Myths

• Juicing is a great way to lose weight
• Juicing is ultimate for ensuring you get all your nutrients
• Juicing is cleansing for the body and rids it of all toxins
• Juicing will help improve my skin and keep it fresher and younger
• Juicing by its detox quality will greatly improve my quality of life
• Cold-pressed organic juices are the best for a juicing detox

Facts

• Rest TEMPORARILY assured your weighing scales will most definitely show a drop BUT at a very steep price. You’ve “lost weight” because you’ve starved yourself for a week. The body is forced to tap into its glycogen and protein-aceous stores (not fat!) to fuel your body and the loss of muscle is highly detrimental. The usage of these fuel sources pulls a lot of water as well from your body and THIS is the “weight loss” you see/feel. Go back to eating normal foods and your starved body will pile on double the pounds to prep for another ‘drought’ like this.
• Seems like it’s just what the doctor ordered, right? Lot’s of fruits and veggies worth your weight in a diet! Not even close. Juicing squeezes the fructose syrup out of the foods and the fibre-mineral-vitamin-antioxidant rich pulps and peels are left behind. The only nutrient you get is sugar and a sugar-rich diet is terrible
• NO! Your body has evolved thousands of thousands of years to become the cleverest ‘machine’ there is. It is fully equipped to detox by itself through some magic organs like the lungs, kidney, bowels and liver. If you were in fact “contaminated” or “polluted” as the sellers of these juices would want you to believe, believe you me you’d be very very ill.
• Juicing is essentially cutting out huge food groups and forcing you to be on a sugary diet for a period of time. Food companies would have you believe this is precisely what you need to flush out toxins (which ones they’ll NEVER state) lurking within and underneath your skin. Your skin needs fat and protein along with an array of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and water to maintain its healthy glow; things this diet lacks. Anyone claiming that juice diets have left their skins feeling refreshed is demonstrating a Placebo effect!
• If having dramatic mood swings, feeling irritable perpetually, having to put up with intense lethargy and splitting headaches is considered a better quality of life then yes, juicing will do what the “labels” state. The scarcity of amino acids means the brain cannot produce serotonin or the feel-good substance to uplift your mood.
• Cold-pressed juices are great for ensuring that you lose the fiber and nutrient rich pulp and peel of your fruits and veggies and retain just sugar and water. Further, the fruit being organic only means there aren’t any harmful pesticides on it and doesn’t mean they aren’t calorific (like mango and grape) 

Pros

• Like any other trending fad diet what the Juicing concept can do for people is make them experience a psychological shift into feeling motivated and adopt a healthier, cleaner lifestyle in terms of eating habits and physical exercise. 
• Another pro of a diet like this is it forces you to instill discipline into your routine and cut out processed foods and calorific items. Long-term if this discipline is continued it could lead to the even trendier concept of “clean eating”.
• For people with food intolerances a juicing diet could be slightly beneficial for their symptoms by eliminating the stimulant food triggers eg. dairy, wheat, nuts etc
• People rarely obtain their ideal fiber intake of 45-50g a day and if the fruits & veggies are juiced in a blender this diet could help them achieve that goal

Cons

• Juicing Diets are exorbitantly priced. Literally people’s salaries are wasted away in something that offers practically zero benefit whatsoever to their health.
• Side-effects of another deprivation starvation diet like this include lethargy, fatigue, headaches, irritability, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), constipation, dizziness, nausea and diarrhea
• The weight gain is instantaneous once the person goes off this diet and the pounds pile on tenfold
• A juicing diet is severely lacking in protein and this is THE macronutrient which is essential for fat and calorie burning long term. The deficiency of fats and carbohydrates as well slows down the metabolism of the individual
• A juicing “detox” diet can actually raise the toxicity levels of your body because it’s seriously lacking in FIBER. Fiber is what carries toxic metabolic waste out of your body through the intestine.

• Juicing is DANGEOROUS for Diabetics or anyone with insulin resistance. The sugar from the fruits is rapidly absorbed and the sugar levels in the blood can fall to deadly levels for Diabetics. Without the fiber and protein there is an absence of stability and “feeling fuller longer” and the individual will find himself/herself hungry very quickly. This is highly stressful to the body and jolts the system each time
• In reality this type of eating closely mimics the binge-and-purge style of Bulimics and with the distorted sense of rationale it can induce anorexia in individuals. People quite easily become obsessed with the pattern and avoid real food for weeks on end

My Take

Remember when juice was just juice? A lovely cool, fruity beverage to go with some cereal or on an afternoon stroll by the beach? Guess I’m the only one who’s ancient in her thoughts because today juice is all about being a magical potion that will cleanse your body and attack every last fat cell in your body.

I can tell you that when I come across people (many in number) who are doing the “juicing detox” or “juicing cleanse” I yo-yo from wanting to guffaw at their stupidity or roll my eyes spectacularly at their ignorance. The idea that you can wash away your calorific sins is the perfect antidote to our fast-food lifestyles and alcohol-lubricated lives. You have been warned about the brutality of my next statement – IT. IS. A. SCAM!

Juicing is currently a 5 billion dollar business and one that is projected to grow from anywhere between 4-8% in 2016. High stakes mean that the marketing of the concept is furious and aggressive and yet not one of the manufacturers can name one single toxin we’re meant to be ridding our bodies of.

Juicing apart from giving you a false sense of security is actually toxic to your body by overloading it with only a few nutrients without a method to eliminate it from the body. Want to really detox then stop smoking, start exercising, drink a minimum of 3 litres of water a day, cut back massively on the alcohol and eat a well-balanced diet free of processed foods! And if you must have juice then ditch the juicer and instead throw the fruit/vegetable into a blender and puree it thereby preserving all of its goodness.