Bad fad - Ruby Tandoh on how clean eating turned toxic
The backlash against a 'wellness' diet is in full swing - and leading chefs and writers associated with it are doing their best to ditch the term. It's time we called it what it is.

[1] 'I think we have an obsession with diets. With fad diets?' This was Ella Mills, the food writer behind Deliciously Ella and bestselling author of arguably the most successful fad diet cookbook series in recent years. Her eponymous first book was the UK's fastest-selling debut cookbook ever, and she has since gone on to launch two central-London delis, create her own range of 'energy balls' and even release a skincare range in collaboration with Neal's Yard. Speaking on last Friday's Today programme, the blogger was keen to distance herself from so-called 'clean eating' and, cleverly, from the crescendo of criticism surrounding the trend.
[2] 'T've never described myself as "clean", said Mills, nimbly shadow-boxing with a litheness that probably shouldn't surprise us, coming from a 25-year-old yogi. She described her frustration at being dubbed the 'queen of clean', and was quick to point out the moralistic overtones that language such as 'clean eating' ascribes to food. It was a smart move, preempting the backlash that would come from that evening's premiere of the BBC documentary Horizon: Clean Eating - The Dirty Truth.

[3] This new philosophy, popularised by bloggers such as Mills, the Hemsley sisters and Amelia Freer, was roughly the idea that we should eat less processed food and more fruit and veg. It was about doing away with junk food, and staging a return to a more thoughtful way of eating. So far, so sensible, you might think. Although not all of the bloggers used the exact phrase 'clean eating', their approaches fell into step with its core beliefs: slimness is health, health is everything, and - crucially - diets are bad.
[4] Cannily dodging the restrictive and judgement-laden overtones of the dreaded D-word, this generation of cooks was vocal in eschewing old-fashioned diet terminology. The Hemsley sisters' grain-free manifesto, The Art of Eating Well, wasn't a diet book, then, but a way to achieve some kind of seductively slinky 'wellness'. Healthy-eating guru
Madeleine Shaw encouraged us not to count calories, but to 'get the glow'. 'This isn't a diet for me; it's a lifestyle,' Mills told us. It was a world of beauty, happiness and self-love, all bundled lucratively together under the vague banner of wellness.
[5] With their profits and media presence blossoming, however, it wasn't long before these self-appointed health gurus came under scrutiny.
[6] Natasha Corrett, author of the bestseller Honestly Healthy, was embarrassed last week by the revelation that the inspiration for her alkaline diet, Dr Robert O Young, is facing jail time for practising medicine without a licence.
Horizon revealed that Young took more than £62 000 in payment from the family of cancer patient Naima Houder-Mohammed in return for a 'cure' of injections of bicarbonate of soda solution. Houder-Mohammed's condition worsened during her time in Young's care and she died at 27. Alongside such outright crooks and villains as Young, the hapless
 Mills doesn't look so bad[7] Behind the pretty public face of wellness is a far bigger beast. With the exception of fitness guru Joe Wicks, the overwhelming majority of wellness personalities are young women, and it is these women who rise to and eventually fall from grace in the public eye. And yet the machinery of these fads is constructed largely by a small group of men.
These are the doctors - self-styled or otherwise - who spin questionable academic studies, patchworks of data and sometimes little more than fanciful anecdotes into best-selling diet industry manifestos.
[8] A share of the blame lies with publishers, too. At a time when money is rare in publishing, editors are digging deep to offer book deals to wellness gurus, no matter the credibility of their claims.
[9] There are many toxic layers to the wellness phenomenon. It is no coincidence that the faces of wellness are unfailingly young and thin, overwhelmingly white and all the talk of purity against that backdrop of privilege leaves a rather unsavoury taste in the mouth. Wellness is also the unprincipled driftings of the publishing houses with whatever currents lead them to a quick buck. It is the evangelism of wellness bloggers, picking up and shrugging off whatever label will give them the most page views. At its core is the idea that food is medicine.
[10] But these sensational claims reach us by insidious means, and those who suggest we ought to just use some common sense underestimate just how muddled the truth about food really is. So, many of us will, at one point or another, turn to the false prophets of the diet industry. We might become evangelists for wheatgrass for a while, or sing the praises of some superfood that 'cured' a dodgy knee. We might laugh these fads off, in time, just as the wellness personalities slip out of their skins and into the next big craze.
[11] We have an obsession with diets. With fad diets. There is no miracle cure, but there is a way to push back: call them as you see them. Wellness is a fad diet. Clean eating is a fad diet. If it promises salvation on a plate, it is a fad diet.
Hold the wellness gurus accountable, let them know that their diet is a diet. Make them eat their words.