Writer and former fast-food junkie Maggie Fazeli Fard gave an online Q&A with her readers about the journey to healthful eating. Here is an edited excerpt.
"Eating clean" usually means avoiding processed food, but there can be different understandings of the term. What do you use as your general guidelines?
Clean eating does mean different things to different people. I've been chastised for eating baby carrots because they undergo an industrial process to make them "baby." I try to eat food with minimal or no packaging. If it has a package, I look at the ingredients and make sure I recognize everything. I once heard that a good way to look at ingredients is to ask: "Would my great-grandmother have recognized this?"