The supermarket aisle has become a confusing place. It used to be full of recognisable items like cheese and butter: now you find yourself bamboozled by all manner of odd alternatives, such as ‘raw’ hummus, wheat-free bread and murky juices.
You have to stay pretty alert to make sure you pick up a pint of proper milk, rather than one free from lactose. Supermarkets have become shrines to ‘clean eating’, a faith that promises happiness, healthiness and energy. Food is to be worshipped — and feared.
As with all growing religions, you know it by its disciples. On The Great British Bake Off, one contestant, Ugne Bubnaityte, has denounced cake as a ‘nutritional sin’ and hopes to win with low-fat, vegan and gluten-free recipes.
Commercially, she’s onto a winner. The market for gluten-free food is soaring; forecast to grow by 48 per cent, to €49 million in Ireland, within two years.
The high priestesses of this new religion are a group of young, attractive women who amass hundreds of thousands of followers online as more and more people turn to them for guidance. Essentially recipe bloggers, they are becoming revered, in an age of confusion, for telling us what to eat and what not to eat.
There’s Madeleine Shaw, 25, a ‘holistic nutritional health coach’ who believes in ‘enlivening the hottest, happiest and healthiest you’ and offers a ‘chia seed egg substitute’ to use in recipes.
Twenty-four-year-old Ella Woodward bounced back from a rare illness after adopting a new plant-based diet and entices her followers with sweet potato brownies.
And there’s Tess Ward, 23, who has written a cookbook called The Naked Diet, which replaces conventional chapter headings (Breakfasts, Starters, Mains, Desserts) with Pure, Raw, Stripped, Clean and Detox. The Art Of Eating Well — the best-selling cookbook from sisters Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley — contains no recipes with grains, gluten or refined sugar.
Woodward recommends raw, rather than pasteurised, coconut water, which is tinted pink ‘because of all those antioxidants’, and warns about the dangers of dairy.
Milk, she says, ‘can actually cause calcium loss in our bones!’ When we drink milk, she says, calcium is drawn from our bones in order to rebalance the acidity it causes, which can result in a calcium deficit.
This is news to nutritionists. Milk can, if consumed in absurdly excessive quantities, lead to a condition called milk-alkali syndrome — but this is more commonly caused by over-consumption of calcium supplements than by guzzling milk. More common is calcium deficiency, which the HSE says can be caused by cutting out dairy products.
Sian Porter, a consultant dietitian, warns: ‘If people do not plan really carefully for substitutes for food groups, then you can end up malnourishing yourself.’
So these diets are not simply a silly fad that might leave you a little skinnier. The pursuit of wellness and ‘clean eating’ could, in the long-term, make you unwell.
‘Often, these people have found that an approach works for them, and that’s great,’ says Porter. ‘But it doesn’t mean that it will work for anyone else.’ The Hemsley sisters write on their website that gluten ‘breaks down the microvilli in your small intestine, eventually letting particles of your food leach into your bloodstream, which is referred to as “leaky gut syndrome”‘.
This can be the case, but only for those with coeliac disease. It is not so for those who do not have this auto-immune condition, which is thought to affect one in 100 people in Ireland.
Ian Marber, a nutrition expert who is a coeliac, believes that many of these wellness gurus have ‘little understanding of the responsibility that comes with discussing food’. He says: ‘Everyone eats, so everyone thinks that they’re an expert. But these people are injecting an unwelcome degree of paranoia into our society, without any scientific backing.’ It is not entirely clear why ‘eating clean’ — by avoiding gluten and certain carbohydrates — would keep people healthy.
Carbohydrates, as the body’s main energy supply, are crucial: according to the Irish Nutrition & Dietetic Institute, we should eat six or more servings of carbs a day, such as wholegrain bread and potatoes, to fuel our body.
Nor are they inherently fattening; any unneeded energy ‘will be converted into fat no matter what the source’.
But the overwhelming message from the plethora of people urging us to eat cauliflower couscous and gluten-free loaves is a simple one: carbs are bad. The fear of gluten, milk and other newly unfashionable foods could also damage children whose parents foist their fads on the whole family.
‘Muesli-belt malnutrition’ was first identified by doctors in the late 1990s, when they found children were suffering as a result of the excessively restrictive diets that their health-conscious, middleclass parents had developed. Now, with the internet so readily at hand to offer quick diagnoses, the new obsession seems to be with allergies and intolerances — and cutting out all sorts of foods in order to deal with them.
It ties into a similar mantra espoused by those who pursue wellness: that you can heal yourself — and your family — by cutting out entire food groups.
Earlier this year, the charity Sense About Science warned that parents were risking leaving their children malnourished by restricting their diets to deal with perceived health problems. A decade ago, a study of 969 children on the Isle of Wight found that a third of them were thought by their parents to have food allergies. In fact, only 5 per cent did.
It’s not often that science intrudes into the world of ‘wellness’ fads. To become a clean-eating guru, a cheery demeanour seems to matter more than proper qualifications.
Ella Woodward, Madeleine Shaw and Tess Ward all studied History of Art. The latter two then studied an online course with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
This course, based in America, claims to be a ‘movement’ working to reverse the health crisis by promoting the concept of ‘bioindividuality’ — a concept coined by its founder, Joshua Rosenthal (who eats a gluten-free diet). It hinges on the idea that one person’s food is another person’s poison. The institute claims that the qualification it offers is ‘rooted in science’ — a claim which puzzles Dr Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist and eating disorders specialist.
‘The minute you scratch beneath the surface,’ he says, ‘you realise that its roots aren’t in science.’ It is certainly rooted in commercial logic: the surging demand for wellness gurus means that those brandishing credentials are welcomed by an audience that is often mistrustful of mainstream medicine.
Successful gurus are cashing in. The Hemsley sisters sell their own brand of ‘spiraliser’, a gadget for turning courgettes into ‘courgetti’, a gluten-free pasta substitute.
Supermarket sales of courgettes are also soaring thanks to healthconscious consumers embracing the vegetable, which is presented as having near-miraculous powers.
The avocado, once considered ‘bad’ for you because of its high fat content, has been forgiven; and in the US, where many food trends originate, sales have quadrupled since 2000.
It’s a good time to grow avocados, but a bad time to herd cows.
The pursuit of wellness is a dream, and every dream has a darker side. On a number of pro-anorexia websites, there are discussions about many of the topics favoured by the wellness brigade.
On a popular clean-eating website, one girl writes that the ‘spring rolls are easy to take to work and look like you’re actually eating proper food, lol’. Another comments that chia seeds are ‘really helping with hunger’ because ‘when they get into your stomach they absorb the water and expand, making you feel full’.
While the wellness gurus deliberately avoid any discussion of eating disorders and diets, their attitude to food is often worrying. Madeleine Shaw admits that as a young girl she had ‘quite a torturous relationship with food and my body’.
She suffered cycles of ‘depriving and bingeing’, which led to her hair falling out and periods stopping. At one point, she reportedly ate only rice cakes and fruit.
It certainly sounds as if she had a disordered way of eating.
Phrases used by devotees of the religion, such as ‘eat clean’ or ‘it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle’, frequently feature on pro-anorexia chat rooms.
Dr Bijal Chheda-Varma, a consultant who specialises in eating disorders, says that she is seeing more and more patients who have eschewed food groups based on advice they have read online.
‘Clean eating’ is a term she is used to hearing as a way of justifying a particular diet. Apps and social media do not necessarily cause obsessive behaviour, but can increase obsession over food,’ she says. Social media websites are wary about being associated with eating disorders; Instagram’s privacy and safety centre has a whole section dedicated to the topic.
A search for the phrase ‘anorexia’ brings up a warning about ‘graphic content’. But type in ‘orthorexia’ — the term associated with obsessive healthy eating — and no such warning appears. More than 80,000 images pop up, tagged with those increasingly familiar incantations: #wellness #eatclean #nourish.
The sentiment underlying this new cult isn’t a bad one. Most of us would like to be healthier.
But the overwhelming advice from the people who know a lot about nutrition and dietary health doesn’t seem to have changed much over the years: everything in moderation.
The millionaire’s daughter
WHO: Ella Woodward, 24. Dubbed ‘the new Nigella’, the food blogger got into healthy eating after a chronic illness left her bedbound for 16 hours a day.
PRIVATE LIFE: Daughter of British MP Shaun Woodward, Ella had a privileged upbringing at boarding school and lived in a mansion (sold for €33.7 million ten years ago). Her parents still own a €9million villa in the Hamptons in the US, with other properties in the Alps, Mustique and Oxford. Ella got engaged to her publicity-shy boyfriend earlier this month.
PHILOSOPHY: Essentially vegan, eating no meat, dairy, refined sugar, gluten or processed foods.
BOOKS: Deliciously Ella, released this year, has sold 212,549 copies so far, which makes it the fastest-selling debut cookbook of all time.
EARNINGS: Just over €3 million from the book. Sales of her recipe app (€3.99) have topped €55,000.
WACKIEST DISH: Sweet potato brownies, made from dates, almonds, maple syrup and steamed sweet potatoes. Even Ella admits they were ‘a mistake’.
MOST STARTLING CLAIM: Milk ‘can cause calcium loss in our bones’ because it causes our bodies to become acidic, which draws calcium out of our bones to rebalance pH.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: ‘Not the case. Drinking milk is a good source of calcium,’ says Nicole Berberian.
QUALIFICATIONS: Currently training for a diploma at College of Naturopathic Medicine in London, focusing on a nature-based study of human body.
The ex-rice cake addict
WHO: Madeleine Shaw, 25. As a teenager, she ate only rice cakes and fruit, and ended up with severe digestive issues. Working in the cafe of a health club in Australia started her clean-eating kick.
PRIVATE LIFE: Struggled after parents divorced when she was 18. ‘I thought if I could control something, then everything would be okay. Food was a coping mechanism,’ she says. Lives in Wandsworth, South London, with boyfriend Kieran. PHILOSOPHY: Recipes contain no refined sugar (just dates, fruit and maple syrup) and include healthy fats such as coconut oil, almond butter and avocados.
BOOKS: Her first, Get The Glow, was published this year and has sold 49,100 copies.
EARNINGS: €672,000 from book sales, plus her hugely Ma popular monthly cookery demonstrations (€125 a ticket).
WACKIEST DISH: Matcha chia porridge, made from chia seeds (flowering plant from the mint family), flavoured with powdered Japanese tea.
MOSTSTARTLING CLAIM: An advocate of ‘leaky gut’ theory (see Hemsley sisters), she swears by apple cider vinegar to stop bloating and indigestion.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: Excessive consumption of this vinegar can cause low potassium levels and low bone density. It’s also not advised for diabetics.
QUALIFICATIONS: Studied History of Art at university, but gets her diet qualifications from a €5,200 online course at the New York-based Institute For Integrative Nutrition.
Beauty who hates bread
WHO: Amelia Freer, 34. Was PA to Prince Charles before quitting at 28 to study nutrition.
PRIVATE LIFE: Lives in Notting Hill, West London, with her labrador Oliver.
PHILOSOPHY: Follows a grainfree diet, avoiding gluten, dairy and refined sugar.
BOOKS: Has sold 106,630 copies of Eat. Nourish. Glow, which shot up the charts in March after singer Sam Smith credited Amelia with his dramatic two-week weight loss.
EARNINGS: €1.5 million from book sales. She is so in demand that she’s stopped accepting new students for her nutrition course. Consults on healthy menus for hotels and spas.
WACKIEST DISH: Green ‘beauty’ smoothie with spinach, baobab powder (made from African fruit) and powdered collagen.
MOST STARTLING CLAIM: Is anti-bread, calling it ‘a bucketful of insulin and inflammation’.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: ‘If you take carbohydrates out of your diet completely, you’re losing a component that’s key for fibres, vitamins and minerals,’ saydietitian Nicole Berberian.
QUALIFICATIONS: Completed a four-year diploma in nutritional therapy at the Institute For Optimum Nutrition in Richmond, South-West London.
The avocado queen
WHO: Tess Ward, 23. Picked up a parasite in India aged 18, leaving her with irritable bowel syndrome. Turned to healthy cooking after seeing specialist doctor in 2011.
PRIVATE LIFE: In a relationship but won’t reveal any details.
PHILOSOPHY: Urges her followers to ‘count colours, not calories’ — meaning increase number of colourful vegetables and grains on your plate.
BOOKS: The Naked Diet was released in June and has sold 596 copies.
EARNINGS: €10,900 from book sales. Also travel writing and blogging.
WACKIEST DISH: Avocado ice cream, a green concoction of frozen avocados, limes and coconut milk.
MOST STARTLING CLAIM: Advice is vague, with mantras such as ‘focus on crowding in the good and you naturally eat less of the bad’.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: Eating disorders specialist Dr Max Pemberton says: ‘Diets like this play on insecurities and are seen as cure-alls, when there’s no science behind them at all.’
QUALIFICATIONS: History of Art graduate who studied ‘bio-individuality’ at Institute For Integrative Nutrition. A trained chef, she cut her teeth at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school and worked at River Cottage and The Ritz in London.
The sultry sisters
WHO: Jasmine (left) and Melissa Hemsley. Jasmine, 35, modelled for 15 years while Melissa, 29, was a consultant for a footwear brand.
PRIVATE LIFE: Daughters of an army colonel, Jasmine has been with boyfriend Nick Hopper, a model and photographer, for 15 years while Melissa is single.
PHILOSOPHY: Diet centres on bone broth — stock made from boiling fish and meat bones in water. They say it heals the gut, strengthens thyroid and improves skin.
BOOKS: The Art Of Eating Well, sold 94,792 copies, knocking Mary Berry off the top of the Amazon charts.
EARNINGS: Book sales have generated €1.9 million. They also sell their own brand of ‘spiralizer’ (€41) to turn courgettes into spaghetti strips.
WACKIEST DISH: Avocado and lime cheesecake, made with pecan nuts and cacao nibs (the dried seeds of the cocoa tree).
MOST STARTLING CLAIM: Gluten ‘breaks down the microvilli (hair-like membranes) in your small intestine, letting particles of food leach into your bloodstream, referred to as “leaky gut syndrome”‘.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: ‘This can be very serious for those with coeliac disease, a digestive condition in which small intestine is sensitive to gluten — but that’s a minority of people,’ says dietician Nicole Berberian.
QUALIFICATIONS: Neither is formally trained in food, nutrition or diet.
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