The diet can deliver rapid weight loss – at a major cost
Detoxing diets are often praised as quick fixes for weight loss by purging “toxins” from the body. However, these diets can lead to serious nutritional deficiencies and health issues.
So why does it seem like these diets do deliver short-term weight loss? Nutritionist Shefalee Loth explained on the Which? podcast: “By cutting out (whole food groups), ultimately you’re reducing your calorie intake so you lose weight.”
The actual reason detox diets may result in weight loss is not due to eliminating specific food groups or expelling toxins from the body as it doesn’t actually do this. Shefalee said: “The idea is that our body is full of toxins.
“So we have to reduce those toxins that we’re putting in but actually our bodies have inbuilt detoxification systems. Our heart, our lungs, our kidneys, our livers do that for us.”
Detox diets typically promote removing whole food groups, for example excluding dairy, complex carbohydrates, and gluten. The nutritionist, who confessed her complete opposition to detox diets, pointed out: “(These) things that aren’t inherently bad for you, unless your coeliac or something like that.
“(These diets) demonise foods that shouldn’t be demonised. Dairy is a really important source of calcium so when people are cutting out all dairy products there’s a real risk they’re going to end up with calcium deficiency. These food groups provide really important nutrients in our diet.”
Professor Giles Yeo, a geneticist from Cambridge University, weighed in to highlight one very specific set of circumstances when detoxing can be useful. But it has nothing to do with changing what you eat, rather what you do and drink.
He explained: “The word detox comes from drinking too much alcohol or drug overuse. You detox by stopping said items.
“We shouldn’t be excluding whole food groups…but by all means do dry January, cut down on your alcohol, that is detoxing.
“Everything else is (removed by) your liver or your kidneys. If that’s not working you need a hospital.”
As for food and drinks that claim to make your detox quicker or more efficient, the expert said: “There is no way to eat something to speed up the detoxing, which is what a lot of the juicing things say is that it speeds up the detox. Nothing you can actually eat will detox you faster.”
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