There’s nothing wrong with those things in and of themselves—we all need a value system, an identity, and a community. The problem is that in the case of clean eating and other modern manifestations of diet culture, the belief system often takes over your life and prevents you from developing your own identity and values outside food and eating. It shrinks your life by making you more and more fixated on food and exercise, at the expense of other things you truly care about. Clean eating isn’t alone in that. With all forms of diet culture, the message is that you can’t trust yourself and that
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