After the seasonal excesses our systems need a healthy overhaul rather than a detox, and this means changing your food routine rather than wasting money on a quick-fix diet solution, writes CAROLINE MADDEN
CALL IT WINTER conditioning, call it water retention, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the average Irish person gains more than half a stone over the Christmas period. As well as an uncomfortably tight waistband, seasonal overindulgence can leave us feeling sluggish and lethargic, and suddenly those crazy detox diets favoured by celebrities don’t seem quite so crazy after all. So what if you have to live on cabbage soup and colonic cleanses for a fortnight if it transforms you, if not into a svelte superstar, then at least into a cleaner, leaner, healthier you? Alas, the informed consensus is that detox diets are, at best, a waste of money.
One of the most popular detox diets around is the maple syrup plan, also known as the lemon detox and the master cleanse. This near-starvation regime has been knocking about since the 1940s, but it wasn’t until Beyoncé lost 20 pounds in two weeks, surviving on a concoction of maple syrup, lemon juice, water and cayenne pepper, that it became a craze. Not just any maple syrup will do – apparently it has to be Madal Bal Natural Tree Syrup for the magic to happen. At the time of writing, a litre of this precious substance would set you back £36.99 (€44) on Amazon.
This may seem like a small price to pay in return for shedding an unwanted stone in 10 days, (which is the claim made by proponents of this diet), but as with all crash diets, the results are likely to be fleeting. “What you will get with these plans, these very, very low calorie diets for short periods of time, you’ll lose a lot of fluid,” says Aveen Bannon, a consultant nutritionist. “This can look like dramatic weight loss, but the minute you reintroduce normal eating you’ll put the water weight back on.”
Despite its dubious credentials, the detox industry is flourishing, and extends far beyond diet plans. Detox products now range from foot patches and laxative teas to detoxing dental work. Holland Barrett sells a wide range of products to “give your body a natural detox”, from Detox Patch-Its for €35.19, which it says use “actions of reflexology to support your body in reducing the toxic load imposed on it day to day”, to 90 capsules of Acai Daily Cleanse, which it says “may support digestive and intestinal health”, for €23.49.
But do these products really have the power to undo the damage of Christmas day calorie overload, one too many glasses of mulled wine and a few sneaky cigarettes, or are we just throwing good money after bad? Can they really flush out toxins and purify your system? UK consumer magazine Which? recently teamed up with Sense About Science, a London-based trust that helps the public to make sense of scientific and medical claims, to investigate a number of detox products, and found they don’t live up to their claims.
First under the spotlight was the Nicky Clarke Detox and Purify hairdryer, which claims to “release toxins from your hair”, leaving “partied out hair” shiny and revitalised, using something called nano silver technology. Which? queried this with expert toxicologist Dr John Hoskins, who said: “What doing in hair is anybody’s guess. Those released are not specified, nor how the detox occurs.” He said the claims were “without reasonable explanation or merit and therefore valueless and misleading”. The investigators asked the company for evidence of how the hairdryer works, but it declined to comment.
Which? also concluded that Vitabiotics’ Wellwoman Inner Cleanse (30 tabs cost €9.19 on vit-shop.ie) did not live up to claims that it supports the body’s “natural cleansing”. Vitabiotics referred the investigators to a “substantial body of worldwide literature” when asked to support its claims. However, when expert dietitian Catherine Collins reviewed the evidence she said: “You do not need to ‘detox’ as your body is cleansing toxins all the time. And this product is not a nutritionally complete multivitamin and mineral supplement.”
In 2009 Sense About Science carried out more extensive research in this area. Its Voice of Young Science network asked companies for evidence behind the claims they were making for detox products, special diets, tonics and supplements. It found that none of the companies were able to provide any evidence or even give a comprehensive definition of what they meant by “detox”.
“Worryingly, many of their claims about how the body works were wrong and in some cases the suggested remedies were potentially dangerous. We concluded that ‘detox’ as used in product marketing is a myth,” says Dr Síle Lane, campaigns manager at Sense About Science.
Dr Lane says that they reviewed progress this year and found that some of the original products investigated are no longer claiming to “detox”, but that plenty of new products are doing so, including detox dental treatments and methods for mental detox. “Claims like this will keep cropping up,” she says. “The only way to make a permanent difference is for everybody to ask for evidence for every claim they see whether in advertising material, product claims, policy announcements or campaign statements.”
Dr Daniel McCartney, PR officer for the Irish Nutrition and Dietetics Institute, and lecturer in human nutrition and dietetics at DIT, believes that the idea of detoxing can be damaging, as it lulls people into a false sense of security. It leads people to believe they can overindulge in sugary, fatty foods, as well as alcohol and cigarettes over Christmas, and that the damage will be retrievable as long as they are able to detox afterwards.
“That really isn’t the way it works, unfortunately,” he says. “Our biological systems have a long memory and are not that forgiving.” This kind of damage to our systems has a cumulative effect, and the next time you fall off the wagon, you start from a slightly lower base. “If you do that all the time, it’s not a great idea.”
It can also be tempting to shell out on the latest antioxidant-rich “superfood” discovered in a remote rainforest, and assume that this will be a panacea. However, while superfoods may indeed be rich in certain antioxidants, which are associated with certain health benefits, the reality is that no one food can provide us with all the different antioxidants we require.
“The best route is a broad variety of fruits and vegetables of all different colours. Reds, oranges, yellow, darker coloured fruits like blueberries and blackberries,” Dr McCartney says. “All of those contain a different spectrum of antioxidants.” The broader the spectrum, the more effective your diet will be at eradicating toxins.
Aveen Bannon believes the term “detox” is a little misleading. After Christmas, our systems need a “healthy overhaul” rather than a detox, she says, and this can be done through food alone. She advocates a sustainable diet, which means changing your routine rather than plumping for a quick-fix solution. The aim is to reach a point where you enjoy eating healthily, “so you’re never getting to the point where you need to be detoxed”. The best approach is to reduce your alcohol intake, and to cut back on high fat and sugary foods. The next step is to keep yourself well hydrated. She recommends taking in about 1.5 to 2 litres of water a day, which can include herbal teas and juices.
Like Dr McCartney, she strongly recommends eating a wide variety of coloured fruit and vegetables, which have immune-boosting, disease fighting properties.
Dr McCartney believes that part of the “fallacy” surrounding this whole area is that “we require strange potions to achieve a sort of detox effect”. Fortunately for our wallets, the expert view is that this is not the case.
