'Clean' and Healthy Eating--What Does That Mean?

With more than 70% of Americans considered overweight or obese,^[1] and such diseases as diabetes and heart disease becoming more prevalent, some of your patients are probably looking for ways to adopt more healthful, "cleaner" eating strategies. Many of them might turn to the Internet to see which diets are trending.

Diets come and go over time. Some popular plans are nothing more than fads with little science to support them. Others have been more rigorously studied, and they do have evidence to show they work. Here's a rundown of the diets your patients might ask you about, and what the research has to say about them.

Detox and Cleanse Diets

The premise behind detox diets is to rid the body both of the environmental toxins (pollution, chemicals in foods and household products, etc) to which it is continually exposed or those that are by-products of metabolism.

Detox diets purport to accomplish this through "clean eating." That typically means eating a strict diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and raw nuts and seeds, plus lots of water. Detox diets eliminate processed foods and sugar, as well as foods to which some people are sensitive, such as dairy, gluten, eggs, and red meat. Cleanse diets take the idea a step further, by limiting intake to such fluids as lemonade or green smoothies for a period of several days.