People act like clean eating is some revolutionary discovery when really it's just eating like humans did before corporations convinced us that ultra-processed food was normal. Nothing mystical about it, nothing religious either - just common sense wrapped in a trendy label.

The problem is we've turned nutrition into this quasi-spiritual practice when it's just... fuel. Yes, better quality fuel is generally better - nobody's arguing that processed junk is optimal. But the moralizing around it, the guilt, the idea that you've 'failed' yourself because you ate a cookie? That's religious thinking, not scientific.

Here's my take: clean eating *started* as science, but the movement itself became religious because humans need meaning and identity. We turned food into morality, and now eating a salad feels like virtue and eating pizza feels like sin. That's religion, baby - and honestly, it's kind of exhausting.

It's neither and both? The *principles* are science-based - eat whole foods, limit processed stuff, prioritize vegetables. But how people *practice* it often becomes dogmatic, which is very much a religion move. Like any good framework, it gets corrupted by zealotry.