What is Clean Eating?
Clean eating is not so much about calorie counting, but more about looking at the process of your food from paddock to plate.
Huh? Well think about it, how processed are your foods today? There are many foods we eat without even thinking about how far removed they are from their original form, or what has been added that has been created in a lab.
People are eating more junk food than ever and our waistlines are paying for it.
Source: Dr. Stephan Guyenet. Fast Food, Weight Gain and Insulin Resistance.Whole Health Source.
It’s time to get back to eating real whole natural foods, which are as little processed as possible.
This suggestion is one of the best ways to steer clear of lifestyle diseases, reduce our waistlines and improve our overall health and longevity.
Here are some tips and guidelines to clean eating:
Eat whole, natural foods
Make sure the foods you eat, are as close to their natural form as possible. For example eating whole fruit instead of dried fruit or fruit juices (both highly concentrated in natural sugar, even without added sugar and the rest).
Eating natural fruit and vegetables, which have an abundance of vitamins and mineral, can vastly improve your health. Eat meats and healthy fats consuming enough protein to maintain your muscles and enough fat to support your vital systems.
Cut out all packaged foods, processed foods and sugar
Again foods, which aren’t what we naturally eat, become a problem for our health when we consume them. When foods are processed and have added sugar, they contribute to our ever-expanding waistlines and lifestyle diseases.
Also avoid foods with additives such as added colours, flavours or preservatives as these can be pretty detrimental to your health and wreak havoc on your body. Your body just doesn’t know how to handle these foreign bodies.
Finally, the chemical processes foods, such as vegetable oils and trans fats, go through to reach their processed state, can be very harmful to our bodies. A good tip is, the more ingredients it has on the label the worse it’ll be for your heath.
Eat organic, free range, grass fed ethical foods where possible
The treatment of the animals you eat, and what they eat, has a vast effect on their health, and therefore your health. Stressed animals fed an unnatural diet, of usually corn or grain, injected with hormones to grow and antibiotics because of the unsanitary conditions they live in, creates produce which has adverse effects on our health.
Furthermore, produce which is grown via high usage of pesticides can be equally damaging thus organic is the way to go.
Where you can spare the change to shop this way, do so for your health, the ethical treatment of animals, and sustainability of the environment.
When you buy take out, eat from packaging or cook with premade sauces and condiments, you don’t really know what you are cooking with. Have a look at the premade bolognaise sauce you use. How much added sugar, preservatives, flavours and colours does it have? Any trans fats or vegetable oils?
What to eat clean? Cook from scratch using fresh produce.
Once you’re used to cooking this way it’s really not such a big effort. There are super easy recipes that you can follow which taste great and don’t take a huge amount of time. It’s more about habit.
So if you’re looking to feel better and trim down, clean eating may be a great way to do it.