A Healthy You: The Clean Eating Diet - What Does it Mean?

By Cindy Gates

The term "Clean Eating” is suddenly everywhere these days, but exactly what does it mean?Everyone seems to have a different flare of what a clean diet should be. The basic idea of clean eating is to eat the healthiest and best options you can, by staying away from junk and processed foods, artificial sweeteners, additives,food dyes, and preservatives, to name a few examples.Clean eating may mean buying organic, knowing where your food comes from, or buying local and eating whole foods. Whole foods are foods that haven’t been tampered with, such as whole fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, organic free range meats and seeds and nuts.Processed foods are anything that has a label on it. A label means that more than one ingredient was used to make that food. You don’t need to eliminate all foods with a label, but a good rule is to avoid foods with more than 5 ingredients, and if you can’t pronounce the ingredient, then don’t buy it.Preservatives are in food to help them have a longer shelf life and we are finding out that our bodies are having a hard time breaking down foods high in preservatives. Try to eliminate refined sugar. Sugar provides nothing but calories so has very little place in a clean eating plan.So clean eating is more than washing the dirt off your fruits and veggies-it’s about feeling more energetic, being healthier and being good to the environment.The Environmental Working Group has a guide to help shoppers buy make better informed choices when picking out fruits and veggies.The Dirty Dozen are the ones that you should try to buy organic if you can. The dirty dozen has higher amounts of pesticides and they include: apples, celery, cherries, tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, hot peppers, imported nectarines, peaches, potatoes, spinach, strawberries and sweet bell peppers.The Clean Fifteen has less pesticides and you don’t necessarily need to buy organic. This group includes: asparagus, avocado, cabbage, cantaloupe, corn, eggplant, grapefruit, kiwi, mangos, mushrooms, onions, papayas, pineapples, frozen sweet peas and sweet potatoes. A Healthy You is a regular column about nutrition, healthy living and cancer care. It is written by Cindy Gates, RD and LD and the Cancer Center’s Oncology dietitian, herbalist and Certified Wellness Coach.