Today's issue is brought to you by Proving Her Wrong

Hey, friend! People assume Cleanish came from Lacey failing at eating clean, when it was the opposite. She got really good at it, and that's exactly when she needed it to break. Then, we went looking for an actual definition of "ultra-processed" and found out nobody has one, including the government. There's also a pizza dough recipe without yeast, so Friday night pizza isn't a project. Let's get into it!

— Lacey Baier, Dustin Baier

Cleanish didn't come to me in a lightbulb moment.

I lived it for years before I had a word for it.

Here's the part people get wrong: They assume cleanish came from failure, that I couldn't hack the strict version, so I softened it and slapped a friendlier name on it. That's not what happened. It was the opposite.

I got really good at “eating clean.” I read every label, cooked almost everything from scratch, built my whole plate around whole foods. And it worked.

But the more success I had at it, the more I needed it to break.

I wanted pizza. But I didn't want to always make it from scratch. I wanted to travel and enjoy baked goods without feeling guilty. I wanted donuts. I always want donuts. None of that fit inside "clean." Clean was working, and for that I was so thankful. But it was quietly running my life.

So, I did the thing I'd watched fail a hundred times: I let a little life back in.

All-or-nothing had never worked for me. The second the "all" cracked, I was in the "nothing." I’d either stay perfect, or I’d fall completely off. And nobody stays perfect, not while living an actual life.

I realized it isn't a willpower problem. It's a design problem. An approach that only works when you're perfect isn't an approach. It's a trap with good marketing.

So, here's what cleanish actually means. It means eating mostly well, inside a life you love. Whole foods most of the time, because they make you feel good. And moderation with the foods that aren't "clean," because moderation isn't a failure of the system. It's part of the system.

Cleanish is the unplanned pizza on a Friday night when we watch shows. It's the chai latte with oat milk and raspberry galette I savor with Dustin at my favorite cafe in Sedona. It's the coconut cream square donut from Donut Plant on Flatbush in Brooklyn, eaten on purpose, with no guilt attached.

But that's not where cleanish stops. It's also the protein-anchored, real-food meals that fill in the rest of the week, so that none of the above is a big deal. Cleanish doesn't collapse. That's the whole point.

There is a catch, though: cleanish is a paradox. It asks you to trust yourself, to let the pizza and the donut back in and not to go crazy. But the reason you needed cleanish in the first place is that you already dove all the way in. It asks the hardest thing of the person least practiced at it: have a little, and stop there.

I won't pretend that's easy. But it's the only work that lasts.

Cleanish isn't a diet. It's a lifestyle. I've applied it to parenting, to my marriage, to my work ethic, to how I exercise. Everywhere the all-or-nothing trap used to live, cleanish quietly moved in and gave me room to be human instead.

That's cleanish.

Not just how I want to eat. How I want to live.

Real talk on food, health, and feeling good in your body, no perfection required. Cut through the noise and support Cleanish.

I assumed that somewhere, someone official had written down what counts as “processed food.”

Turns out they haven't.

A year ago, the FDA and USDA asked the public to help them build the first federal definition of ultra-processed food. More than 5,000 comments came in. As of this month, they are still weighing competing frameworks, and the lawyers tracking it say there is no single accepted way to draw the line.

I want to sit with that, because I have spent years telling you to eat fewer processed foods, and I still think that's right. But I have been leaning on a word with no fixed meaning. So has every label, every article, and every wellness account you follow.

This also means that, when a package tells you it's clean, or minimally processed, or made with real ingredients, nobody is checking that claim against a standard. There isn't one yet.

This means the ingredient list is doing that job by default. It's the only part of the package that has to tell you the truth.

Curious which definitions they're actually weighing? Here's the reporting

69%

of U.S. adults say the rising cost of healthy food has made it harder for them to eat healthy.

49%

are highly confident they know which foods are healthy for them, which means about half of us aren't.

13%

name clean eating as the way they eat, while 28% say minimal or no processing is part of what makes a food healthy.

Eating clean starts as a great idea, but it stops working when the rules start running your week.

Sources: Pew Research Center (2025); International Food Information Council (2025)

One of Lacey's most-watched videos walks through her guidelines for eating clean. The video already makes this week's point: eat well most of the time, not perfectly. The trouble only starts when you treat them as strict rules instead of a general approach.

Watch on YouTube →

🥗 The dirt on eating clean

Clean eating starts as a genuinely good idea, and the experts in this piece say the trouble starts when it gets restrictive enough to start running your life.

💭 The Bottom Line → The wall we opened this issue with has a name, and plenty of people hit it. Eating clean tends to work right up until the rules start running the week.

☀️ Study challenges a common belief about vitamin D and sunlight

Summer sun alone did not lift vitamin D levels in the groups most at risk, so the season may not be doing the work we tend to assume it is.

🍬 Researchers discover why fructose doesn't satisfy hunger like glucose

Two sugars with identical calorie counts appear to reach the brain by different routes, at least in mice, which is one more reason the label doesn't tell you the whole story.

🔗 Study maps how exercise, sleep, diet, and mood connect in daily life

The four tend to move together rather than compete, so a decent night of sleep may be doing more for tomorrow's eating than any single food choice.

🧠 Your brain can keep improving into your 90s

A three-year study of nearly 4,000 adults found measurable gains at every age, including the oldest participants, which is a good reminder that starting late still counts.

Proving Her Wrong is Lacey Baier's personal essay newsletter on identity, hiding, and finally showing up as yourself.

When Pew asked 5,123 U.S. adults what matters when they decide what food to get, taste won by a wide margin. Healthiness came in third, behind price. People care about being healthy, but taste is what decides whether they'll eat something again tomorrow.

Extremely or very healthy: 21%

Somewhat healthy: 59%

Not too or not at all healthy: 20%

The catch is that middle number. Nearly six in ten people put themselves in the “Somewhat” column, which might be the most honest self-assessment in the whole survey. Most people are just not doing it perfectly, and they know it.

This is self-reported attitude data from a single survey taken in early 2025, so it captures what people say they value, not what actually ends up in the cart. Pew reported the cost figure as roughly six in ten, so we've marked it approximate rather than inventing a precise number.

Source: Pew Research Center, "Americans on Healthy Food and Eating" (May 2025), survey of 5,123 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 24 to Mar. 2, 2025

A childhood candy, the same familiar package, and an ingredient list that quietly changed underneath it. On what we carry home, and what we pass down. Read it →

Takeout pizza crust comes with an ingredient list you'd rather not read, and from-scratch means yeast and an hour of rising you don't have on a Friday night. This is the in-between: five ingredients, no yeast, no waiting, nothing you can't pronounce. Pizza night without the project. Get the recipe →

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