Eating dirty means processed food with refined everything. This usually means less nutrients (empty calories) and a lot of food additives and toxins. One less talked about reason is the presence of rancid seeds oils, which have a lot of toxic effects. You are right that calories are what makes you fat, but at the same time, “dirty” foods can be anti-metabolic and drive fat gain by other patways…
Eating dirty doesn’t increase body fat. Eating clean doesn’t decrease body fat.
CICO determines your weight, any other factors have minimal effect.
Increased protein intake seem to reduce body fat based on a meta-analysis. You may think increasing protein means “eating clean” — may I introduce you to a bacon cheeseburger?
That isn’t to say there aren’t other health effects of eating a diet high in saturated fat. But your question was body fat and eating, so I’m not gonna get into that.
… will qualify that as research seems to show estrogenic compounds and endocrine disrupters increase adipose tissue and effect obesity prevalence.
In order of priority:
Energy balance is the primary factor in weight gain/weight loss. If you consistently take in more energy than you use you gain weight. If you consistently take in less energy than you use you lose weight. It is possible to eat a small amount of “dirty” food and lose weight. It is also possible to eat a surplus of “clean” food and gain weight.
Macronutrient breakdown is important, but it’s secondary to energy balance. For example, if you want to gain muscle you should be eating a high protein diet in surplus of your energy requirements. It’s important to have the protein in your diet as it’s crucial to muscle protein synthesis (gaining muscle). However, you generally won’t gain muscle on an energy deficit even if you are eating a high protein diet.
>If all these ideas are true, what are the true benefits to eating clean? Is it satiation? Or the presence of micros, or avoidance of bad fats preserving you cholesterol?
General health. You touched on a lot of factors there already. Various micronutrients are neccesary to keep your body functioning properly. Certain things are worse than you than others. For example, you could gain muscle with a diet that includes a lot of tran fat but trans fat is bad for you. In fact, “trans fat has no known health benefits.” Also, you can’t gain muscle if you die from scurvy or similar.
So while energy balance is the primary factor in weight gain or weight loss, the other properties of food are still important. They’re especially important to consider when considering your overall health.