Clean Eating vs Paleo Diet: What Are The Differences?

I tend to use terms like “clean eating” and “real food” a lot here. Although our particular system of healthy eating is unique, those terms are often the most convenient descriptors. However, using terms like “clean eating” and “real food” can result in confusion when other systems and philosophies also use similar terms. With that in mind, I’ve decided to write a series of blogs comparing clean eating with other popular philosophies of nutrition. We start today with clean eating vs paleo.

The simplest definition of clean eating goes something like this:

“Eat foods in a state as close to their natural state as possible.  Refined grains, refined sugars, overly-processed foods and artificial ingredients are avoided or minimized.”

In general, the focus of clean eating tends to be on ingredients rather than macronutrients such as carbs, fats, proteins, and calories. Your goal is basically just to eat real, whole foods.

Next in this comparison of clean eating vs. paleo, let’s run through a general definition and overview of the paleo diet.

The paleo diet is built on the theoretical diet of our human ancestors before the agricultural revolution (believed to be about 12,000 years ago). In other words, it is intended to mimic the diet of a human living in a time when there was no organized agriculture. Animals were not raised for slaughter, and fruits and vegetables were not grown in controlled farming environments.

Essentially, a human living during this time would have to hunt animals for meat and forage for plant foods that grow in the wild. For this reason, the term “hunter-gatherer” is often used in conjunction with the paleo diet.

The simplest way to think of the paleo diet: If paleo wouldn’t have had access to it, you shouldn’t eat it. The major items besides processed foods that end up getting eliminated on the paleo diet are grains, legumes, and most dairy.

The philosophy behind the diet is that our genes are programmed for the foods we evolved to eat before the agricultural (and later, the industrial) revolution. The changes that the industrial and agriculture revolutions have brought to our foods do not match our genes and we have not yet adapted to these new foods.

The table below gives a broad overview of various foods and whether or not they are allowed on the clean eating or paleo diets. Remember, these are broad definitions and you may find slightly different rules in different variations of these diets.

Clean eating programs tend to promote organic foods over conventional, grass-fed and pasture-raised meats over feedlot-raised meats, and local and sustainable sourcing. However, in my experience, this type of food sourcing is not usually a specific requirement in order for a food to be considered “clean eating”. Again, most programs will promote the very best food sourcing, and some may even make it a must-do in their particular version, but most programs do not tie sourcing directly with the term.

Clean eating focuses on ingredients and determines if an ingredient is healthy or not based on if it is unprocessed or minimally processed (e.g. whole grains would be unprocessed or minimally processed, refined grains would be processed). It does not typically place groups of foods or particular macronutrients off limits such as all carbs or all legumes.

The Paleo diet is also concerned with ingredients but uses the theoretical diet of our ancestors to determine if a food should be consumed or not. In addition to the processed foods that are off limits on the clean eating diet, all grains, legumes, most vegetable oils, and most or all dairy products are off limits on a paleo diet.