The (Non)Science Behind Juice Cleanses

Do juice cleanses actually deliver on their promises? How did commercial juices become a thing anyway? Anney and Lauren extract the truth from the myths about juicing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Food Stuff. I'm any Ries and
I'm Lauren Folkum and our topic today is juice cleanses. Yes,
as producer Noel said when we told him the topic, juicy, Yeah,
I know. I can't believe we didn't think of that
or pun game is just off? Yeah, if if you
guys would participate in a pun contest, if we if

(00:32):
we had one, let us know, yeah, because that might
be something we're very excited to watch. But let us
let you know about juice cleanses. Yes, well, let's start
like we usually do. What is a juice cleans In
case you have never heard of this thing, it's it's
a it's an idea of like you're living off of

(00:55):
fresh fruit and vegetable juices and water for a set
amount of time in order to detox your body. That
was heavy quotes, La extremely heavy quotes, but you could
feel them from your seat. The goals here are to
lose weight, gain energy, and have a whole other host

(01:16):
of medical benefits from being detoxed. I guess supposedly. Yeah,
some juices, some juice cleanses rather do also contain vegetable
derived fats and proteins from stuff like nut milks and
hemp seeds, which is relatively new, a relatively new thing
in the juice game. Um. Some popular current variants are

(01:38):
the Master cleans. Might have heard of this, Yeah, that
was the first one I remember hearing about. I seem
to remember it in the context of Beyonce doing it. Uh.
And this is like a ten day ten days and
lemon juice, cayenne pepper for cake, and maple syrup. And
that's it. Okay, I I mean that. I mean that

(02:01):
actually sounds like a lovely drink. I would I might
like put gin in that and consume it for fun.
But there's not a bar somewhere that as the master cleanse.
And it's that with it, then you need to up
your game. Bar. Another popular one is the alkaline cleans.

(02:22):
This one you eat quote alkaline promoting foods, which supposedly
is herbal teas and alkaline water. Uh. And you do
this to balance your pH um. We'll talk about the
science or maybe not the science of that later on. Okay,
So that's the basic idea. How does this make you feel?

(02:47):
Not great? Uh? Maybe this is the point in the
podcast where I admit I have, Oh you have not
really kind of. It's fascinating. I didn't do the traditional
like you pay in and you get the like fancy
juices in a box, and I didn't get the instructions
I did. Uh, this test might not be the right word.

(03:12):
A diet where you eliminate a lot of foods to
check yourself by reintroducing those foods. You have food allue
and it comes with a three day liquid diet. And
it was terrible. I was I was eating food, but

(03:35):
it was very bland food and not much. It was
mostly like drinking and you were supposed to primarily avoid
salt and sugar. Um. And in my case, I experienced
just terrible pain. It kept me up at night. It's

(03:56):
like cramping and the muscles and definitely the caffeine headache.
And you do get you feel like really dizzy and
like not even like you're in reality anymore. Anyway, that
was my experience. Generally, he quote symptoms, if you can
call that, of a typical three day clans go something

(04:16):
like this. Day one, cravings, low energy, sluggishness, Day two,
the so called honeymoon day. I did not experience this,
but apparently a lot of people do. UM. They report
having more energy feeling lighter, almost like a high. Um again,
unless you drink caffeine, and then you won't report that

(04:37):
because you're gonna be having caffeine hed ache. Um. And
then day three back to increased cravings and obsession about
what you'll be eating the next day. That's not an
unusual occurrence for me, Like, like, obsession about what I'm
going to be eating the next day is basically just
what I do. Yeah, that's true. Actually, I obsess about
like becoming meal and i' I've heard a lot about that,

(05:00):
that that honeymoon day kind of thing, that that feeling energized,
and I mean that's kind of what they're selling you.
I feel like when when they're selling you on a
lot of these cleanses, they're they're like, oh, you'll feel
so much better. You'll you'll know that it's working because
you'll feel amazing. Speaking of selling you as designer juice,
not like regular juice, not like o J right, but
designer juices like these had become a five billion dollar

(05:23):
industry and was projected to grow forward to eight percent
every year. So this is a cultural phenomenon. Yeah, that
is a lot of juice clenzing happening. It's kind of
a weird thing, but it has been around, or at
least the idea of cleansing yourself, detoxing yourself renewal has

(05:47):
been around for a long time. Most religions have some
aspect of fasting and fenzing um. If you look at
the Hebrew word for fasting psalm, which loosely translates to
quote to afflict the soul, and to this day fasting
or cleansing, our juicing has an association with fresh starts renewal.

(06:08):
It's that thing you do New Year's resolution time, along
with renewing your gym membership. Yeah, it's kind of like
your resetting. The first written records we have of a
juice dates back to somewhere in the to seventy BC,
when the Dead Sea Scrolls prescribed a quote pounded mash

(06:32):
of pomegranate and fig which supposedly would grant you quote
profound strength and subtle forms. Sub I am very intrigued
by subtle form. I don't have it, whatever it is,
but I want it. Another thing that we have ancient
records of our as Annie was saying earlier, these highly
controlled and limited diets that are meant to purify, usually

(06:55):
part of like religious mindfulness UM, which is sometimes called asceticism,
which is the practice of abstinence from physical or otherwise
earthly pleasures. And this is super widespread culturally speaking. I
think of the stories that we have of the founding
figures of various religions, all reaching enlightenment during or perhaps

(07:17):
after a long period of fasting. You've got Moses, Jesus, Mohammed,
Buddha UM. There there are traditions of monks and nuns
and other humans of varying titles and levels of lifetime
religious devotion UM in Abrahamic religions, Hindu and Buddhism, all
practicing ritualized self deprivation UM. And this practice has been

(07:38):
going back for thousands of years. Variations on these practices,
of course filter down to the common people as well
and continue into modern time. You've got Lent, Young, Kapoor, Ramadan,
Mahashi Rat, the fast Sunday and so on and so forth. Yeah,
but back to juice. Juice. Yes, for as long as

(08:00):
it's been around, juice has had this kind of reputation
of being that curative thing that we think of it today,
both in general and for all kinds of specific and
often very strange things. Um. During World War One, physicians
would rub antiseptic garlic juice into soldiers wounds, which sounds

(08:22):
so painful and at the very least unpleasant to smell. Yeah,
and I'm sure the smell situation was not great in general. Yes, um.
Side note from that, a lot of listeners have written
in asking us to look into the anti fungal properties
of garlic, and that's definitely something we're going to talk about.

(08:43):
Oh yeah, yeah. This isn't a practice based on absolutely
no science whatsoever. It would probably help out, just oh yeah, um.
Smearing your chest with onion juice was used as a
congestion remedy in the Bombas and during the sixteenth century.

(09:04):
If you were a balding fella, you might rub some
onion juice on your head and go stand in the
sun to try to encourage your hair follicles to grow.
This is based on a Dare think. So, I don't know,
that's that's not a science fact. That's a Lauren fact.
That's that's a different I'm like in my head, Cannon,
that's absolutely It was just one guy was like, I

(09:27):
bet I can trick Dave over there to go and
stand in the sun juice, good old stinky head Dave
on the more substantiated science wise into the scale sailors
used to drink lemon juice to prevent scurvy. Sure, yeah,
that's that's legit. Going back to less science and very
gross territory. In eighteen seventy threes, a brief history of

(09:50):
the production of Valentine's Meat Juice. Valentine's Meat Juice. Doesn't
it sound so appetizing? No, that's not. It's uh. This
book chronicled the production and bottling of meat juice by
man S. Valentine. And it's just what you would think

(10:15):
it is. It's all the blood and other miscellaneous juice
that can be distracted from raw beef, raw beef, not
cook Okay, yeah raw. And I read part of the
description and it had like bits floating in it. The
smell was horrendous, but that didn't matter, because supposedly this

(10:38):
shoice could care whatever could be ailing you from constipation
to nausea if you could swallow it with that peak. Sure,
which seemed to be a problem given the formentioned smell. Yeah,
if you were depressed, you could also try meat juice

(11:00):
as an enemas for depression that would help. Okay, at
least one doctor, actual medical doctor and actual medical doctor,
doctor J. B. McCaw testified in supportive meat juice, saying
it worked in the most obstinate cases. Okay. So, so

(11:22):
what we're looking at is is by the late eighteen hundreds,
along with a wave of other health crazes, a lot
of people were in on this juicing idea, including a
lot of religious leaders. Right, and we are approaching my
personal huh moment of the episode. One of the best

(11:43):
examples of this is Thomas Bromwell Welch. Welch is it
could it be that Welch who in eighteen sixty nine
saw a business opportunity in religious people who were morally
opposed post to drinking alcohol, and so when they were

(12:04):
offered wine during communion, they had a moral dilemma. Yeah, So,
enterprising fellow that he was, Welch started selling quote, unfermented
sacramental wine, which is just a very fancy way of
saying grape juice. Yeah, that's not that's not what wine means.

(12:25):
What part of the definition of wine is that it's fermented.
So okay, but he started selling this he did under
his side company Dr. Welch's Grape Juice, but he ran
into a problem where he couldn't find a way to
market it and in four years was out of business
until his son, Charles Edgar stepped in and he dropped

(12:49):
the doctor from the company name to make it the
more efficient, streamlined Welch's Grape Juice and started running ads
in magazines like Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan and claiming that
this miracle juice could cure quote all forms of chronic
diseases except diabetes and militis all forms except diabetes. Yeah.

(13:11):
Welch even founded two pamphlets doubting his products benefits, and
he slammed alcohol. He even went so far as to
modify the popular anti alcohol slogan quote the lips that
touch wine will never touch mine to quote the lips
that touch Wilches are all that will touch mine. Lets

(13:31):
a rhyme. But but I guess you see where he
was going. Yeah, I see what he was trying to
do there. Uh. And he took his success to the
Colombian Exposition in Chicago, where thousands of people sample is juice,
and this moment here is often cited as the birth
of the American fruit cheese industry. This this Charles Edgar

(13:52):
was reportedly also involved with the burgeoning health spa craze
of the early nine hundreds. UM. One particular medical practitioner,
Dr John Harvey Kellogg, ran an infamous institution called the
Battle Creek Sanitarium at the time. Kellogg and yes he
is that. Kellogg was obsessed with purity in the diet, gut,

(14:16):
and your sex life. He prescribed the general mutilation to
prevent masturbation. You know, he was probably a terrible person.
Check out our yogurt episode for more about that. But yeah,
Charles Edgar supposedly visited Battle Creek thirty two times during
his grape juice reign. Also grape juice reign purple rain

(14:37):
joke here, somebody write it for us. Um. But but yeah, this, this,
this Welch's grape juice thing became so big. Richard Wilson's
Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan starved Welch's grape juice
at a dinner for British Ambassador James Bryce, and when

(14:58):
alcohol was banned on maybe ships in nineteen fourteen, Welch's
was served instead. Yeah. But Contrary to what you might think, UM,
prohibition was not a boon for Welch's grape juice because
big soda had entered the market. Yeah. Yeah, if you
didn't if you didn't want your alcohol, you could have

(15:20):
soda our grape juice or so. Uh. And after Charles
Welts died in it wasn't until nineteen that Jacob M.
Kaplan bought it and then it passed hands again in
nine four to the National Grape Cooperative Association. Uh. And yeah,

(15:43):
like I said, Welch's is still around and going pretty strong,
with an estimated eighty two million dollars in profits and
another house stuff works and water cooler moment. I brought
this up with one of our coworkers and he said
that that's still what served when he goes to communion

(16:04):
this day, is scrape juice. Yeah, I think I think
I I think I was there for that conversation. Either
that or I had a separate conversation with some of
that scrape juice. I'm not sure which. There's another juice
that we have to mention. Of course, orange juice and
orange juice kind of sort of got in on this
same health action. UM. And one of the biggest proponents

(16:27):
of orange juice uh as like this healthy thing that
you should try comes from Elmer McCullum. Elmer McCullum. Ye
and great name, so many good names when we do
this research. He was dubbed Dr Vitamin also awesome, great

(16:48):
name in nine two by Time magazine, and Dr Vitamin
caused a panic over acidosis. Acidosis sounds horrible. It was
supposedly caused by eating too much meat, dairy, and bread,
but was easily fixed by upping your intake citrus and lettuce.

(17:08):
Sun Kissed in particular, capitalized on Dr Vitamin's words. In
between nineteen fifty and nine, consumption of orange juice tripled,
which translated to about twenty pounds down per year by
the average American. Oh my goodness. Yea, and orange juice
continue to have pretty solid growth. That is so much
orange juice. Okay, So that's kind of our quick primer

(17:32):
on the history of the the commercial aspects of juice
and uh and and a little bit about the religious
background of it. But what about choicing and like juice cleanses,
what about it? Yeah, what about it? We'll tell you
all about it after the short word from our sponsor. Okay,

(17:59):
we'll back, thank you sponsor. Um okay, so juicing, yes,
juicing enter German scientists Max Garrison and British businessman Norman Walker.
Garrison wrote a cancer Therapy Results of fifty Cases book
in which he espoused the curative power of replacing medicine

(18:21):
with three plant based no studium meals and thirteen glasses
of carrot, apple juices or green juices if you're looking
for a little variety. And all of this was to
be made with the freshness of produce, and this therapy
came to be known as the Garrison therapy. And none
of this would have been possible without Norman Walker's invention

(18:45):
of the Walker juicer and nineteen thirty six which I
looked up still buy, not the model, but you know
modern day model um which at the time I was
going to run you two thousand, five hundred dollars that
the old to ninety six one today's equivalent of the

(19:06):
said two thousand five goodness, accounting for accounting for inflation,
that's that's quite expensive. Yeah, that's not cheap at all.
And he Walker, of course promoted eating what he called
living food, raw vegetables and juices, that you made with
his juicer obviously you know, sure, of course, um this

(19:30):
juicer set off a chain of juicers. The first massacating juicer,
The Champion, arrived in nineteen fifty five. Jack Lelane's Power
Juicer debut in nineteen seventy one, Ja Cordex The Juice Man,
and this is what my mom used, hit the market,
selling two million units between nine and I did love

(19:53):
that juicer. All we did was literally, I'm pretty sure
all we ever made with it was fresh orange strawberry juice.
And it was so but that sounds lovely. It was
so delicious, I believe you. And is when juicing really
came into its own, into what we think of it today.
And this is largely thanks to the efforts of scientology

(20:15):
entrepreneur Peter Glickman, who pushed the Master Clans yep, that
Master Cleans that was then used by so many celebrities
from Beyonce except before to to mean more and Ashton Kutcher.
I missed this cultural moment, but apparently they were like
tweeting about ever. Everyone was talking about it. It was
it was all in all of the entertainment magazines, okay,

(20:38):
and the great thing for people pushing this clans is
that all the horrible things you're probably going to experience
doing it, you know, the vomiting, the diarrhea. I mean
that you're just expelling all those nasty toxins and it's
totally working. The miseries. It's all part of the plan. Yeah. Uh.

(20:59):
And juicing continued to grow in the early two thousand's
UM with so so many um, mostly female celebrities backing
various brands and and this is also when the expense
of it started to become very impressive. Indeed, rather than
just reducing your own cleanses at home, you could you

(21:19):
could pay anything from sixty five dollars a day to
a hundred dollars a day for a three day cleanse.
I can't imagine, like, what are you getting for a
hundred dollars a day. I think you get like a coach. Maybe.
I can't imagine spending two hundred bucks a day on food, period,
And I think that and I can imagine spending a

(21:40):
lot of money off that's true. Yeah, that is a
very good point. Uh. This is also when UM some
cleanses started featuring more proteins, introducing those nut based juices umut,
pushing the calorie count up to a super whopping thousand,
two hundred calorie reason some instances, My golly, so many calories.

(22:05):
Twelve hundred calories. That's not that many calories, no sarcasm.
In the two thousand tens, juicing as a lifestyles popularity
started to wane. Um. Even Cosmopolitan, who was one of
the first like high praise singers singers of my praise
of juice cleanses r in an article in sixteen titled

(22:29):
why your detox is, citing the price point and the
lack of scientific evidence. And this is Cosmopolitan, you guys. Still,
the cold press juice market was valued around a hundred
million a year according to Only Times, And like we
said the top of the podcast, it's like a billions
specialized juice, specialized juice designer juice designer juice. That's what

(22:53):
you said. Um. But so, speaking of the type of
lack of scientific evidence that Cosmopolitan and other publications have
been talking about, uh, let's talk about it too. Okay. So,
for the premise of a detoxt work, the first thing
you're gonna need are toxins to get rid of. Okay,

(23:14):
and toxins do exist. Yes, they do. UM A lot
of examples when I was looking into this, Uh, they
used a set of medifin are pesticides. But unless you're
exposed to large quantities of them, your body and in
particular your kidneys and liver and liver are pretty good
at flushing these sex and saut It's kind of what

(23:35):
they do. It's literally their job. But they're there for
in the case of a large dose exposure, you're gonna
have some pretty specific, terrible symptoms and juice is not
going to help you out. No, you're gonna want to
go to the doctor, to a doctor for that one.
The medical professional. You will know when it happens, and
your first thought will not be juice. I I must

(23:57):
get the nut milk. If you're taking um juicing a
step further and getting a colonic, you're risking bowel preparation,
intestinal parasites, and even heart failure. Where does this idea
of of detoxing come from. Yeah, the The modern day
idea of detoxing in the US dates back to the

(24:19):
early nineteen hundreds, with advocates claiming quote, intestinal sluggishness causes
intestinal contents to putrify. Toxins are absorbed and chronic poisoning
of the body results in quote, and this is according
to quack watch dot org that I wonder what our
body Kellogg would have thought about juice cleanses It probably

(24:42):
would have been on board. Um. And all of this
ties into something that we're probably going to wind up
discussing a lot on this our food stuff show, which
is the morality that's assigned to health. And by health
I mean weight, and by weight I mean disproportionately when weight.
We're coming for you, Dr Graham. I can't wait to

(25:04):
do that episode. Hoof yes that Graham. Yes. Uh. Some
some researchers say that juice cleanses um, if not exactly
being disordered eating, are a gateway to eating disorders. Case
studies of this have have reportedly been observed. And also
insert most juices have way too much sugar, like fifty

(25:27):
grams in one bottle. That's more than Coca cola. Thank
you your gra episode. And then let's let's let's let's
look at another claim frequently made by juice cleanses um.
It'll grab up your metabolism, yeah, which means weight loss. Right, No,
not really not really, Uh, you probably will lose weight
on a juice clans, but it's because you're subsisting on

(25:49):
very low calorie diet and essentially starving yourself, which also
explained the lightheaded headedness and dizziness, the feeling of being high.
We talked about our earlier um again. Supporters of things
like the Master Clans claim that this is all part
of the process of the toxins flooding out of your body.
But they're actually probably symptoms of an extremely restricted calorie

(26:13):
diet and or starvation. Yeah, that's catosis. That's uh, your
body really wanting you to eat something, so you're just
amped as all heck because your body is like please,
please food and he where's the food I want? I'm
looking for the food. And as far as kickstarting your metabolism,
if anything, it's going to put you in a starvation
mode which depresses your metabolism, which is basically uh, which

(26:37):
which basically is what happens when your body isn't sure
when it's going to get more food, so it slows
all of your processing systems down. When this happens too often,
by the way, the changes can become permanent. So that's
not what you want. Well, okay, actually, side note um,
the speed of your metabolism is dependent on a whole

(26:57):
lot of things, including your age, sex, hor known levels,
stress levels, sleeping habits, genetics, physical activity, and your incoming nutrients.
And and talk talk about slow versus fast metabolism is
generally more marketing hype than actual science. Fact. Yes, there
are a couple of diseases that can cause weight gain
due to extremely slowed metabolism, like hyperthyroidism and Cushing syndrome.

(27:21):
And yes, making your body burn more energy than you
take in through food will lead to weight loss, but
that's making your metabolism work harder, not faster. Your Your
metabolism doesn't need to be kickstarted or sped up. It's
it's working all the time. If you are just looking
to lose weight with the juice clans, you probably won't

(27:43):
keep it off. Um because when you put your body
into starvation mode, as we were saying, it starts breaking
down its glycemic stores UM, a byproduct of which is
that you start to excrete a whole bunch of water.
So what you're losing is water weight. UM. When you
return to a more usual diet with an appropriate number
of calories, your body is going to start rebuilding those

(28:06):
glycenic stores, which will cause water weight gain again. Yeah,
so if you were going in in your main goal
is to lose weight, then it's not a permanent fixed
for that. Let's go back to that balancing pH claim
made by the Alkaline clans. But first let's take quick
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.

(28:32):
Thank you sponsor. First off, this cleanse comes to those
thanks to pH living miracles Dr Robert Oh, Yeah, who
has been charged with fraud due to his health claims.
So that's a bit of a warning flag there. Uh. Secondly,
most of the acceptable foods on the Alkaline clans are
highly acidic like lemon, and your body's pH is kept

(28:55):
stable at around seven point three five. Eating a bunch
of acids is not gonna alkhalize you. And also there's
no evidence that alkhalizing quote would be in any way
a bit official. Yeah, there's pretty there's pretty much a
narrow window of of acid alkaline balance that your cells

(29:18):
confunction in, and that's what your body is doing. That's
just how it is. That's how it is what you
I mean, you might upset the balance of acid in
your stomach and throughout the rest of your gut by
eating overly acidic foods. But that's again like like like
basically your stomach's job is to handle that. Yeah, so

(29:42):
so you're not you're not putting different ions out into
your body by eating. That's that's fiction, right. Um. Another
criticism most of you have probably heard when it comes
to liquid diets is that because the fiber and all
these fruits and vegetables that you're not eating but drinking
isn't there. Um. And because you're not chewing, you're probably

(30:05):
still going to be hungry after your juice meal thing.
And uh, you're not doing your digestion any favors by
depriving it of fiber either. Um proponents turn this around
and say that this lack of fiber is a good thing,
as it gives the stomach time to quote rest and
a lot of websites I looked at that have juice

(30:26):
cleanses use that term rest um and divert that energy
to detoxin. Let experts say that unless it's after surgery,
your stomach doesn't need to rist. Yeah, fiber is actually
part of your body's normal cleansing system. Um. It absorbs
fiber in your gut absorbs water and along with it
water soluble waste and moves everything on out of your intestine.

(30:50):
So by decreasing fiber in your diet, you're preventing your
body from getting rid of the stuff that it would
need to get rid of. Fiber also serves to slow
your body's sugar uptake, which means that eating whole fruit
and vegetables helps keep your blood sugar levels more stable,
which is the other part of why you may feel
dizzy during a juice cleanse. It's it's because you're your
blood sugar is likely to spike and crash with every

(31:13):
bottle of juice that you drink. Yeah, and you're also
probably not getting enough protein, although some juice cleanses are
trying to fix this with the nut juice slash milk um,
but that can translate to a loss of muscle mass,
especially if you're exercising while juicing. And yes, y'all, fats
and proteins are vital to keeping your body, including your

(31:36):
guts and your liver and your kidneys, running the way
that it's supposed to um. Furthermore, if you're if you're
in this juice cleans for the for the increased vitamins
that you that you're getting because you're probably going to
get increased vitamins because most of us don't eat enough
fruits and vegetables. Um. Part of the thing is here
that some vitamins are much better absorbed by your body
when you are simultaneously consuming fats. Of the thirteen essential

(31:59):
vitamins full or are fat soluble like this, the kind
of helps if you're if you've got the fats. UM.
Those those four vitamins are A, D, E, and K,
and they're all involved in your body's production and maintenance
of healthy bones, skin, and hair. So when you're doing
a super low fat juice cleans, your body isn't actually

(32:21):
absorbing some of the stuff that literally makes your skin
and your hair nice. And I feel like your skin
and your hair will be nice. Is one of the
super big Yeah, it's like that's that's going to settle
over you. Kind of interesting. I guess. Fact, when we
did our episode on kale, I think a year ago

(32:43):
over over on a stuff Mo'm never told you, one
of the tips we read was that you should eat
kale with something like bacon because kale has so many
of these vitamins and minerals, and that the fat and
bacon would help you absorb it better. Oh man, Southern
wisdom comes through again. Yes, all your grains and bacon fat.

(33:06):
That is so southern. That is so Southern. Okay, juices
can be healthy. Yeah, we we don't want to nay
say entirely. Yeah, I mean, let's be fair that they
if they aren't loaded up with sugar. Um, they're better
for you than say a donut. If you eat donuts
like every day and swap some juice out for a donut.

(33:28):
In that way, it can be part of a healthy diet.
Moderation is key. But there's no evidence that they're going
to detox you or that you need to be detoxed. Um,
you're better off just eating fruits and vegetables. Yeah, really,
I think And and the evidence that I have read

(33:49):
about proves out that the best thing that can be
said about juice cleanses is that you're going to be
getting more vitamins and minerals than usual, which are things
that your body needs to turn food into energy and
to grow and maintain all of your cells. Good times there. Um.
Some of this stuff even does have antioxidant properties, which
means that it can help prevent cellular damage, which can

(34:13):
lead to diseases like cancer under particular circumstances. Um And
research does indeed show that eating fruits and vegetables can
decrease your risk of some diseases in the long run.
But the key phrase there is in the long run,
one juice boinge really isn't going to do that much,
especially because your body can only process a certain amount

(34:34):
of any given vitamin or mineral at once. Any acts
any excess there, especially of water soluble nutrients, you're just
going to pee out. Yeah. I've heard a similar thing
set about, like taking those vitamin C pills that say
it's like you're just going to get rid of that. Yeah,
that's right. Um. And I've heard friends say, like, I

(34:57):
like juicing because it saves me time. I don't have
to can just grab a bottle and go. But think
of all the money, the money, and how much time
does it really take to make a salad I don't know,
pick up an apple like I. Um, but if you're
utterly fixated on doing a client, keep it short, just

(35:18):
a few days, I'd say a day or two at most,
like most, if you're like really into it. My advice
would be to just eat food. Yeah, with the caveat
that like Okay, like we said earlier, people around the
world have definitely been using short fasts to practice mindfulness
for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and certainly an

(35:41):
occasional day or two of fasting is not going to
hurt you. Just just know what you're getting into and
and and don't expect magic out of it, right Yeah,
I mean ultimately it's just like three days out of
your life and it's not gonna long. Long term habits
are work, make your long term health happen, so right,

(36:06):
um And and and also caveat to the caveat another caveat.
If you're diabetic, going through chemo, have kidney disease, or
other nutritional deficiencies, juicing is not something you should try.
The sugar and juice can spike the blood sugar levels
of diabetics. Lack of protein is detrimental for people undergoing chemo,

(36:27):
and for those with kidney disease, the high levels of
potassium and minerals from too much juice can lead to
dangerous build up. Um Yeah, I would in general, just
check with your doctor if you have any kind of
UM condition or disease or something that may be juicing.
If your body is already stressed out, it's not gonna

(36:48):
dealing with something else isn't going to help stress it
out with juicing, with the juice climbs, getting getting getting
a good wide variety of regular old fiber and nutrients
and proteins and stuff, it's going to be probably your
best bet. Yeah, which which is such unsexy advice. I'm sorry.

(37:09):
I wish. I wish that we could have an episode
where we go, like, yes, that that diet craze, it
is totally true, make you gorgeous and beloved by everyone. Um,
but that's not it's really not. No. I hope that
someday that episode happens. I hope we break ground. We're
the ones that discover it. We break this new diet,

(37:32):
that food stuff diet. It's just food puns before every meal,
that's it. Because you're so happy from the food puns. Yeah,
you're you're laughing so much that you're burning so many calories.
There you go, Oh food stuff diet. All right, y'all
try it out and write in and let us know
how it works. Um. Speaking of writing in and letting

(37:54):
us know how things work. Here's let's let's let's take
some listener mail. Okay, So the first letter email we
have is from Dan, who wrote about his personal connection
to the sugar industry and response to our sugar history episode.

(38:16):
Dan wrote, I have a personal family connection to the
sugar industry in the US. My family is Cuban and
moved to Louisiana in nine seven. My grandfather worked as
a welder, primarily at sugar refineries. These were popular along
the southeast because they would process the sugar cane being
imported from the Caribbean, so there was a lot of
work to be done. After corn syrup started to replace

(38:38):
kane derives sugars in the seventies and eighties, the refineries
began to close and my grandfather had to move his
family from Louisiana to Central Florida to try to continue
to find work and to live closer to other family
members who are leaving Cuba. Finally, our family moved to
South Florida, which was undergoing construction. Boom and welds were
needed to work on the ships in the ports. The

(38:58):
sugar refineries in the Sound of Feast could not compete
with corn syrup and a lot of the workers you
came from the Caribbean seasonally to deliver and refine the
sugar suffered in economic loss. Oh wow. Yeah, which I
thought was interesting because I didn't really come across any
uh information about sugar refineries in the Southeast when we
were doing the research, although it makes perfect sense, but
that's where they would be because of the locations. The

(39:21):
thanks stand Ford writing in that was very enlightening. Yeah. Absolutely.
Also about our sugar episode, we got an email from
Miquela um and she says something else I wanted to
offer up came from listening to your sugar episode. Lauren
talked about snacking on sugarcane and the hard sugar cones.
It is very common to find both of these and
Mexican Latin markets since they are used all the time.

(39:42):
I can only speak from Mexican cuisine because that's my
cultural background, so here it goes. As kids, my mom
would buy a sugarcane from the mercato and chop it
down to like six inch pieces and then you just
suck on the ends and get all the delicious sugar
liquid out. It's very fibrous because it's a grass like
bamboo and the trick is to not get it's stuck
in your teeth. But it's a great snack. We used
it most recently at Christmas, when punch is a common

(40:04):
holiday drink. It includes the slow simmer of cut pieces
of sugar cane and other winter fruit. It gives the
punch a light sweetness, but you need a cleaver or
a machete to peel away the skin first. The sugar cones,
which I know is piloncio, are boiled down with water
for use as a syrup. When a more intense sweetness
is needed. We use them in the mix for sweet tomales,

(40:25):
along with raisins and cinnamon, in a bread pudding made
around Easter called I think I said that right, And
in the I've used the many pilongchio cones, which are
harder to find in mold wine. But Laura is right
they are impossible to cut. I've never tried cutting pilongio
with a pair of sugar snips, but I have a

(40:46):
feeling historical sugar cones you talked about we're not quite
so dense. I remember, as a teenager trying to cut
the top off of one using every knife available in
our kitchen. And my mom got mad that because I
was trying to break the knives, which I love. She
also sent us a recipe which was awesome. Oh, please
feel free to send us recipe. Uh. Well, we'll see.

(41:09):
I'll see if I can um put that recipe up
on social media somewhere, because because we have some social
media things before I mentioned what those are. First, thank
you so much to Dan and Michaela for writing into us.
These these personal stories are so wonderful to to to
read about. And I mean like like we're on the
science end of of reading about everything, right, so it's

(41:30):
wonderful to hear these human stories along with it. Um,
thank you to them. If you would like to send
us anything or check out that recipe that Michaela sent us. Um,
we've got some social media We've we've got uh an
email address. Yes, it is food stuff at how stuff
works dot com. We also have an Instagram which is
at food stuff and a Twitter account which is at

(41:53):
food stuff HS which stands for how stuff Works, right. Yes,
And also thank you to our audio producer, Melbro. Yes,
he's nodding very seriously. He's wearing his white sunglasses today,
which I am very fond of your awesome yes. Thank
you to all of you for listening. We hope that

(42:13):
lots more good things are coming your way.