Clean Eating

Most often people wonder what clean eating refers to. To break it down very simply for you, it refers to eating food in their natural form without any additives being added to them. Food additives are simply anything that is added to the food. They consist of all the compounds added to food like artificial and natural colours, flavour and texture enhancers, preservative, foaming agents and the list goes on. The major need for usage of these additives is to enhance the shelf life i.e., to allow the product to stay on the shelf in the market for a longer duration without getting spoilt, losing its colour, flavour or texture. Preservatives are also a type of food additive which play a major role in enhancing the shelf life of the product. Another very common word we come across is processing or processed foods. Are processed foods healthy? Should one consume processed foods? So, processing is a technique used to convert food to their edible form. For example, the grains of wheat cannot be consumed, however when they are milled to flour, they are edible. Ultra-processed foods on the other hand have undergone immense processing leading to loss of major nutrients present in them naturally. They have greater proportion of salt, sugar, and saturated fat present in them. Excess intake of salt, sugar and saturated fats are linked to metabolic disorders like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure. All of which in the long run affect the body immensely, predisposing people to the vast ocean of metabolic diseases.

 Preservatives and Health

Preservatives are both natural and artificial. Salt and sugar in greater proportion act as preservatives. Therefore making preservatives an essential part of ultra processed foods. Scientific studies have related various of the artificial preservatives and additives to adverse health conditions like hyperactivity, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease. Lesser the preservatives in food, healthier it is.