Crunchless diets is juice fasting safe?
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JUICE fasting has become a popular fad for those who believe that drinking nothing but liquefied raw fruits and vegetables is an ideal way to cleanse the body of toxins and even lose weight.
Under these dietary regimes, a person consumes nothing but juices for a period of time that may vary from days to even weeks. That’s not to say the practice is not without controversy. Web sites are full of advice on juice fasting, and some online purveyors around the world even offer juice deliveries to the doorstep — usually at high prices.
One of them in the US is RAW, offering a three-day packages of 18 bottles of juice for US$185. In the UK, Radiance Cleanse sells a similar package for 225 pounds (US$295).
Juice fasting is also catching on in China, where brands such as HeyJuice, VCleanse, ProJuice, Farmhouse Juice and FSJuice are spending big on marketing. Many of these vendors rely on celebrity endorsements to rope customers into what is hailed as a healthier lifestyle. Last year, Chinese actress and model Angelababy (born Yang Ying) invested in Beijing-based HeyJuice, using her venture capital fund AB Capital.
HeyJuice was founded in 2013 and now delivers juice packets to more than 40 cities across China.
TV host Li Chen is an investor in Shanghai-based FSJuice, which was founded in 2014.
The cold-press juices these companies sell are pretty expensive in China, too. Six 400-milliliter bottles of vegetable and fruit juices from HeyJuice — enough for one day’s use — cost 230 yuan (US$35).
The ads for these products are all cleverly attractive. The brands claim their products are formulated by world-class nutritionists, and their advertisements feature favorable testimonials from users.
Short-term juicing can deliver impressive weight loss of 2 to 3 kilos over three days, but questions arise about whether taking the “crunch” out of eating really is healthy for the body.
Sun Jianqin, director of the Clinical Nutrition Center at Fudan University Huadong Hospital, says juice fasts can be harmful and claims about their benefits can be misleading.
“Body detoxing is a false proposition,” she said. “The human body has its own metabolic system that’s adjusted through a balanced diet. Even if you have toxins in the body, you cannot flush them out by simply drinking fruit and vegetable juices.”
A juice diet provides water-soluble vitamins, fiber and hydration, but lacks necessary key nutrition like protein, iron and zinc that the human body needs. If one goes on a juice fast just for three days every week, 40 percent of the dietary structure becomes imbalanced and may lead to malnutrition. Even adding protein through products like nut milk doesn’t redress the imbalance, she said.
“Also, in fruit and vegetable juices, the sugar content is relatively high,” Sun explained. “Mostly it’s the fructose and glucose that are absorbed by the body very fast, and in the long run, that is harmful to health.”
Then, too, juice fasters deny themselves the pleasure of chewing food and enjoying flavors, which is part of the primitive instincts of the human animal.
“If you drink a bottle of cold juice in 5 or 10 minutes, you suddenly increase the pressure on the stomach and on your metabolism, overloading the body in a short period of time,” Sun said.
Replacing all meals with bottled juices is dull and boring as well, the doctor pointed out.
“I wouldn’t recommend the diet from a nutritional perspective because it’s not scientific and sustainable,” she said.
“Plus, drinking six bottles of juices a day as a diet is not fun at all. It’s turning diet into a formula of chemical elements.”
Of course, that’s not the type of evaluation companies in the business of juice fasting are keen to publicize. Nor do they mention the risks of purchasing packaged juices. In some cases, the source of the fruits and vegetables and how they are processed aren’t made clear.
Consumers depending on brand reputation and user testimonials may not know what they are really buying.
The obviously solution for some is to make their own juices at home with juicing machines. It’s certainly cheaper and more convenient. But the heat from the whirring blades of standard juicers can hurt the quality and nutrients in the fruits and vegetables. There are cold-press varieties of juicers that extract juice from raw foods without blades, but they are expensive to buy and devilish to clean.
Using juice fasting as a way to lose weight can be a trap. The kilos that might be shed initially come from loss of body fluid and proteins, not fat. That means the weight will quickly reappear when a fast is ended.
“Losing weight sensibly should be a medical and nutritional process that involves monitoring not only the weight but also body composition,” Sun said. “A qualified dietician is the best one to create tailored plans that combine a balanced diet and exercise regime. Body management is all about changing lifestyle, not seizing on gimmicks.”
Contrary to popular opinion, juices are not necessarily low-calorie. One cup of orange juice, or 248 grams, contains about 112 calories, mostly from the sugar content. It takes about four squeezed oranges to make one glass of juice, but, in reality, few people would eat that many oranges in one day.
Sun said it is important for people to eat more fruit and vegetables, but they should be consumed in their original form instead of juiced.
Summer is the best time to enjoy fresh fruits. The season brims with delicious varieties of peaches, watermelon, tomatoes, lychee, plums and other fruits easily purchased from street-side vendors or in supermarkets.
If freshness is what you see, try U-pick orchards in Shanghai suburbs or cities beyond.
Popular destinations for such fruit-picking excursions include cities of Ningbo, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Taizhou, Hangzhou and Wuxi.
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