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Eating Clean is Useless

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Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#101

Post by pliftkl »

avenius wrote: post #94
Underqualified wrote: post #51

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).

Agreed, I've always considered "clean" to mean non-preprocessed food. n=2

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.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#102

Post by ice109 »

fuwafuwa wrote: post #36

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 t…

this kind of thinking is just another iteration of self-serving anti-intellectualism (akin to climate change denial and anti-vaxxing). there is absolutely hard exercise science you can read in order to exercise more effectively than "stretching" (an activity whose value has never been empirically proven) and "body-weight" exercises (slightly more effective than nothing but pales in comparison to real weight training and cardio). protein supplementing does work[1], creatine does work[2], caffeine+ephedrine does work[3] (though you can't buy that anymore). the hard science is in exactly the same place it always is: research journals. for starters I always recommended exrx.net.

[1] http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/96/6/1454.short

[2] https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-4...

[3] http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/1318281

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#103

Post by bryanlarsen »

azinman2 wrote: post #66
pmiller2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organic is definitely not better for the environment than non-organic, by default: >Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry. Canadian scientists pitted 'reduced-risk' organic and synthetic pesticides against each other in controlling a problematic pest, the soybean aphid. They found that not only were the synthetic pesticides m…

Non-organic farming typically involves a lot of petro-based fertilizers being used that deposit large run offs of nitrogen, ammonia, and other goodies that “burn” the soil and run off into streams which then causes many other issues.

Organic farming typically involves a lot of manure-based fertilizers being used that deposit large run offs of nitrogen, ammonia, potassium, E. coli and other goodies that “burn” the soil and run off into streams which then causes many other issues such as algae blooms, water poisoning, et cetera.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#104

Post by vorotato »

trabant00 wrote: post #78

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…

I think the maxim "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" whether true or not is useful here

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#105

Post by vorotato »

Swizec wrote: post #95
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 prep…

It's affected by what foods get agricultural subsidies and which ones don't.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#106

Post by 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.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#107

Post by Swizec »

brucephillips wrote: post #100
Swizec wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 differen…

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.

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.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#108

Post by jjawssd »

edejong wrote: post #24
jjawssd wrote: post #2

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…

"Eating dirty is theoretically possible". I think you mean "hypothetically", unless you have some references to scientific research?

Sorry; my English is poor.

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#109

Post by jjawssd »

bpodgursky wrote: post #45
struppi wrote: post #13

"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 an…

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.

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

Re: Eating Clean is Useless

#110

Post by bpodgursky »

jjawssd wrote: post #109
bpodgursky wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

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