what is your opinion on juice cleanses?
Ok, so I think raw, organic juices can have a place in a healthy, plant-based diet, but there are a lot of things to consider.
First thing is that anyone with less than ideal digestion shouldn’t be wasting their money on juices and definitely shouldn’t be doing a juice cleanse because they will get very little benefit from the juice. Combined, our small and large intestines are around 25 feet long, which means there can be years (or a lifetime!) of poorly digested food built up along the intestinal walls. Any food that doesn’t have fiber (meat, dairy, anything processed) has a very hard time passing through our intestines and these foods can and will create build up in the intestines. So doing a juice cleanse suddenly after a lifetime of eating animal products or processed foods is pretty silly - there’s a literal coating of sludge in your bowels that makes it very difficult for the villi to absorb any nutrients from those expensive raw juices. Secondly, since juices lack fiber, it’s not helping to remove any of that sludge, so again, you’d be wasting your money.
However, if someone has been following a plant-based diet for a long time, then drinking raw juices can be beneficial because a lot of that intestinal sludge has been moved out of the bowels. That being said, I still think juice cleanses aren’t ideal. I definitely think smoothies make more sense - they have all the fiber intact, which helps sweep waste through the intestines AND serves as a pre-biotic for healthy gut bacteria. They’re simultaneously easy to digest because the food is essentially pre-chewed/broken down for you, so your body expends less energy on digestion, and you’re still getting all the amazing nutrition from greens and fruit.
So it really depends on the person. I see so many people talk about doing a juice cleanse or “detox” after a party weekend in Vegas or after binging during the holidays and that’s really not helping them in any way. In that situation, I believe having a green smoothie in the morning and switching to salads at lunch with some cooked veggies, and then a simple dinner would be 1,000 times more beneficial (and satisfying) than a few days of juicing. But for someone like me who has been eating plant-based vegan for several years, I do occasionally buy a raw juice to drink a few hours after my smoothie.
