The Impact Trends Have On Our Life
We live in an era where our lives are more or less dominated by the trends going around us. It has become more about what’s in and what’s not. From our clothes to the music we listen to, everything has to be up to date and in sync with the latest trend around the corner. You can call it peer pressure or one’s desire to be a part of the larger ‘cooler’ crowd or the maddening influence of social media, but all fall prey to these ‘uber cool’ trends in one way or the other. The latest fad is about food, the ideas of healthy and clean eating. Instagram, these days, is flooded with pictures of all vegan, supposedly organic and healthy looking food pictures. Every second person is posting and talking about guacamole on the multi-grain toast breakfast and their quinoa bowl lunch.
All About Clean Eating
Clean eating is a trend which focuses on avoiding processed food and consuming raw, unrefined produce. Some versions of clean eating are vegan but there are others that include meats (preferably wild or the ones raised in a clean and healthy environment). The core definition that most of the people who follow and propagate the idea is choosing whole food in its natural form as it comes from nature but there are different interpretations of the idea that people have come up with. Diets like Paleo, dairy free, grain- or gluten-free are just some of it. The idea behind this diet plan stems from the belief that the food that we usually consume, i.e. the processed food, is unhealthy and is one of the major causes of modern day health issues. In the recent times, health has become one of the most important concerns of the masses, everybody goes to the gym, everybody wants to get into the fit and flexible club. The question however is, is this new hip and supposedly good diet actually helping us get fit or is it just a passing rave that promises better health but does not deliver it.
Is It Actually Helping Us Or Is It Making Us Weak?
When we first hear of the concept of clean eating the first thing that comes to our mind is how can it ever go bad. I mean what is wrong with eating unadulterated organic food? How can it not be healthy? If I were you, I would also agree that clean eating is great and would also try it out myself, i.e. if I wasn’t so in love with my processed pizza with processed cheese. We have always been told by doctors, by health magazines and by our own elders that fruits and veggies are good for health. What is not told to us is the fact that even these fruits and veggies in excess can cause great trouble. It might come as surprise to most of you, as it was for me, but then it is true, your carrot and kale can also cause you a great deal of trouble.
Not Exactly What You Expect
Doctors and scientists from across the world have come up and spoken about the toxic effects of the ‘clean eating’ trend. There have been multiple reported events of people developing serious eating disorders as a result of following this restricted and supposedly healthy diet plan. “At best, clean eating is nonsense dressed up as health advice. At worst, it is embraced by those with underlying psychological difficulties and used to justify an increasingly restrictive diet — with potentially life-threatening results,” says Dr Max Pemberton (an eminent British doctor, journalist and author) in one of his interviews. If reports are to be believed, this diet drains the body of the necessary nutrients and leaves the body without any energy to function. The effects of the diet don’t stop at the physical level, this diet can also lead to depression due to the lack of glucose in the body. This diet is followed by binge eating to regain energy can cause vomiting tendency. Repeated vomiting leads to lack of electrolytes in the body and can lead to heart attack.
These diets are also problematic as they shame other ways of eating. This diet usually finds its followers in young men and women who are unhappy with their bodies and are promised a better shape by the propagators of this diet. A few people have come up with this diet plan as being body shaming.
These diets are usually propagated by self-proclaimed social media celebrities without any research and analysis, their only premise is their own experience and things that worked for them. A lot of people who have followed the diet extensively for years are now coming out and talking about the ill effects that the diet has had on their bodies. Jordan Younger, an Instagram sensation with a following of 196k, is one of the many people who followed and propagated the diet in the past, but is now choosing a more balanced lifestyle instead of the much-hyped ‘clean diet’. She followed a strict gluten-free, sugar-free, oil-free, grain-free, legume-free, plant-based raw vegan diet which lead to loss of hair in clumps. When she chose to go back to a regular diet she had to face the backlash of thousands of people for leading them on to this diet.
It might also come to you as a surprise that this entire hoax now has become a multi-million dollar industry. New diet plans, vegan cookbooks and supposedly organic yield has become the hot cake of the town. Everyone is into superfood like kale and beet. There is no problem in eating healthy and organic food, but an excess of anything is a problem. Even proteins in excess can cause fatal problems.
What We Really Need
What we really need is a food culture where people eat what they like eating and not what they are forced to eat. A balanced diet is enough to keep us healthy. One need not starve to be fit. Besides this, we also need to fight the notion that fit means slim. A fit body comes in every size and we must not put forward unreal body standards for others. It is possible that there is someone who is a vegan and has a very fit and flexible body but then, there also are a million others who eat whatever they want to and are equally fit. We also need more research and awareness in the field of wellness and health, it is high time that our food habits are inspired by real nutritionists and doctors rather than self-proclaimed fitness gurus.
