoiding processed foods.  There are no strict rules, so you can take the philosophy as far as you like.  It makes sense since it's the way humans have eaten for, well, basically all of their existence until the past 100 years. 

Eating clean isn't without it's pitfalls.  It's much more time consuming.  And although eating clean removes most unhealthy foods, there are some minimally processed foods that are perfectly healthy and could be needlessly eliminated.  So where do you draw the line between eating clean and convenience?  Below are the most important things to consider when eating clean and time saving tips.

Can you visualize where it came from in nature?

The further removed a food is from what it looks like in nature, the more processed it is.  It's easy to imagine a tomato growing on the vine or cherries hanging from a tree.  Although they are lightly processed, you could easily visualize where raisins or plain yogurt came from.  But fat free hot dogs?  Or dairy free coffee creamer?  What about cheez whiz?  Unless you're a food scientist, it's probably not coming to you so easily.  So let's leave these food-like creations on the shelf.

Check out the ingredients list.

Are all the ingredients recognizable as food?  If so, you can probably use your good sense to decide if it's healthy or not.  However, if the ingredients sound like a page ripped from your high school chemistry book, you might want to pass. 

Now, to be fair, there are some completely safe food ingredients that may have unfamiliar names, like guar gum, pectin and casein.  But I think most people (myself included) could never memorize the thousands of food ingredients then research to decide if they feel comfortable eating it or not.  So you might needlessly eliminate something healthy following the whole "if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it" rule, but I still think it's good general advice.

Clean eating or not, it's important to be aware of the most questionable ingredients.  If you missed it, here's the list of ingredients I avoid. 

Avoid diet foods.

If it sports a fat free, sugar free or light label, it may not be as healthy as it seems.  Removing fat, sugar and calories from food typically means lots of processing.  And just because a food contains fat, sugar or calories, that doesn't necessarily mean it's unhealthy.  In most cases, go for the real thing.  If you think it's not healthy, just eat a smaller amount or eat it less often.

Avoid "enriched" ingredients

Enriched is such a sneaky term.  It sounds healthy, right?  I mean, I'd like to be enriched with about a million dollars, please!  Unfortunately, the process of enrichment isn't exactly what it sounds like.  Sure, vitamins and minerals are added to a food, but it's usually because the nutrients were stripped out in the first place.  Take enriched flour for example.  The flour is "enriched" with the B-vitamins that were removed when processors removed the bran and germ.  But the fiber, trace minerals, small amounts of omega 3 fats and hundreds of antioxidants and phytonutrients are still missing!  In the end, it's a net loss of nutrition rather than a gain.

Plan meals in advance

Clean eating is delicious and healthy.  Convenient however, it is not.  Eating clean means spending more time in the kitchen and there's no way around it.  However, if you practice good meal planning and do a little bit of advance preparation, you'll find it's easy to minimize time in the kitchen to an amount that works for you.

DIY it

Some convenience foods are so easy to replicate at home, it's just silly to waste money on the convenience version!  Below are my favorite quick DIY tricks.
- Instead of buying flavored rice, cook plain brown rice in broth and add 1-2 teaspoons of your favorite spice mix.   
- Make your own pizza dough.  My recipe takes just minutes to put together and requires no kneading!  Just mix, place in a warm spot and wait.  The recipe I linked to makes 2 large pizzas, so freeze the other ball and use it later. 
- Okay, so this is an obvious one, but I feel the need to post it since so many people still eat those horrid sandwich crackers and actually think they are healthy!  Just get a good whole grain cracker, like Wasa or Ryvita and sandwich it with an ounce of cheese or natural peanut butter.
- When you make a batch of soup or chili, prepare double the amount and freeze extra portions in individual containers.  It's just as convenient to heat up frozen soup as it is to open up a can!
- Trail mix can be crazy high in added sugar.  Mix together bags of unsweetened, whole grain cereal, nuts, unsweetened dried fruit...and maybe a little dark chocolate if you like!
- A few months ago, I posted on DIY flavored yogurt, microwave popcorn and instant oatmeal, all of which take just minutes to put together!