Clean Eating Goals: The "How" it's Done

Someone brought up clean eating on one of my threads. Do you have clean eating goals? What's your criteria for clean eating?

I eat healthy. Do I always eat clean? No. But what about those home cooked meals that are borderline clean? What determines whether they fit into the clean eating category?

On one end of the spectrum, I would think that whole food vegan would be the extreme of clean eating.

At the other end, anything that's processed into a powder and reconstituted with water and sprayed with fat is not clean eating. So that would be something like Ramen noodles. Or mac and cheese.

Hot dogs. A fake processed food. Very far from clean eating. Right? Do we agree?

What about this? You want to treat yourself to a steak dinner. So you have grass-fed beef from the farm, whole potatoes, fresh broccoli and fresh salad.

Because it's red meat, do you consider it clean or not clean? What if I made a gravy using the meat drippings and I added butter and flour? Clean or not clean?

What about bottled salad dressings versus homemade? To me, it's cleaner if you make your salad dressing out of olive oil, Greek yogurt, herbs and seasonings.

But in some cases one might want to save time by picking up a bottled dressing which mostly has fresh ingredients but maybe a few extra things. Then eat it over a fresh salad with cooked rice and let's say some baked chicken breast.

Clean or not clean?

I'd love to hear your best clean eating recipes or thoughts about what clean eating means to you, or what you've read about clean eating. Thanks!