Juicing: Healthy detox or diet trap?

cwsreddy

I'm doing it to test a theory about mucosal production in my throat.

Have you tried cutting out dairy? If you have a slight dairy intolerance, that might be the cause of the mucous in your throat. I have known several people who had bad sinus infections, etc, and they were much better after cutting out dairy.

If your juice cleanse works, great, but if when you go back to eating regularly and your mucous returns, you may want to give the dairy issue a try.

if it works I wouldn't go back to my old ways. For a while I cut out dairy, then put it back because I didn't see much of a difference, but things change. May look back into it if this doesn't produce results.

ImaWaterBender

Everything in moderation. I drink about one glass of juice a day.

mjbself

Depends.

There are many detox and juicing diets out there, but people forget that once you do the detox, you can't just go back to your old dieting habits of eating large amounts of refined sugars, processed foods, and modified grains. A detox is an opportunity to restart your body. It gives your organs time to get rid of all the toxins from foods like refined sugars and processed food chemicals that the body was never intended to process. It is very stressful for the organs, like the liver.

If you have no intention of modifying your lifestyle, then yes they are a diet trap. If you do modify your lifestyle to reduce or eliminate these items, it give the body the opportunity to restart and is a healthy detox.

Now I do not juice where all the fiber and pulp is removed, seems so wasteful and concentrates the amount of sugar in the juice your created because you need twice as much. I pulverize the whole thing until its liquid. If you want to remove the pulp, I would suggest juicing a normal amount of the fruits and veggies and then dilute with water to keep the sugar in check.

Just my opinions based on my experiences.

Maleficent0241

Most people who juice frequently don't throw the pulp away - they save it and use it in other recipes (added to soups, baked goods and in homemade veggie or bean burgers etc). Juicing removes fiber and without the fiber the nutrients get into your system quickly (since they don't have fiber slowing digestion down) . It's great for people who have digestive issues, are healing from surgery or not feeling well - they get a high quantity of nutrients with little effort. Smoothies are thicker because they keep the fiber in which keeps you full longer but they can be harder on the digestive system . People who juice or do smoothies tend to prefer one over the other but both have their benefits.

Just stop. Stop. Please. Make it stop.

ETA: And adieu.

To be fair, there is partial truth in what was said. Fiber does slow digestion down (as does fat and to a lesser degree protein), and for people with certain digestive issues, reducing fiber as much as possible allows the stomach to actually empty food and get something out of it. At the peak of my digestive disease I couldn't have more than 15g of fat and 10g of fiber per day, as the food would sit in my stomach for 12+ hours and make me extremely ill. Juice (though I just bought mine, didn't juice at home) was the only way for me to get any "fruit". That said, if you don't have a digestive disease that makes you not digest food, go for the fiber

Rage_Phish

Why do you seem to think your intestinal surface should be squeaky clean after each dump? What exactly do you think your intestines are supposed to look like, that shiny pink velvet-carpet image they put in the anatomy books?

This is a good point. I think now we're getting closer to the source of Reddy's problems.
*puts on caring therapist voice*
I ask you, Reddy, how does this high expectation for colon purity affect your self-esteem? Do your intestines have performance anxiety? What is it they say about sitting down and working it out with a pencil...

donut?

just terrible posting

cwsreddy

Why do you seem to think your intestinal surface should be squeaky clean after each dump? What exactly do you think your intestines are supposed to look like, that shiny pink velvet-carpet image they put in the anatomy books?

This is a good point. I think now we're getting closer to the source of Reddy's problems.
*puts on caring therapist voice*
I ask you, Reddy, how does this high expectation for colon purity affect your self-esteem? Do your intestines have performance anxiety? What is it they say about sitting down and working it out with a pencil...

donut?

just terrible posting

ok ok ok.

pop tart?

neandermagnon

I think juicing is a good detox for a short period of time. Let's say up to 10 days. I can't detox yet but can't wait to. I would do a juice detox but eat small meals at the same time like salads, soups, lots of beans and veggies. I try to juice at least once a day. I love the documentary fat, sick and almost dead with Joe Cross. I actually meet him twice.

But why do you need to detox? And why would you detox, then reintroduce the 'toxins' into your system? I genuinely don't understand what juice detox's are supposed to achieve?

Also it's important to note that I'm mostly playing devil's advocate in this thread. Not once did I mention toxins yet somehow it's been brought up quite a lot. I'm doing it to test a theory about mucosal production in my throat. Simple as that! But let's please keep flaming - it's awfully fun.

your body can build up pounds, literally pounds of fecal matter and other crap (hehe) within your large intestine and colon that aren't removed during typical... purging. cleanses get the rest of it out.

But what about all the homo erectus people? How did they purge their colons when they didn't even know what a colon was or why poop came out of their bottoms?




Sorry but what you said is ridiculous. If fecal matter really was building up in your intestines, then that would be a medical emergency. Natural selection has removed any animals from the gene pool whose intestines couldn't empty themselves without some form of intervention. (I say animals, because it's not just humans who have a digestive system)

eewww I didnt realize I messed up this reply. Here it is for easier viewing:

I'm no anthropologist, so correct me if im wrong, but homo erectus ate an awful lot of veggies, and not so many man-made chemicals or deep fried foods, yes?

Also it's important to note that I'm mostly playing devil's advocate in this thread. Not once did I mention toxins yet somehow it's been brought up quite a lot. I'm doing it to test a theory about mucosal production in my throat. Simple as that! But let's please keep flaming - it's awfully fun.

No-one knows how much veggies Homo erectus ate. They ate raw meat though, probably including raw meat scavenged from other predators, e.g. lion kill, which would probably kill a homo sapiens person as our immune system isn't really geared up for eating carrion, and we're descended from humans who cooked foods (later Homo erectus cooked food, but early Homo erectus didn't). Cooking removes a lot of potentially harmful bacteria and some toxins.

Deep fried food does not change the fact that fecal matter does not remain in the human gut. Eating more veggies might help prevent constipation, but we're not discussing standard medical and dietary treatments for constipation (which would be to drink more water, eat more fibre and ensure adequate fat is in the diet) - we're talking about "cleanses". While an unbalanced diet is unhealthy, the remedy for that is to make an effort to eat a balanced diet and there's no need for such cleanses. Yes Homo erectus would have naturally eaten a balanced diet, but nothing in palaeolithic diets resembles the idea of "cleanses" and lower palaeolithic people (i.e. pre use of fire) would have been exposed to more toxins, not less, due to eating raw meat, at least some of which was scavenged rather than hunted. Like eating raw road kill, if you want a modern analogy.

Homo erectus didn't do anything remotely like a cleanse. Neither do other primate species. Or other wild animals. So the idea that modern people are some kind of evolutionary freaks whose colons need cleansing in spite of our genus living as hunter-gatherers without either the knowledge of or access to such cleanses is really quite silly. Yes of course eat a balanced diet, including plenty of water, which our kidneys and colon need to function right. But that's as far as it goes. And if by "cleanse" you mean "drink more water and eat more fibrous veggies" then that's not what most people mean by cleanse. They mean specific products such as concentrated vegetable juices that are supposed to remove toxins that normal food, gut function etc can't do. Additionally, removing the fibre from vegetables and consuming them as a juice rather than whole is likely to make constipation worse or more likely to occur than eating whole fruit and veggies. Homo erectus only ate whole foods because they had no way to refine them. They certainly couldn't juice them!!