What it is: A detox diet book that touts weight loss as a bonus. The liquid-only program consists of fresh vegetable juices and purées, which you prepare; supplements, including antioxidant-rich powdered vegetable and fruit drink concentrates, available at health food stores; and plenty of colonics and enemas.
Duration: You can choose from the 21-day program (recommended annually), seven-day cleanse or two-day weekend cleanse.
Claims: The 22 servings of fruits and vegetables taken daily, every two hours in small doses, help you shed toxins. Because they exceed nutritional needs, you feel full, stop obsessing about food and lose weight.
The theory behind it: The juices are supposed to stimulate the cells to cleanse themselves and flush toxins out of the body (how, specifically, is not clear). Weight loss is a perk.
Restrictions: No chewing is allowed. You have to love vegetables to subsist on them, puréed, for 21 days.
Most outrageous claim: "When we don't chew, our digestive system can rest," states DeLuz, freeing up energy to engage in more "repair and rebuilding."
What the experts say: The only redeeming quality about this diet (or any detox diet), according to Nelson, is that it encourages increased fluid intake, which is healthy because most of us do not drink enough fluids. However, the list of dangers is long.
• First, no expert recommends colonics or enemas for healthy people.
• To lose a pound a day, you would have to eat nothing and burn an extra 1,800 calories per day for a total deficit of 3,500 calories. Yet you're supposedly consuming 2,200 calories daily in vegetable purees (though there are no serving-size instructions). It's impossible, says Nelson. "You would have to be awfully close to starvation to lose that much weight."
• The diet also excludes entire food groups such as dairy, protein, essential fatty acids and insoluble fibre (which, ironically, is the kind found in the whole grains we need to keep our intestines healthy, says Nelson).
• Our digestive system does not need a break – and, for the record, it still has to work to digest purées. An all-liquid diet lacking in key nutrients over more than a day or two can actually impair the body’s natural ability to repair and rebuild itself, she adds.
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