That's a lot of questions to answer, haha. Look at it this way: one day, you will die. No matter how much healthy food you eat, no matter how much sleep you get, and no matter exercise you do, you will die. Sure, living a healthier life can extend your lifespan, but you may get hit by a car, your genetics may predispose you to a heart attack or cancer, you just never know. All that we know is that life ends in death and everthing will eventually kill you.
So what matters is how good you feel between now and then. Some people can eat whatever they want and feel great. My brother lives on Oreos and 4 hours of sleep, and I will still never be as good as he is at bodybuilding because he simply has better genetics than I do. Some people are overweight. Some people have low energy. Some people don't feel good. Changing your diet is the key factor in feeling better, barring having an incurable disease or something.
There is no universally accepted version of "clean" because eating clean is all about setting goals. What if you're Vegan? What if you have awesome genetics and can live on junk food and still get great results? Results may vary. In general, however, eating clean means lean meats, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and nuts, stuff like that. Eating unhealthily generally means fast-food like McDonalds, junk food like Pepsi and Snickers bars, fried food, Pop-tarts, that sort of stuff.
You can get into the philosophy aspect of it and question every nitty-gritty detail until the cows come home, or you can get realistic and decide on a goal and make a plan to achieve your goal. Most people want to get skinny and get in shape and feel good and have energy all day; eating junk food generally doesn't get you into that position, so that's what people mean by "eating clean". Don't get hung up on the semantics; it's like when people get uptight when they say "I want to lose weight" when they really mean "I want to lose fat", because weight implies both fat & muscle. You get the idea?
Paleo fits just fine under the lean meats/complex carbs/good fats/enough sodium guidelines. I more or less eat Paleo already due to food allergies (no dairy, no grains like wheat), but I'm not advertising as the best diet out there, because the best diet out there is the best diet for your goals. Personally I think the Thrive Diet is the best diet on the planet (go watch the Forks over Knives documentary on Netflix sometime), but that brings its own limitations in terms of eating out and eating the foods you love - but it also gives you awesome results.
But again, it ultimately boils down to your goals. If you want to get really strong, the Stronglifts 5x5 program is great and you'll need to drink a lot of milk. If you want peak energy, the Vegan Thrive Diet is the best I've found. If you want to eat gourmet food and still be healthy, there are Paleo recipes for that. You can tailor and tweak diets and pick and choose systems to fit your goals. Some of my friends have no health & fitness goals, don't care about being overweight, and want to eat out at fancy restaurants all the time. That's perfectly fine because life is a choose-your-own-adventure game where you get to make the choices.
As far as the eating smaller meals to lose weight, it's more about what you eat than when - I prefer smaller meals more often because I stay full all day, feel good all day, and it curbs cravings because I'm always full, even when I see a donut or other goodie. If you want to know more, PM me so we don't get this thread too derailed I lost 50 pounds when I switched to eating small, healthy meals, so I can tell you it definitely works, but so does a lot of other stuff. All depends on what you want to do, what your goals are and what you're willing to change to achieve them.
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