Because Its Socially Accepted

Non-scientific claims. Warped sense of logic. Need for immediate gratification. Mixed with a little stubbornness and perhaps credulity. Out comes the drive to begin the "Master Cleanse" detox diet. Also known to detox connoisseurs as the "Lemonade Diet" or "Cayenne Pepper Diet".

This so-called diet is actually a concoction of maple syrup, lemonade, and cayenne pepper. That’s it. Mix that in a cup and drink it a few times a day. The individual is supposed to be on the diet for about ten days. Although some people take it to the extreme and have reported being on it for upwards of 40 days!

The basic tenants of this diet were born by Stanley Burroughs*. As a self-proclaimed natural healer focusing on the practices of alternative medicine, Stanley claimed he could cure many ailments and diseases through reflexology massage sessions, exposure to colored lights and lemonade concoctions. Don't worry. It its not as specious of a treatment as it sounds. There is a completely cogent explanation for his treatments: Mr Burroughs actually found and translated the lost tablet of Joseph Smith.

The diet has been further perpetuated by Peter Glickman. Glickman basically took Burroughs' lemonade diet, added the syrup and pepper and wrote a book about it in 2004. He again advocated that this diet can magically do many things like rid the body of toxins, cure ulcers and break one free from habits like smoking. I say magically because these claims by the likes of Glickman and Burroughs have no backing by science based medicine. There has never been any evidence submitted to a peer-reviewed journal showing empirically that any of these claims are true.

Actually, there is one outcome that is typical of this diet: weight loss. It’s no surprise. Of course you will lose weight if you are only ingesting syrup and lemonade daily. Given a few hundred calories a day, your body is going to need to get extra energy from somewhere. Mainly from fat and muscle. Your muscle and bone will start to rarefy due to the lack of nutrients in the diet such as protein and calcium. In fact, prolonged fasting such as this can elevate compounds called Ketone Bodies that lower the pH throughout the body and can have damaging effects on cells, tissues and organs.

I have come to think that the people who take on this diet inherently understand that it probably isn't as good for them as it sounds. They see the smoke and mirrors of "detox" but choose to embrace the gimmick anyway for what it really does: helps you lose weight by starving yourself. I was having a hard time understanding this, until a friend proposed an idea to me. She said simply, "it is socially accepted anorexia". I kind of thought "yeah yeah yeah, but what about the ketone bodies do you think they heard me say that"?

However, the more I thought about it the more it became clear that this is a completely viable theory. Its a common way of life: immediate gratification. People want the results but don't want to put in the work. Not only that, but our society puts a high price on being thin, especially for women. An idealized image can be hard for people to obtain with their regular routine. It can be difficult to go join a gym or start running regularly.

So why not? Why not starve yourself for ten days to lose the weight you want like Peter the Gimmick Clickman have proposed? Why not lose weight with the Lemonade Diet like Beyonce did for her role in Dreamgirls? Because you can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and still lose weight. Because your body doesn't need to be starved to detoxify itself. Because a gimmick is a gimmick, and if you understand that from the get-go than there is a greater problem you need to deal with even if it is socially acceptable.

- m.tsang

[*Mr Burroughs' treatments actually ended up killing one of his quote, un-quote patiends]