This is the first of a multi-part series.
It’s 10:37 AM, and I have not eaten anything yet today. I’m at sitting at my desk at work, where I have been sipping hot water and herbal tea all morning, waiting for breakfast.
It is finally time for my meal: a bottle of kale-apple-ginger-romaine-spinach-cucumber-celery-parsley-lemon juice, ice-cold and a lovely vomit-green color. Delicious.
Thanks to BluePrintCleanse (BPC), one of the world’s leading juice cleanse companies, this raw juice concoction is just the beginning of my one-day mini-cleanse. Three more bottles are neatly lined up in my refrigerator, and as per BPC’s rules, they are the only sustenance I will consume today – except for water and herbal tea, should I choose.
The idea of consuming juice and only juice for three to ten days may seem extreme, but I am not the only one at the mercy of a stringent juice cleanse regimen. As a point of reference: between 2007 and 2010, BPC had sales of $10 million, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
For one person, BPC juices cost $65 per day, plus shipping for home delivery, which can range from $10 to $15. For just a three-day cleanse, then, the total cost can range from $195 to $240. If you break down BPC’s sales over those four years, that means that they had at least 10,000 customers each year. And that number has likely risen with time.
How did I become one of those customers? Let’s start at the beginning.
The Trendiest of Trendy Diets
I first heard about juice cleansing from my friend Ashley*, age 22.
Last November, Ashley and her roommate Brooke* decided to attempt a juice cleanse.
“She had watched a documentary in her personal health and wellness class about a guy who does a cleanse, and she wanted to try it out,” Ashley said.
This documentary was 2010’s Fat, Sick, and Nearly dead, a film that follows one man’s journey to lose weight and wean himself off the steroids he took to treat an autoimmune disease. His strategy? Juice, of course. He pledged to drink only fresh fruit and vegetable juice for 60 days, in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle.
The movie was quite popular, sweeping several awards at independent film festivals worldwide. Although critics were unenthused – one, from the Hollywood Reporter, called it an “infomercial passing itself off as a documentary” – Fat, Sick, and Dead still managed to introduce the concept of juice cleansing to the larger public.
While the exact origins of the juice cleanse, or “juice fast,” are unclear, it seems probable that the trend has its roots on the West Coast, as it has long been a fad in Hollywood. After going in and out of style for the past few decades, cleansing is making a major comeback nationwide.
Many celebrities have openly taken part juice cleanses, likely contributing to its rise in popularity and spread to the East. Hollywood actresses like Blake Lively, Olivia Wilde, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Ashley Greene have all been spotted juicing – incidentally, all with BPC products.
The fact that Ashley and Brooke’s interest in doing a juice cleanse stemmed from the documentary they saw is proof that pop culture and the entertainment media do play some role in the rising popularity of juice cleanses. But Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead was not their only motivation.
“We had also both been drinking a lot, and we wanted to do something to restart our systems,” Ashley explained.
Ashley and Brooke are not the only people I know who have dabbled in juice cleanses. I have heard of people trying them for reasons ranging from the spiritual to detox to weight loss, and I have always wondered: does juice cleansing really have any positive effects on your body? Or can it be risky, or even harmful to your health?
This is a controversial subject, and there are certainly many skeptics of juice cleanses – many of them medical professionals. Experts say that our bodies are self-cleaning, and there is no health benefit to cutting out solid food in favor of pressed fruit and vegetable juices like those offered by BCP.
“Clean eating is what you need to do,” said Keri Gans, registered dietician, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, and author of The Small Change Diet, told LiveScience, a website that investigates science-based trends. “Clean eating, not cleansing.”
“You don’t need to do any kind of food-based cleansing,” registered dietician and Boston University clinical associate professor Joan Salge Blake concurred.
But what about juice cleansing as a means of weight loss?
“The best method for long-term weight management is just to try to take in less calories and displace food with less nutrition, like sweetened beverages and grain-based desserts, with more whole grains, fruits, and veggies,” Blake said.
Other dieticians and doctors agree that juice cleanses are not a lasting solution for weight loss or other medical conditions. Only a lifestyle change, like healthy eating and exercise, can lead to long-term results for those issues.
However, some argue that juice cleansing can be useful for other purposes. When done with adequate preparation and caution, brief juice cleanses can actually help you to break bad habits, like drinking too much coffee or alcohol, or eating too many fatty, greasy foods.
What’s more, when you are on a juice cleanse – if done properly – you are likely consuming at least the daily recommended serving of fruits and vegetables. For example, the kale juice I used to kick off my own juice cleanse claimed on the label that there were six pounds of fresh-pressed veggies packed into that little 16 ounce bottle.
But juice cleansing properly is a major caveat. Taking your juice cleanse to extremes can end in dehydration, or worse. When British model Peaches Geldof died at the age of 25 in 2014, media reports abounded that her juice cleansing habit could have been a contributing factor: she had admitted in interviews that she often did juice cleanses, sometimes drinking as little as three juices a day for a month at a time.
Although the official coroner’s report listed her cause of death as opiate intoxication (specifically, a heroin overdose) questions surrounding her death still led members of the medical community to weigh in on a major question: can juice cleanses ever be fatal?
In my research, I could find no evidence on record of anyone ever dying as a result of unsafe juice cleansing. However, experts stress the importance of balance.
In an interview following Geldof’s death, internal medicine physician Keri Peterson explained that juicing can drain your body of protein and fiber.
“I don’t ever recommend juicing,” she said. “I would say for a very short time, no harm done, but it’s a quick fix, not a long-term solution.”
Programs like BPC seem to take the balance element into account, at least to some extent. For example, BPC’s last juice of the day is a non-dairy almond milk, which is packed with protein.
Another friend of mine, Jenny*, age 21, also recently tried a juice cleanse, and she ordered her juices through a program she heard about at SoulCycle.
“I just wanted to see what all the hype is about,” she said. “My results were…nothing, except I felt a little healthier, since I was having fruits and vegetables instead of my normal mac n’ cheese.”
*Name has been changed