How brexit, donald trump and the new cold war have killed off clean eating

Lucy Mangan 16 March 2018 6:00pm GMT With the news that Ella Mills, the high priestess of the wellness and clean-eating crusade that has dominated the hearts, minds, stomachs and Instagram

feeds of women of a certain age and class for the last half-decade, has closed two of her three Deliciously Ella cafes in London, a hope stirs in my breast and strains to rise. Is the

crusade over? Might I start getting decently fed in friends’ houses again? Truly, it has been a testing time for those of us who did not fall under the spell cast by the coven who took over

the culinary world with blogs, television series and cookbooks that advised us all to start knocking back gallons of Nutribulleted smoothies, spiralising courgettes as an alternative to

pasta, granulate cauliflower to replace rice, pretend whipped and frozen avocado was genuine ice cream and imbibe only milk that had never seen a cow. All piled on gluten-free toast and

sprinkled with so many seeds that I frequently found myself channelling John Hurt in The Elephant Man: “I am not a budgie! I am human! And in need of a hamburger!” The Hemsley sisters’ The

Art of Eating Well advised readers on how to go grain-free. Saskia Gregson-Williams hymned the advantages of going wheat, meat and dairy-free. Natasha Corbett, author of Honestly Healthy,

advocated an alkaline diet and Mills’ own blog and books are based on the gluten, sugar, meat, dairy and alcohol-free regime she devised for herself after being diagnosed with a heart

condition. They and their followers have created a global wellness industry – for chia seeds, matcha powder and milk squeezed from increasingly unlikely sources do not come cheap – worth an

estimated £3 trillion. Those who did not dive into the grass-fed belly of the beast, however, became increasingly enraged. Clean-eating specifically and the wellness industry generally is

infuriating. It is assertions, feelings, individuals’ beliefs, wrapped round an (organic, unhusked) grain of truth – that we all, as a society, need to try and step away from the processed

food that encourages obesity and heart disease – mixed with a bit of yoga here, Eastern mysticism and holistic whatever there; a syncretic pseudo-religion with sleek bowel movements instead

of salvation at its heart. None of its high-profile proponents is a qualified dietician. The world they and their satellites and acolytes have built was post-fact before Trump. It is a world

in which honey and dates are approved, but fruit – yes, fruit – can be cut out because of all the sugar it contains. A world in which butter, a substance which has been bringing calories

and joy to humans since the dawn of our history without any noticeable detriment to our health, is bad. A world in which if salt isn’t the “mineral-rich”, pink-hued Himalayan kind, it is not

the kind of salt you want in your basket. > Tomorrow we’re going to be saying goodbye to our deli at Seymour > Place and Herne Hill. Seymour was Matt and my first venture together

> and we learnt more opening that site than we ever thought possible. > It’s been a huge piece of our journey, and it’s filled with many > great memories. It really feels like a 

million years ago that we sat > downstairs the night before opening unpacking the final boxes and > panicking if anyone would ever come. Somehow lots of you did, and we > realised 

very quickly that we needed a larger space, which is what > led us to Weighhouse Street, just 5 minutes down the road. We love > our cosy spot on Seymour Place and all of our regulars,

 but as > time’s gone on it has become clear that having two delis so close > together doesn’t really make sense, and that we’d be better off > focusing all of our attention on one 

deli (Weighhouse Street) and > making it the absolute best experience for all of you. We’re so > excited that we’ve been able to reach more of you by having our > energy balls, 

granolas, bircher muesli and oat bars stocked in lots > of shops throughout the UK, and we have lots of exciting plans for > new food ranges throughout this year. We’re really going to

 miss > Seymour and Herne Hill and both will always have such a special > place in the Deliciously Ella journey, but we’re excited for all > of the things to come at Weighhouse 

Street, and look forward to > seeing you there soon. Thank you to everyone who visited us at > Seymour and Herne Hill, we’re incredibly grateful for all of your > support in making 

this journey possible, we couldn’t do it without > you ❤️❤️❤️ >  > A post shared by Deliciously Ella (@deliciouslyella) on Mar 6, 2018 > at 8:57am PST Above all, it is a world in

which this sentence – from Madeleine Shaw’s Ready, Steady, Glow – is meant to be digestible. “Lettuce,” she writes earnestly, “makes a great alternative to bread.” The wellness guru’s

apocalyptic visions of distended guts trying to absorb glutenated carbs is as nothing to the mental contortions the uninitiated reader must go through to take this in. And it is the

psychical rather than physical effects of clean eating and the surrounding coconut-oil-is-the-new-chrism nonsense that most makes me hope that the closure of Ella’s cafes foretells the end

of the industry. Although it has always purported to be simply a way of making people more conscious of the dietary choices they make – and Mills, the Hemsleys et al have all stated that

improving people’s health was ever their sole intention – for many of their followers, clean eating has always been a weight-loss diet by any other name. “Wellness” simply substituted for

“slim” was the stated goal. But its audience, mainly women, all primed and adept at decoding euphemisms for what we are not supposed to (and occasionally genuinely shouldn’t) want, knew what

it was and what it meant. It gave a veneer of modernity and acceptability to the age-old process of putting fewer calories and less of the stuff you wanted in your mouth, in order to thin

your thighs. And, as with any diet plan but especially one that advocates cutting out entire food groups and asserts the goodness/badness of particular properties without much in the way of

scientific backing, it played hugely effectively into the fears of people already prone to disordered eating. The cracks were already beginning to show in the wellness cult before Ella’s

cafes were shuttered, but it is probably background forces that will ultimately bring down the clean-eating gods. The energy, expense and wide-eyed belief it requires are a function of a

calm, well-ordered and affluent society, which also allows the luxury of pomegranate-scattering self-indulgence. In a spiralised twist of fate, it may be that Brexit, Trump, a new Cold War

looming and assorted other horrors have given us some real perspective back. Eat inorganically, drink anything but cold-pressed wheatgrass, for tomorrow there’s every chance something will

kill us much quicker than cancer. Now, at last, please let me eat cake.