The superfood craze is ruining university and beyond

University is infamous for unhealthy students nomming takeaways at three in the morning and boiling kettles for midday, pot-noodle breakfasts, but something is changing.

Society has become slightly obsessed over ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ food: we’re constantly questioning whether we should eat this or that. Maybe I should buy some goji berries – they’re supposed to be healthy right? Oh broccoli bread is a thing? I should definitely try that! I can’t buy that doughnut but I should really drink this kale smoothie that costs four quid and literally tastes like soil, yeah?

Let’s be honest, cauliflower pizza will probably never be as good as normal pizza and you will definitely regret spending £16.00 on that raw honey. Also, what even is buckwheat flour and why are paleo diets a thing?

You’re lying if you say that sprouted brown rice flour sounds nice

The unprecedented rise of the clean-eating movement has embedded itself into the core of our society’s eating habits, particularly at uni. If you don’t know what avo on toast is, I think you may be living in a hole. Unsurprisingly, Ella Woodward’s Deliciously Ella has become the fastest debut cookbook of all time.

I’m all for eating green. I’m a keen advocate of eating less processed and more natural food – and yes, in my kitchen cupboard you will find some flaxseed, quinoa, peanut butter, avocado and almond milk. But, I eat that stuff because I genuinely like the taste (apart from the almond milk – that’s actually pretty grim so I won’t be buying that again).

I think it’s great that people have got more into eating fruit and vegetables and trying new types of food, but what I don’t like is how hung up people have become about clean-eating. Speaking from experience, it’s so easy to get obsessive and compulsive. Last year, if I even consumed half a slice of bread I’d feel guilty, which is ironically not healthy at all.

Clean eating can lead to a horribly dysfunctional relationship with food; categorising food into ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ groups implies that some foods are dirty and we can’t go anywhere near them. If I eat a slice of cheesecake, I am not going to die. If all I eat is kale, I’m not ‘eating healthy’. I don’t suffer from coeliac disease so I’m not going to cut gluten from my diet.

I don’t believe Deliciously Ella sold so well because all of sudden people were interested in eating a plant-based diet: the cookbook was able to capitalise on one of society’s main insecurities – the never-ending need to get thinner.

It’s important we don’t deprive ourselves of certain foods, or for us to eat something that is actually quite disgusting because it’s classed as healthy. If you want to eat a bowl of pasta, go eat the pasta. That stuff is nice. It’s also really easy.