I recently attended a “wellness” festival and was told that #JERF is a food trend set for big things. For its , it represents the distillation of many dietary philosophies into a simple, if slightly annoying, acronym. Many also claim it is the key to tackling the obesity crisis.
JERF stands for Just Eat Real Food, and appears to have grown out of the death throes of “clean eating”, a movement widely criticised for attaching a potentially damaging dichotomy of clean and dirty to food choices. JERF claims to be less judgemental, encouraging a focus on fresh fruits and vegetables, unrefined oils, meat from animals raised in pastures, eggs, seeds, nuts and fermented dairy products.
So, is JERF an approach to eating rooted in evidence, one that might be described as sensible and healthy? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as one recent small study shows. It compared the effects of two different breads on the metabolism of 20 people in a randomised trial.
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One was a traditionally made wholegrain sourdough, the kind of loaf that costs a small fortune when sold to you by a tattooed, biodynamic hipster called Rufus. The other was an industrially produced white loaf.
Marketing tropes
Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers found no significant differences in any major metabolic markers regardless of which was eaten, with markers related to risk of type 2 diabetes the main focus. Our metabolism seems to care little for price tags and artisanal “real food” marketing tropes.
Like other dietary fads, JERF is a loose doctrine, a restrictive and judgemental diet masquerading as a holistic lifestyle. Followers are pushed into rejecting perfectly sensible choices for not being “real” enough, in much the same way that the clean eating movement demonised foods as “dirty” for various arbitrary reasons.
If something isn’t local, seasonal or artisanal, then it is unlikely to be considered real. If your meat isn’t raised in the right conditions and your dairy cows aren’t milked by moonlight to the sound of chanting Tibetan monks, then they too will probably not make the grade. If you aren’t buying unwashed, misshapen organic vegetables from distressed crates fashioned out of reclaimed Radiohead albums, then your choices will probably be deemed fake. And by implication, you too will be fake.
This language is particularly insidious in our social media obsessed age, where keeping things “real” is considered an essential moral trait and being “fake” the ultimate online taboo. These are potentially just as damaging associations to attach to food as “clean” and “dirty”.
Obesity solution?
Fortunately, away from wellness festivals all foods are real. Although there are many manufactured products that shouldn’t be eaten to excess, healthfulness is defined by chemical composition, not by the price tag or the kitchen or factory in which it was made.
JERF isn’t an answer to complex problems such as obesity. The unsettling truth is that obesity is a deep, structural problem that extends beyond individual dietary choices. For reasons that aren’t well understood, some people find maintaining a constant weight easy. This can fool them into believing that they have discovered a hidden secret, so leading them to spew out meaningless platitudes like “Eat Clean” or #JERF in a misguided attempt to help.
If this was completely harmless it would be easy to ignore. But the damaging associations, the shame attached to perfectly sensible food choices, the reinforcement of class divides, and the stigmatisation of obesity as a disease of personal choice is far more likely to cause lasting damage than provide meaningful solutions.
Cell Metabolism
Read more: A loaf of bread emits half a kilo of CO2, mainly from fertiliser; There is now a sixth taste – and it explains why we love carbs
