"master cleanse" news and stories

Remember all the hype surrounding Beyonce and her occasional detox diet?

It's now officially being referred to as the Def Jam Diet. For some reason, everyone associated with the record label is drastically dropping pounds. However, now that Beyonce's (supposedly) pregnant, she can't do drop the pounds with the extreme dieting. (Well, duh, Beyonce, you're gaining weight because you're pregnant.)

There's been question about what exactly the Def Jam Diet is (because it seems to be working for the likes of Jay-Z, LA Reid, and Mariah Carey. Now everyone can breathe easily because the Def Jam Diet "is just the hip rapper way to say Master Cleanse."

Oh. Yeah, anything is more hip than saying you drink nothing but some strange concoction of lemonade, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper.

[via Huffington Post, via NY Post]

Celebrities are touting the maple syrup diet, which is a type of detox diet that is also known as the Master Cleanse diet, or the lemonade diet. Essentially, you drink a mixture of water, maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper (a very small amount) for about 10 days. Without getting into the sticky issue of whether or not you are really cleansing your body, if you even need to, the diet is a way to drop a few pounds quickly, for better or worse. It works because you take in relatively few calories and a lot of liquids.

All in all, it seems to result in a relatively quick weight loss of a few pounds, but certainly neither a long term solution nor a substitute for a more traditionally healthy diet. It is great for the sales of maple syrup, though, since some stores are reporting that their sales have more than doubled in the past few months.

One woman's account of her time on the diet can be read here if you're interested in getting the daily details of the "cleanse."

Source