What is Clean Eating?

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of My Unhealthy Podcast, a show that talks about health and wellness beyond just diet and fitness. On this show, we try to look at what is unhealthy in terms of habits and lifestyles and figure out ways to transform them into healthy ones. So, as I mentioned on my last show, and if you haven't gone to listen to that, I give you guys a quick update, but I mentioned a concept that I wanted to talk more in depth about called clean eating. 

So, I got my thoughts together. I have everything down here on note, so we're going to go over that. But before we do that, I want to give you guys just a couple of other updates.

(1:04 - 2:36)
One, I mentioned that I had been asked about my pizza that Diana Feinstein had talked about getting me and I want to let you know that, yep, I got the pizza recipe and it's actually a two-part deal because there is the recipe for the cauliflower margarita pizza and that calls for a pizza crust that you have to make. So, there's a cauliflower pizza crust where you take the ingredients of cauliflower, mozzarella cheese, blah, blah, blah, and you make your own crust. Well, I talked to the wife, Kim, about that and apparently that's a process and probably a process I don't want to try on my own. 

So, she is going to be looking for a cauliflower pizza crust that's already done. So, we're going to start there, but then the rest of the pizza itself we will do. So, I just wanted to let you know that, yes, we did get that and I am going to try that and after I do, I will be setting up a future podcast with Diana and we'll talk about it and give her a grade as to how well the pizza is.

(2:38 - 3:22)
Second thing is I ended up talking to my good friend Sherry Mills about a whole bunch of stuff and also some upcoming things. She's got a program that she's going to be running. If you go to my Facebook group, you'll see where you can go sign up for that. 

I've also sent out an email to people on my mailing list and if you want to get on the mailing list, just head over to unhealthypodcast.com and sign up and it's not a full-blown newsletter list. It's not a spammy list. I rarely send stuff out, but I every now and then will send out, you know, important things and keep you guys up to date on what's happening in the community.

(3:23 - 6:04)
So, when I was talking to Sherry, I had reviewed with her an app that I was using and I decided I'm going to do a separate episode on this later, but I wanted to give you guys a little heads up and get any input from you if you have stuff that you want to add to it. I had on the Diana show talked about the MyFitnessPal app and how I was not really using it, but then I came across another app that was based off of a look for the dirty dozen. I had heard about the dirty dozen talked about on another show and the dirty dozen was put out by a group called EWG and EWG has an app called the EWG Healthy Living. 

So, I had downloaded this app and started researching it. So, the EWG is the Environmental Working Group. It is a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is to empower people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. 

So, we were talking about that because basically the app allows you to scan barcodes while you're shopping and it would give you a health code about the food. So, it's kind of like a scoring thing and the food scores are based on nutrition, ingredient concerns, and processing. However, while I was talking to Sherry, it seemed as though she had some other apps that were a lot easier to use. 

So, the EWG app, I will say this, not a lot of foods get good scores. So, I had to do some more research on that. I do have a couple of apps. 

I'm going to share that on a later show, but if you have an app that you have been using that is better than the two that I've mentioned, the MyFitnessPal and the EWG Healthier Living, let me know and see if they make the list here and we'll talk about them there. So, food apps. And again, the concept is going to be based on what I'm talking about today, a concept called clean eating. 

And this was something I had heard on another show. They weren't even talking about food. They were talking about minimalism and simplicity.

(6:05 - 8:38)
And a lady had brought up the term of clean eating and she was using that as a method to clean out the fridge and the cupboards and only keep healthy stuff and blah, blah, blah. So, that was a whole thing there. So, I thought, let me see what this clean eating is. 

And I've kind of started to look more at it from, can I do this? And of course, the first thing we need to understand is what is clean eating? And in some people's eyes, it's another diet trend, but at its core, clean eating refers to eating whole, unprocessed foods and avoiding the processed prepackaged foods that have artificial ingredients and additives. Now, technically, there's no official definition of what clean eating is, but that's what it is at its core. And again, avoiding artificial ingredients, preservatives, refined sugars, all that stuff. 

And the goal is to eat nutrient-dense foods that are close to their natural form as possible. Now, you've heard the concept of, in order to eat healthy, you really should be eating on the outside of the grocery store, things that you're not going to find in a box, but you're going to find in its packaging, whether it's the fruits and vegetables, whether it's the meats and all of that stuff, you're usually not going to find those in a box. So there are some extreme versions of clean eating, which talk about cutting out entire food groups like dairy, grains, gluten, anything that is considered unnatural or processed in any way. 

And of course, that leads to demonizing certain food groups, which I'm not going to do that. Now, we have to understand that there technically is no scientific evidence that completely eliminating food groups or only eating pure food groups offer significant health benefits over a balanced diet with a variety of whole and minimally processed foods. That's kind of what I was doing when I was going through and looking at all my stuff.

(8:40 - 9:47)
It's weird because, of course, there are thousands of people out there. If you go look at YouTube or look at the blogs or hear podcasts, there are going to be tons of people that all they're going to do is say, you know, eat these 10, avoid these 10, do all of this stuff. But I think that what I'm going to come at it from, the standpoint that I'm going to come at it from is, I'm not going to go extreme to any degree on this. 

I'm going to do what I think is reasonable with foods that, first of all, I understand, I can pronounce, and I can know what the ingredients are. So obviously, some of this is going to sound like any other diet plan where it's going to talk about loading up on fruits and vegetables, choosing lean proteins, chicken, fish, eggs, lean cuts of meat, eating healthy fats from nuts and seeds, avocados, olive oil. It's kind of where I kind of start to hit their gray area.

(9:49 - 11:59)
Complex carbs like whole grains instead of refined grains. The favorite that we always look to avoiding, sugars, sodium, and unhealthy fats. And then, of course, things like drinking lots of water, unsweetened tea instead of the sugary beverages. 

And like I said on my last podcast, I basically have gotten rid of sodas. Now, not 100%. Every now and then, I'll have a small soda on the weekend, or if I'm out and about, but as my daily routine, soda's out. 

Let's see here on the notes here, the benefits of clean eating. So one of the things that I looked at as to why I should consider this is some of the benefits that they talk about is better digestion, improved mood, weight management, reduced risk of chronic diseases. And they talk about the fact that clean eating is like giving your body a great unhealthy hug. 

And to some degree, when I go through all of this, it sounds like it could be a lot of work. But from the things that I've been looking at, it really isn't. If you're cooking your food at home already, it's just a matter of changing the ingredients. 

If you're looking for things to do that are simple and delicious, some of the things talking about is just doing a big salad with grilled chicken, avocado, a nice little balsamic dressing, doing a veggie stir fry, doing it over brown rice instead of white rice. For dinner, things like baked salmon with roasted sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, turkey chili made with lean ground turkey. So in a sense, it really isn't too much of a change.

(11:59 - 13:00)
It's just, again, changing the ingredients so that you're not using stuff out of a box and you're using the lean, protein-rich meats. And when it comes to snacks, you know, fresh fruit, veggies, hummus, homemade trail mix, and so on and so on. So I will do more talking about this in later shows. 

And of course, some of this is going to come up in the discussion of the apps that we're going to be talking about in an episode, probably the next episode. So that's it. Just wanted to talk real quick about clean eating and talk about how we're doing it. 

I'm doing it. My family's not doing it. I'm the one. 

But that's it, folks. Thank you for listening. Again, send me information, questions, comments, and let me know what you're going to be doing to live healthy and be happy. 

See you next time. Holla!