Eu vejo esse movimento como parte de um conjunto maior. Por onde se olha hoje em dia as pseudociências e as teorias da conspiração tão bem enraizadas, com a ajuda das redes sociais. Uma sociedade sem norte, descrente das instituições e das autoridades, atacando a Ciência e criando "verdades" subjetivas sem base em fatos (aliás, o viés de confirmação age na seleção de fatos convenientes e eliminação de todos os demais). Como se qualquer pessoa tivesse conhecimento e experiência para opinar sobre qualquer coisa. Quão verdadeiro é o discurso passa a depender do alcance de quem fala, do número de seguidores, da "influência". As pseudociências poderiam muito bem se chamar pseudoreligiões.
O problema é que, quando envolve saúde, o bullshit pode matar. E às vezes pode matar outras pessoas que não o próprio sardinha.
Why We Fell for Clean EatingA seguir, alguns excertos:
"Why has clean eating proved so difficult to kill off? Hadley Freeman, in The Guardian, identified clean eating as part of a post-truth culture, whose adherents are impervious, or even hostile, to facts and experts. But to understand how clean eating took hold with such tenacity, it’s necessary first to consider just what a terrifying thing food has become for millions of people in the modern world. The interesting question is not whether clean eating is nonsense, but why so many intelligent people decided to put their faith in it."
"You can’t found a new faith system with the words “I am publishing a very good vegetarian cookbook”. For this, you need something stronger. You need the assurance of make-believe, whispered sweetly. Grind this cauliflower into tiny pieces and you can make a special kind of no-carb rice! Avoid all sugar and your skin will shimmer! Among other things, clean eating confirms how vulnerable and lost millions of us feel about diet – which really means how lost we feel about our own bodies. We are so unmoored that we will put our faith in any master who pro[REMOVIDO] us that we, too, can become pure and good."
"It’s striking that in many of the wellness cookbooks, mainstream scientific evidence on diet is seen as more or less irrelevant, not least because the gurus see the complacency of science as part of what made our diets so bad in the first place."
"In another context, Freer writes that “I’m told it takes 17 years for scientific knowledge to filter down” to become general knowledge, while advising that gluten should be avoided. Once we enter the territory where all authority and expertise are automatically suspect, you can start to claim almost anything – and many #eatclean authorities do."