David Smart, president of the Craft Bakers’ Association (CBA) has claimed the clean eating movement is a “cutesy one-liner aiming to sell books.”

Clean eating has dominated social media in recent month with 22 million Instagram posts using the hashtag #cleaneating. The posts consist of various healthy foods and juices that are regarded as natural ingredients, unprocessed and have no refined sugars.

Smart, managing director of Greenhalghs in Bolton, appeared last month on ITV’s This Morning discussing specialty breads with presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, and claiming that supermarkets were churning out substandard products. Ever since his passionate outburst, the baker has taken social media platforms by storm, with Twitter followers calling for him to have his own show and to appear on This Morning regularly.

And he did appear again on the show this week, in a segment on so-called clean eating.

Commenting on his recent fame, Smart told British Baker: “I’ve had 300,000 views on my Facebook page and even a mention from one of the comedians at Channel 4’s Comedy Gala that happened last month at the 02 Arena in London.

“When I was making the pie on Wednesday, the products that I made are 100% natural. By using the word clean, it is wrong, the terminology is wrong. Stick to the basics.”

Barcroft Productions has also been in contact with the baker to discuss an offer of television work in the future. The production company makes prime-time factual TV programmes which discuss human interest for UK broadcasters. 

Last month David Smart gave an impassioned defence of artisan bread on BBC Radio 5 Live.