Is Juice Feasting for Real?

December 3, 2008 9:34 PM

Who has experience on an extended juice feast?

I have to admit that initially a 92-day juice fast/feast (see website) sounds a bit like overkill. But also, a good way to detox while still getting all your vitamins and minerals. I'm not talking about a Master Cleanse, but an actual rather balanced diet of fruit and veggie juices. Um, and enemas?!
Does anyone have any actual experience with a long juice fast/feast because as inspiring as the testimonials are, I'm a little suspect.
Or maybe it's just that I'm lazy and I want to hear that these people are quacks?
They claim juice feasting accomplishes:
1. Ending the addition of toxic/foreign/depleted foods into our bodies.
2. Drinking Nutrient Dense Living Juices with Superfoods/Supplements
3. Physiological Rest
4. Removing Uneliminated Waste Matter in Small Intestine and Colon
5. Hydration
6. Removing Uneliminated Toxins in the Blood, Lymph, and at the Cellular Level throughout the body
7. Alkalinization
8. Reduction/Eradication of Inflammation/Chronic Pain
9. Oxygenation
10. Rejuvenation of Metabolism and Digestive System
11. Restoration of Nutrients
12. Rebuilding
I'd like to hear good and bad experiences from people who have tried this. Is it worth it?

posted by hulahulagirl to health & fitness (18 comments total)

I personally know people who swear by juice/water fasts and benefit from them; however, I don't believe it's more psychosomatic than due to any of the reasons listed below:

1. Ending the addition of toxic/foreign/depleted foods into our bodies.
If it's labeled "toxic", you probably shouldn't be eating it. What is "foreign" food? Are they implying that imported fruit juice is bad for you? Same goes for a depleted food. The above statement means absolutely nothing.

2. Drinking Nutrient Dense Living Juices with Superfoods/Supplements
I see you'll be buying their products?

3. Physiological Rest
Does that mean you can fully expect to feel lethargic while fasting? Consider that the human body did not evolve to rest beyond the sleep you should be getting every night.

4. Removing Uneliminated Waste Matter in Small Intestine and Colon
Read this.

5. Hydration
Any healthy (as in, it keeps you alive) diet will supply that.

...to be continued, have to go.
posted by halogen at 10:06 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Steve Pavlina just did this over the last month and blogged extensively about it- what he ate, how he felt, his dreams, his mental clarity, etc. (He intended to go the full 90, but quit around Day 30, BTW.)
posted by pseudostrabismus at 10:07 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You also have to ask yourself why drinking a bunch of fruit and vegetable juice is qualitatively any different than just eating fruits and vegetables with a glass of water. It gets chewed up to a near-liquid consistency in your mouth and broken down in your stomach even further. Magic blender?
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:11 PM on December 3, 2008

Or maybe it's just that I'm lazy and I want to hear that these people are quacks?

They're quacks.
posted by grouse at 10:24 PM on December 3, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

My rule of thumb: Anyone who uses the word 'toxic' or 'toxin' is a fraud, licensed medical pros and OSHA excepted. It's been remarkably reliable so far.

I'd be somewhat concerned about the effect on blood sugar levels. Solidity of food helps move its calories into your bloodstream more gradually. So does consuming protein and fat. Only way I can see a juice fast not requiring you to dose all day long is if there was some kind of ... bean juice going on. (Hmmm + yechhhhh = ?)

"Living Juices," now? Meaning that they were prepared within moments of consumption, so the cellular machinery is still running? Or what?

"Alkalinization": Of what? Note, if what you eat can materially affect the pH of your body in general, you've got a disorder: In most bodies, breathing is entirely sufficient to remove excess acid from the blood (well, breathing and maybe peeing), and blood pH regulation trickles down to regulate everything else. Or did they just mean alkalinization of your gut? (I'm not sure how consuming a lot of fruit is going to help with that, either, but whatever...)

"Physiological rest": If the efforts expended by your stomach and intestines are a significant drain or hardship, again, you've got worse problems than what juice can fix. If it's a reference to the fact that generally fasting leads to lethargy, well, yeah, but ninety days of lethargy leads to atrophy and is not generally gonna do you any good.
posted by eritain at 10:31 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Generally. In general. As a general rule. Sir, Private Skeptic reporting for duty, General Rhetoric, sir.
posted by eritain at 10:34 PM on December 3, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

OxCAF is right, your stomach doesn't care if your food was blended in your mouth or in a blender. That first link you posted is very suspicious, here's some claims they made.

create a deeper, more joyful experience of life for yourself, free of physical discomfort and pain
Eh, I eat my food solid and I feel just fine.

experience mental clarity and freedom from "brain fog
This sounds very hippy to me.

enjoy your body more, as it becomes the correct weight for your height
This is probably the main reason most people go on juice feasts, but once you start on whole food again you're more than likely to just gain all the weight back. Diets are temporary and a bad way to think about losing weight. To lose weight and keep it off takes a lifestyle change that you're going to stick with for the long term.

gain more self confidence
More than likely associated with the weight loss thing.

eliminate the need for chemical pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs
Whoa, that's pretty bold.

have consistant energy and emotional stability throughout the day
or be pulling your hair out b/c all you want to do is eat a nice solid juicy steak.

effortlessly move away from the foods that create illness because you now get FAR MORE pleasure from feeling healthy than you ever did from eating sugary, processed foods.
I eat processed foods like it's my job and I'm in pretty good shape and haven't been sick for about 10 years, I did get strep once though but I dare the juice diet claim immunity to strep.

Whoa!! even more crazy is I just found out that site makes you pay!! What a load of garbage. Sorry to sound so cynical about this juice diet thing but not only does it seem wacko but dangerous if people really start to believe their claims.
posted by BrnP84 at 10:47 PM on December 3, 2008

I didn't do juice flushing but I did something called 'shank prakshalana', which is flushing with hot salty water. I think it's a better deal: you definitely feel like a crapload of *something* was removed from your body (whether to call it toxins or something else is up to you, but it feels really good); it takes a day to do and another day when you feel too weak for hard work, not in a bad way but just not enough energy for intensive work; it's not a commercial thing, just sea salt (a better slightly more expensive type tastes more palatable) and hot water. The only inconvenience is that for a few hours you have to keep running back to the bathroom every once in a while. Google for this thing and there's many sites that have instructions.

Basically the way it works is that when water is salty it goes through intestines instead of being absorbed into bloodstream, it should be between warm and hot like a soup you'd drink because colder water would make you lose too much internal heat (I think that's the reason, anyway), and as the water goes through, it flushes everything that's not good. I did it about half a dozen times and it did not do anything bad for me, only good. At the end you end up drinking last glasses of water and it goes right through the other end in a few minutes. You know you're done when it's just clear water going out.

One thing that I found out that I did not see mentioned on any sites was that at first salty water tastes really off-putting, impossible to drink. I was unable to drink more than a glass or two the first time. The next time, much easier. Third time really easy. You get used to the taste (a few weeks passed between each try).

One other thing is that some sites recommend boiling vegetables like celery and using the water if you can't drink salty water at all, but that did not work for me. Only salty water worked.

Traditionally the whole thing is done 4 times a year, when the seasons change, so that the body is ready to switch to the foods available in the new season.
posted by rainy at 11:05 PM on December 3, 2008

With anything like this I'm not sure it's about the physical as much as the mental. I think it is an effective way to get yourself started on a healthier way of eating if that's your goal - because you can more easily resist temptation after such a test.

But the toxin removal etc etc - just not eating processed or fat laden foods is going to make you feel better and less "clogged" up really.
posted by gomichild at 11:36 PM on December 3, 2008

Wow, what astonishes me about that gumf is how often it directly contradicts the truth. If you want to remove waste matter from your colon and have constant energy throughout the day the absolute last thing you want to be doing is consuming nothing but fibre-free, protein-free, high-sugar, not-even-any-fibre-between-you-and-all-that-sugar juice, for pete's sake.
Juice is delicious, but it's only minimally better for you than a chocolate bar; if you're drinking it from a carton it probably has so few vitamins left that it's no better for you than a chocolate bar, and if you're looking to it as a complete diet for any period of time it's worse for you than a chocolate bar, because at least the chocolate bar has a certain amount of protein and fat, both of which humans need to get from somewhere, as we use them in our bodies all the time.
Unless your liver or kidneys are failing, you do not need to 'detox' - you have underlings doing that for you. Your part of the bargain is to supply your organs with the substances they need to keep functioning properly. By giving them nothing but juice, you will be letting them down.
posted by Acheman at 11:52 PM on December 3, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

It was hardly a 92-day fast, but once, as a starving student, I ate almost nothing but fruit for several weeks.

At first, I felt vaguely hungry, and more to the point, my body felt vaguely empty.

After three or four days of that disconcerting feeling, it suddenly adjusted.

The peculiar consequence was that I suddenly became *much* more energetic, and needed a good deal less sleep. I started bouncing out of bed in the morning, which was (and now is) quite unlike me.

This fruitarian idyll ended when I went to visit a relative for an extended period, and was reintroduced to my customary meat-heavy diet.

I'm not a food or nutrition freak, and I have no idea what would have happened, for good or ill, had I maintained that course-- and yes, it's entirely possible that the result I experienced was largely placebo (though again, I hadn't expected that surge of energy-- I was just being cheap)-- but, hey, my perceived experience was as described above.

YMMV.
posted by darth_tedious at 12:51 AM on December 4, 2008

You also have to ask yourself why drinking a bunch of fruit and vegetable juice is qualitatively any different than just eating fruits and vegetables with a glass of water. It gets chewed up to a near-liquid consistency in your mouth and broken down in your stomach even further. Magic blender?

Juicing increases the sugar content and removes nutrients.

The increase in sugar/fructose content and hydration is the likely explanation for the oft touted feeling of increased energy, as described by darth tedious.
posted by tallus at 2:56 AM on December 4, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think what you really need to ask yourself is, what happens to your body when you deny it protein for 3 months.
posted by missmagenta at 3:21 AM on December 4, 2008

starvation can induce a kind of euphoria. (it's part of what makes anorexia so difficult to treat.)

when you go on a juice fast, or any other severely restricted diet, your body begins to go into starvation mode and the endorphins kick in to make up for a lack of ingested energy. for a while it's great, because you have the fat reserves to make the most of that extra energy, but eventually, once your body mass declines, your energy declines as well.

the fast doesn't last long enough to starve you to that point, so you end the fast still feeling euphoric. that's why people go back to them.

assuming you are otherwise healthy, this won't kill you, and maybe there is a valuable spiritual component that you can access by being in a weakened, euphoric state, but flushing toxins and cleaning your colon and all that crap? nah.
posted by thinkingwoman at 4:28 AM on December 4, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is a great post and most everyone covered the points I had. However, I wanted to add my experience. I have done a five day fruit fast. Meaning I drank only fruit juice and ate only raw fruit. It was a wonderful experience and I definitely had the euphoria that thinkingwoman describes. I felt clean and refreshed. Five days in, however, was enough for me. I could not imagine doing it any longer than that. By the fifth day I was drained and ready to move on. Try it, you might like it, you might hate it.
posted by birdlips at 6:55 AM on December 4, 2008

More anecdotes: I know a couple that did this. (Both before and after, they were on a raw diet, so it was probably less of a shock to their systems than most people.)

After about a month, they looked great, both had lost a little weight, looked healthy, had good skin, said they were full of energy. At the end of the 3 months, they both looked emaciated and had bad skin. I only saw them once a month, so it was pretty easy to see the changes, probably more than if I had seen them every day.

They did say they felt great, but it really didn't match up with their external appearance. YMMV.
posted by min at 7:32 AM on December 4, 2008

OxCAF is right, your stomach doesn't care if your food was blended in your mouth or in a blender.

Mostly true, but saliva DOES contain several enzymes that aid in digestion. I think they primarily work on fat and starch and likely have little impact on fruit digestion, but I could be wrong.
posted by phearlez at 8:35 AM on December 4, 2008

I'd be terribly worried about the lack of protein and potential muscle loss if you do that for three months - losing muscle is a really shitty way to lose weight in the long run.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:06 AM on December 4, 2008