Do we need to eat cleaner? Clearing up the confusion (September 2025)

By Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN

Clean eating has been a full-fledged trend for almost 20 years, emerging in the women’s bodybuilding world before expanding into nutrition and wellness spaces, despite the lack of an official “clean eating” definition or diet. 

One person might define clean eating as trying to eat more nutrient-dense “whole” foods while limiting foods high in added sugar and sodium, which may also mean cooking more at home and prioritizing organic and local produce. Another person might strictly avoid foods with ingredients they don’t recognize or can’t pronounce, cut out entire food groups and refuse to eat any non-organic foods.

The belief that underlies the idea of clean eating is that it promotes health and prevents disease. But does it? For some “clean eaters,” there’s a moralism and rigidity about their food choices. Not only can this lead to disordered eating, but it contributes to shaming of food choices of people who don’t want to—or can’t afford to—“eat clean.” 

It’s one thing to aim to eat more whole and minimally processed foods, another to fear ingredients that have been shown to be safe. Unfortunately, what makes a food be deemed “clean” usually has more to do with marketing or social media rhetoric than how nutritious or processed it is. Messages such as “don’t eat ingredients you can’t pronounce” not only taps into safety fears, but imply that if food isn’t clean, it’s dirty, or that if it’s not chemical-free, it’s chemical-laden. The truth is that foods aren’t that black or white. 

In a 2016 viewpoint in the British Medical Journal, “Clean eating and the cult of healthism,” physician Margaret McCartney wrote, “The command to eat cleanly implies that everyone else is filthy, being careless with their bodies and lives.”

In some cases, clean eating, especially in its more rigid forms, can become less of a diet than an identity, crossing the line from, “The food I eat is clean” to “I am clean.” Eating a “dirty” food can lead to feelings of shame and fears that they have harmed their health through the simple act of eating food, and may make them feel that they themselves are impure or dirty. In susceptible people, the ideal of a clean and pure diet could even lead to orthorexia, a form of disordered eating typically defined as “an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating,” or possibly to a clinical eating disorder.

Not surprisingly, the National Eating Disorder Association says the clean eating trend may be associated with orthorexia nervosa—an unhealthy preoccupation with healthy eating that, while not currently an “official” eating disorder, has overlap with behaviors seen with restrictive eating disorders such as anorexia.

Clean eating can be a genuine way to eat a nutritious diet based on fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains, with healthy fats and either plant- or animal-based protein food for balance—while reducing sugar and ultra-processed foods.

However, for some people who adopt clean eating, the desire for perfect health and the pursuit of a perfect diet takes on a greater urgency, leading to a rigid diet that bans several foods or food components, including sugar, grains—especially gluten-containing grains—soy, pulses, meat and dairy. 

In many cases, this is encouraged by wellness bloggers and celebrities who have no nutrition qualifications or evidence to back up some of their promises, which often include claims that their version of clean eating will change your life or cure your health issues. In reality, rigid diets can lead to nutrient deficiencies if food choices become very limited.

The bottom line is that improving the nutritional quality of your diet should broaden your food world, not shrink it. Aiming to eat more fruits and vegetables can improve nutrition, and supporting local farmers may help you feel more connected to food—but attaching a label or a name to how you eat and not allowing yourself flexibility in your diet doesn’t make a good thing better.

References:

The Dirt on Clean Eating: A Cross Sectional Analysis of Dietary Intake, Restrained Eating and Opinions about Clean Eating among Women: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6164197/

When clean eating goes dirty: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(18)30277-2/fulltext

Clean eating and the cult of healthism: https://www.bmj.com/content/354/bmj.i4095

Orthorexia: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/learn/by-eating-disorder/other/orthorexia