“Eating clean means eliminating all those extras – the preservatives, chemicals and dyes,” Shayna Komar explains. “It means becoming more aware of what you are eating, getting back to whole foods and looking at food labels and ingredients.”

She says a simple way to “eat clean" is to choose local and/or organic food whenever possible. This way, you know where your food comes from and if extra chemicals or hormones are added to it.

Know the ingredients in your food

“Look at the ingredients on your food label,” she says. “Make sure you can actually read the words because sometimes food contains these long-lettered chemicals, and we don’t even know what they are.”

Reading food labels is important because trans fats, high fructose corn syrup and dyes can be found in many products marketed toward children, including gummies and juice, and even salad dressing.  

The DASH Diet

“DASH stands for dietary approaches to stop hypertension,” Komar says. “There is some very good long-term research that says if you follow this healthy plan, you can lower blood pressure and stop hypertension.” The DASH diet places a major emphasis on vegetables and fruits, as well as on whole grains and moderate amounts of protein. “I would say the most important thing in the DASH plan is that you are eliminating or decreasing your sodium intake,” she says. “It’s keeping your sodium very low – under 2,300 mg per day, which means not eating a lot of canned or processed foods, and salad dressing which can be very high in sodium.”

Overall, the DASH plan and the concept of eating clean go hand in hand. Studies prove repeatedly that a healthy diet rich in whole foods and low in sodium can prevent or even heal serious illness.

Need to make an appointment with a Piedmont physician? Save time, book online.