Clean eating or a sensible balance?

With my nose deep in textbooks at the moment I sometimes miss the latest food trend or tag. However having recently watched the BBC's Horizon: Clean Eating - The Dirty Truth programme with the shrewd and delightful Dr Giles Yeo, I was reminded of this trend in January's delicious magazine. In their "a good rant" at the back, Anthony Warner (The Angry Chef; see details at end), whose blog is not for the faint-hearted (or clean-eating), argues against the "increasingly crowded wellness market...as more new bloggers, Instagram stars and bandwagon-jumping celebrities appear." The meat of his delightful diatribe against "clean-eating" is a meat we should all be chewing on more enthusiastically. 

"The key to a healthy relationship with food is to embrace as much variety as possible and try to keep some balance. To arbitrarily exclude anything is quite the opposite of what we should be doing. Eating is one of life's great joys. 

"There is no such thing as a healthy food, or an unhealthy one. Healthy eating is about balance. Despite what the media would have you believe, the advice from scientists has remained fairly consistent over the years. Eat a balanced diet, lots of fruit and vegetables, not too many calories, not too much salt. Try not to become overweight; it’s bad for you. If you do, you are eating too many calories so cut down a bit.
 
"Sugar is not bad for you. Too much sugar is bad for you. Too much sugar and too much fat is even worse for you. Too much water is bad for you. Too much kale is bad for you... It is all a question of balance".

Have we simply become desensitised to the phrase "a balanced diet"?

Anthony Warner is a development chef by day and blogs as The Angry Chef by night (angry-chef.com). Twitter handle is @One_Angry_Chef