STOP JUICING: It's Not Healthy, And The Mentality Is Dangerous

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-stop-juicing-2013-11



***SNIP

We need protein and fat in our diets. We also need to consume enough calories to reassure our bodies we aren’t starving, or we risk all kinds of metabolic and electrical freak-outs. Plus, liquefying fruits and vegetables means getting rid of fiber, which aids digestion by sustaining the microflora in our gut. (LOL! Let’s obsess over how immaculate we can make our insides even though our intestines host trillions of bacteria.)

“We have cave-people bodies that are built for survival,” says Dr. Elizabeth Applegate, a senior lecturer in the nutrition department at the University of California–Davis. “We do a good job recouping our losses, but that doesn’t make juice cleanses at all healthy.” Nor are they effective at keeping off pounds. “On a cleanse diet, you shed water weight as your body breaks down its glycemic stores, but it comes back once you start eating adequately again.”

Yet the real JC sales pitch is not about microflora or nutrients or even—ostensibly—weight loss. It’s about toxins. You cleanse to flush your system of impurities, flecks of blight (some would say sin) lodged in your cells.

“We live in an age of what William James called ‘medical materialism,’ so instead of fretting about a fallen world, we speak of a poisoned one,” observes Shulevitz in her New Republic article. BluePrint and Life Juice are meant to scrub away the effects of our pizza Mondays, our martini weekends, our polluted air and water. Get right with your gut, the cleanse companies urge. Get right with God.



Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/11/juice_cleanses_not_healthy_not_virtuous_just_expensive.html#ixzz2lCgTUEd9

[Schema Thing]

1. horseshit with a few specs of truth.

Juice diets are a good change for most people. They aren't forever. This article makes it sound as if people get on juice diets and then stay on them.

"we need protein and fat"?? lol, no, no we don't. Not in the ridiculous quantities most of us get it.

"you shed water weight"?? lol, no you shed actual fat as you eat less calories (whilst getting more than your usual h20.


"we have cave bodies..."??? lol, ok, then you aren't going to be worried at all if we disrupt our normal high fat high protein diet for a short while, right? Dumbass.


But yeah, choosing to make smoothies with all that fiber is an even better change than juicing.

The best Paleo hack anyone could do is skip a meal or 10 every now and then.

[villager]

2. +1

n/t

[mike_c]

4. you've dismissed a senior lecturer in nutrition at a major research university...

...as a "dumbass" because you don't agree with her? Might you perhaps share your credentials so the rest of us have some sense of your qualifications in that regard? One can only assume that you likewise hold a doctorate in human nutrition and that you and she have an ongoing professional disagreement about the role of juice diets-- the alternative, of course, is that you're just someone with an ill informed opinion who calls experts dumbasses when their expertise conflicts with his/her closely held beliefs. Surely that's not the case....

[Schema Thing]

7. ;)

[trotsky]

11. ...

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

― Isaac Asimov

[Warpy]

10. Water weight comes off the first week

as glycogen stores break down, liberating water to be peed out. After that, not so much. Dieting plateaus exist because the body tries to rebuild those glycogen stores.

Juice diets (the more responsible ones) suggest eating one meal a day of lean meat or fish plus veggies and fruits and some morbidly obese people have done as well on them as their counterparts have on post surgical diets.

They're certainly not for everybody else and the people seeking digestive purity would be better served if they examined non dietary parts of their lives in their quest for purity.

[Ian David]

3. Where does the fiber supposedly vanish to when you turn things into juice?

And if juicing stuff actually does get rid of fiber, you can always just add powdered fiber to the juice.

Yes, your body does need SOME fat. So, why not throw an avocado in there, along with some flax seed?

[CrispyQ]

5. My juicer extracts the juice & churns out the pulp.

I have a Vitamix blender & you can blend anything in that thing! Stick a carrot in with a tiny bit of water & it will liquefy it. Carrot juice from my juicer is smooth & juice like. From the Vitamix, it is smooth, but there is definitely more texture/bulk. Even if you add water to thin it out, it still has more bulk.

[Schema Thing]

6. the fiber is separated out from the WATERY juice :)

good points though, it's easy enough to add some fiber back in. And fat as well, if you want it.

[HuckleB]

8. Another health scam, and adherents get religious about it.

[HuckleB]

9. 5 Experts Answer: Is There Such Thing as a Healthy Juice Cleanse?

http://www.livescience.com/35561-5-experts-answer-juice-cleanse.html

Why a juice cleanse is a waste of your time (and money)
http://www.hellawella.com/why-a-juice-cleanse-is-a-waste-of-your-time-and-money/6495

[xchrom]

12. interesting thread, isn't it?

[HuckleB]

13. Yup.

[flamingdem]

14. Juicing = expensive and often consumption of toxins in

the plastic containers. Especially if the juice is acidic.