Tips to stay safe with juice cleanses


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Photo courtesy of pinterest.com

Companies like Pressed Juicery and Suja Fresh sell the promise of “better living” in a bottle. With trendy packaging and ingredients like kale and coconut water, the appeal of juice cleanses or juice-only diets is obvious. But, juice cleanses are easy to buy into but hard to go through.

Juice cleanses take you on a journey through extreme craving, borderline starvation and irritation. Yet, many of us Trojans see juice cleanses as a way to detox from the weekend or the infamous Freshman 15. While juicing might be better than eating whole fruits and vegetables ­­— it does make plant nutrients more accessible to your body — there are a few precautions to keep in mind to ensure that your juice cleanse healthy and beneficial.

  1.    Check your juice is really clean.

Greens are susceptible to bacterial growth, so if you squeeze your own juice, do not save your juice for later or keep it outside unrefrigerated — getting sick is the opposite of what you want. There is a risk even with store-bought juices. According to the FDA, freshly squeezed drinks are often not pasteurized.

  1.    Fill up with fiber.

While juices have valuable nutrients, by not eating the whole fruit or vegetable you are losing a significant source of fiber. Keeping the pulp in your juice or buying thicker drinks can add fiber to your cleanse. Fiber also has the added benefit of making you feel more full (and less grumpy).

  1.    Make peace with protein.

Many “juicers” tend to avoid heavy foods like carbohydrates and proteins as juice cleanses are a type of weight-loss diet. It is incredibly important, however, to add some protein to your diet. The Greens 1.5, my personal favorite from Pressed Juicery, only has 1 gram of protein. According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the average adult needs 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Supplement your juice cleanse with white meat, seafood or fat-free yogurt to avoid loss of muscle mass.

  1.    Thank your liver and kidneys.  

Remember that your liver and kidneys naturally remove toxins from your body. According to dietician Manual Villacorta, they are much better detoxing than a juice cleansing would be. Juice cleanses are often temporary, but your liver and kidneys will take you a long way, so treat them kindly. Vegetable juices do help!

These tips are not meant to stop the juicers from doing juice cleanses, but to make sure that you get the most out of your experience if you do choose to juice-cleanse!