Apple Juice Diet

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We’ve all heard that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but some apple enthusiasts take it to the extreme by building a short-term cleansing diet entirely around juice from the crunchy, thin-skinned fruit. There’s no official apple juice cleansing diet; the term refers to short-term regimes emphasizing the consumption of that type of juice. Before you’re tempted to bite the apple, consider that more evidence is needed to determine the safety and efficacy of cleansing diets.

Apple Juice Calories

Apple juice is not a calorie-free beverage, making it a poor choice for a weight loss diet. You may feel as though you are not consuming many calories by drinking only apple juice, but an 8 oz. cup of unsweetened apple juice with added vitamin C has 114 calories, 31 more than a glass of skim milk and 30 more calories than a 6 oz. glass of white table wine. If you drink eight glasses a day, you will consume slightly more than 900 calories. The NIH recommends a healthy weight loss caloric intake, including beverages, of 1,200 for females and 1,600 for men.

Sugar and Nutrients

Unsweetened apple juice has 24 g of sugar, a trace of protein and fat and 28 g of carbohydrates. Apple juice also has 95 mg of vitamin C, 250 mg of potassium and a trace of sodium. Although the unsweetened apple juice has naturally occurring sugars, the majority of the calories in the juice come from sugar. Drinking apple juice may make you hungrier than eating food, according to a study published in the March 2009 issue of the “Journal of the American Dietetic Association.” The study found that participants who drank apple juice were much hungrier and more likely to eat sooner than the participants who consumed solid or semi-solid food.

Intended Benefits

Proponents of the apple juice cleansing diet ascertain that reducing or eliminating heavier, unhealthy foods from your diet gives the digestive system a much-needed break from processing. Some versions of apple juice diets advocate drinking olive oil or taking laxatives to facilitate the elimination of waste from your system as part of the cleanse, as described in Edgar Cayce’s Diet Plan. Advocates maintain that drinking large quantities of apple juice provides the body with necessary nutrients and healthy antioxidants while curbing appetite, although more evidence is needed to confirm these claims.

Other Benefits

Even if you’re not participating in a hard-core apple juice cleansing diet, drinking apple juice as part of your regular diet can have positive benefits. Drinking apple juice may help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, according a 2009 University of Massachusetts study involving mice, apple juice and memory-based maze trials. Regular consumption of apples might decrease the risk of heart disease, according to a University of Michigan press release published by the Apple Products Research and Education Council. In another press release published by the Apple Products Research and Education Council, a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that people who consumed apple products, including apple juice, were likelier to have less risk of metabolic syndrome.

Process

Some extreme liquid diet plans recommend beginning with three days of consuming only apple juice, as described by the Just Cleansing website. Most plans recommend using fresh juice made from organic apples; inorganic apples can be peeled before juicing, as described by Edgar Cayce’s Diet Plan. Some apple-based diets don’t require adherents to juice the fruit; instead, apples may be consumed whole. When returning to a normal eating schedule after completing a cleansing diet, dieters may slowly reintroduce simple grains and organic foods as first steps.

This method is from a book by David Wolfe called “Sunfood Diet Success System ”:

1. Freshly squeezed apple juice 3 or 4 times a day, using slightly sour green apples.
2. Cassia bark sticks – to be sucked on in the evening of day 3 and 4. There is often confusion between cinnamon and cassia with even their packaging getting their names switched. Cinnamon is normally sold in powered form or in cigar like stems. Cassia bark is just that – it looks like the bark of a tree which is just what it is.
3. On the 4th afternoon, at least 2 hours since the previous apple juice drink, drink 250ml of olive oil (organic, cold-pressed and stone pressed) followed by 250ml freshly squeezed juice made from fresh organic lemons. This sounds like quite a concoction but is key to the detoxing process. Sip slowly if it helps.
4. After taking the olive oil and lemon juice, rest for the remainder of the day. Lie down on your right side with a hot water bottle against your belly just under the rib cage where the liver is.
5. On the 5th day, resume “normal” eating but very gently and lightly. Continue to rest as much possible.

Precautions

Not all research embraces cleansing diets, juicing diets or highly restrictive diets embracing only one or two food types, such as an apple-based plan. Extreme regimes can lead to nutritional deficiencies, according to a March 24, 2009, “USA Today” article. Eating high-fiber foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein, is a naturally efficient way to clean out your digestive system without resorting to severe limitation in dietary choices. Incidentally, drinking apple cider vinegar, sometimes touted as a weight-loss strategy, has not been proven effective for that purpose.