Clean Eating

Clean eating is a loosely defined dietary idea centered on choosing foods perceived as natural, wholesome, minimally processed, or free from ingredients considered undesirable. It is not a standardized scientific diet, medical diagnosis, or regulated nutrition term. Research shows that people use the label in different ways, so two diets both described as clean eating may differ substantially in which foods they include or exclude .¹

Some versions resemble conventional advice to emphasize minimally processed foods, but the label can also attach moral value to foods by dividing them into clean and unclean categories. Because there is no agreed scientific definition, the healthfulness of a clean-eating pattern depends on the actual foods eaten, its nutritional adequacy, and how rigidly the rules are applied rather than on the label itself .¹

Clean eating should therefore be distinguished from orthorexia nervosa. Orthorexia is a proposed pattern of pathological preoccupation with healthy or pure eating that can involve rigidity, distress, nutritional compromise, or impaired daily functioning. A person can prefer minimally processed foods without having orthorexic behavior, while increasingly restrictive clean-eating rules may overlap with features described in orthorexia research. The boundary is based on the pattern's rigidity and consequences, not simply on food preference .^1,2