Nigella Lawson, queen of buttery sauces and spatula-licking puds, has warned that healthy eating ‘fads’ might be disguising eating disorders.
She told a group of catering students at a college in Toronto that people had become ‘a bit extreme’ with their eating habits.
‘A lot of so-called healthy eating is a cover-up for an eating disorder and I think people persecute themselves to what they do eat and what they don’t eat,’ she said.
The TV chef when on to dismiss the ‘mumbo jumbo’ spoken about diets today and described how many of her friends deny themselves certain treats, only to binge on them later.
Cutting out entire food groups, she said, ‘doesn’t seem to make sense’.
‘You should eat a bit of everything,’ Nigella concluded.
It’s not the first time that Nigella has spoken out about ‘clean eating’ either.
She said a similar thing back in 2015, when she told audiences at a JW3 Speaker Series event that people subscribed certain ultra-healthy’ diets were ‘a way to hide an eating disorder or a great sense of unhappiness with their own body’.
And Nigella has a point, obviously.
Cutting out entire food groups is miserable and counterproductive; how many people do you know treat carbs like poison…only to binge on them in a moment of perceived weakness?
But we should be careful of dismissing genuinely healthy eating habits as disordered dietary patterns. There’s a difference between eating a whole foods diet – one packed with real, wholegrain, unrefined foods – and one which demonises certain foods or ways of eating.
The interesting thing is that our terminology seems to have changed a bit around this subject.
A few years ago, Nigella lambasted the term ‘clean eating’, claiming that implied that ‘any other form of eating is dirty or shameful’. Today, she criticises ‘healthy eating’.
So does that mean that all these influencers and brands who promoted ‘clean’ living have cottoned onto the bad PR and simply re-branded – hijacking a perfectly innocent and worthy term? Or does Nigella genuinely take offence at the prospect of people trying to eat in a way that benefits their health?
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