You can’t open a paper or magazine these days without seeing some celebrity clutching their clear plastic container (just so we can see how virtuous they are!) of blended juice. You can almost see a faint halo around their crown chakra if you look through squinty eyes……..

All joking aside what we are witnessing throughout the last year or so is an explosion of an obsession with juicing and juice cleanses. Most nutritionists would agree that fruits and especially vegetables are some of THE most nutritionally dense foods on this earth. They are loaded with phytonutrients (plant compounds that support health e.g. antioxidants), they contain vitamins and minerals. They supply the body with an exogenous source of enzymes. They contain compounds that reduce our risk of cancer, heart disease and other killer diseases. So no arguments there.

There is however a problem when we extract something out of our diets and focus on it exclusively to the exclusion of other food groups. There are also a number of problems when we process that food to a form that our bodies are not really used to, in this case a juiced down variation of a whole food item.

I am going to look at a number of issues that need to be brought to the attention of the general public so that they can make an informed choice. Rather than jumping on a 7 day juice cleanse just because Madonna and Beyoncé are doing it lets look at some of the consequences and implications and facts pertaining to how the body functions and whether or not a juice cleanse is actually more of a help than a hindrance.

The Weight loss promise:

Many individuals jump on the juice cleanse band wagon in order to lose weight. Now I have a number of problems with this one. First of all liquids are far less satiating than whole foods. Juices leave the stomach in a very short time and so there satiation effects are very short lived. Not good news for dieters or those who don’t enjoy hunger pangs.

The thermic effect of food is a measure of how much energy is used to chew, digest, absorb and assimilate your food.  Between 5 and 30% of the calories of food are wasted just by digesting the food! Since we do not chew juices and they don’t really require much in the way of digestion we miss out on a pretty serious calorie burn by using them instead of a whole food.

People love to see the scale weight going down daily on these juice cleanses. It looks so gratifying. What the average punter still does not understand (despite years of explanation from the fitness industry) is that weight loss is not the same as fat loss! Your colon will simply empty out over the length of the fast, your glycogen stores will drop  and the loss of muscle mass will be high due to a negligible protein content in the diet. What one is Not losing is FAT! A juice cleanse is very conducive to catabolism –the wasting of lean body mass (your lean body mass is what’s left when the fat is taken away. We need this!). How many people get their body composition measured before and after a cleanse? Most people gain all of the “weight” they lost back after just a few days of eating normally again.

The Detox promise

If the main reason people go on a juice diet is to lose weight the second greatest reason is to detox. Now I am all for detox! The one thing that is right about the Juice craze is that toxicity is at last in the zeitgeist. What the general public fail to realise without an in depth education is that detoxification is a little more complicated than swilling a few disgustingly tasting beverages for a week.

Detoxification happens through hundreds if not thousands of reactions in the human body. It happens in phases (I and II) in the liver. Now the antioxidants, vitamins and phytochemicals found in your juice could really facilitate the Phase I part of detox really well. The problem arises with the fact that the compounds produced at the end of Phase I are usually even MORE TOXIC than the original toxins! They need to be swiftly converted into a form to be disposed of rapidly by the human body. This is Phase II and it is very highly dependent on amino acids, the building blocks of protein. So now on your juice diet 1 of two things happens. Since vegetable and fruit juices are an abysmal source of protein your body catabolises its own muscle tissue to provide those amino acids (your muscle mass drops and with it your metabolic rate, just in case we hadn’t slowed that down enough with the low calories). And that’s if you’re lucky. If for some reason your body is not able to supply the appropriate amino acids from breaking down your lean body mass you are left with a mass of non-soluble toxins which are more toxic than the original toxins which your body must reabsorb. This process is called auto-intoxication. Congratulations you’re now more toxic than when you started.

Fibre

Fibre is an amazing component of fruits and vegetables. It increases the satiation of a meal.  It delays gastric emptying keeping you fuller for longer by slowing down the post prandial rise in blood sugar. It mitigates the insulin response for those who may be interested in a leaner waste line. It increases the thermic effect of feeding just in case you might like to waste a few calories and make your fat loss quest easier. And it binds to toxins in your colon to sweep them out of your body more effectively ensuring that you don’t reabsorb any toxins that you are ready to get rid of. It also encourages the growth of good bacteria in the gut.

You would wish to remove fibre from your diet for what reason?

Juicing removes all of the fibre from your fruits and vegetables thereby negating all of its positive effects cited above. You will probably get very constipated on your juice cleanse. Not a happy scenario if you wish to detox as the body expels many toxins via the colon.

Fructose 

Some juice fasts contain a lot of fruits. This can be a problem due to soaring fructose content in the diet. Unless you can burn the fructose off with dynamic exercise you may run the risk of fructose overload and one is not exactly super energised during these fasts.  You see fructose does not raise insulin and so it cannot be readily stored in your muscles. Therefore it stays around in the tissues potentially creating havoc.

“Fructose is the guest that comes to dinner but never wants to leave” – Robert Crayhon Nutritionist

While fructose hangs around it creates substances called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGES for short). These literally age your body and damage your metabolism. While a small amount of whole fruits a day can work in the average person’s nutritional program 3, 4, 5 or more in a juice cleanse could be exposing you to the damaging effects of too much fructose especially if you’re not training with the volume and intensity of an Olympic athlete. Charles Poliquin, trainer of many Olympic and professional athletes once stated that a pro athlete can burn up to 30g of fructose a day while a non-athlete would burn around 15g. A medium apple contains 18.91 grams of sugar most of which is fructose (source National nutrient database USDA). Watch that you don’t blow your fructose budget on a juice cleanse!

So in summary juice cleansing could cause muscle wasting thereby reducing the metabolic rate making you even more flabby. You could end up more toxic than when you started and you may accelerate the aging process. And all of this to lose a few pounds that will come back with a vengeance as soon as you resume your normal diet.

Why not do yourself a favour and get in touch with a Metabolic Typing™ Advisor or a Biosignature Practitioner who can set you straight on effective nutritional methods to achieve your goals. Remember just because something is in fashion does not mean it is a sound or useful practice.