THE TRUTH ABOUT DETOX DIETS: WHY YOU SHOULD THINK TWICE THIS JANUARY

But what do these diet plans and products actually do? The answer is not very much. Companies were seen to use widely varying definitions of the word detox, and many could not support the detox claims their products made. 

"[Detox] is marketed as the idea that modern living fills us with invisible nasties that our bodies can’t cope with unless we buy the latest jargon-filled remedy,” says Harriet Ball, biologist and one of the VoYS members behind the study.

The medical definition of detox is clear. A natural process carried out by the liver, kidneys, skin, and lungs, detoxing flushes away toxins that would be harmful if they stayed in your body. Toxins might be alcohol or pollutants from the air – or they might be byproducts of natural processes, such as the ammonia that is produced when your body digests protein (the liver turns it into urea and it gets flushed out in urine). 

Detox diet plans promise to cleanse, revitalise and reboot our bodies. But are they based on fact or fiction?

So the good news is that your body will be detoxing this January whether you diet or not. The not so good news is that many people will adopt diets that don't necessarily have a significant effect on the detoxing process.

Search for ‘detox diet plans’ on Amazon and you'll find over 1,500 results, I rarely come across clients who have lasted 14 days. There just isn’t enough energy in these plans for people to go about their normal business.

And yet, the number of people partaking in these types of detoxes is clearly enough to fuel the market. One of the reasons for this could be a side effect of detox diets, which is weight loss. By restricting your diet, detox regimes offer not just a 'purer' you, but also a slimmer one – in crude terms, you eat a lot less, so you end up weighing less.

Often, this weight loss is a case of smoke and mirrors, brought about by a lack of carbohydrates in the diet. As soon as the seven or 14 days are over and you return to your previous diet, that weight will most likely return. However, we should hesitate before dismissing such diets completely. The mere fact that weight loss is occurring in the short term is enough for some to help them feel as though they're starting the New Year in a refreshed state.

So could it be that these detox diets do more for our mindset than our body? “I can understand people being attracted to a detox,” says Aunty Jackie. “Completing a strict diet regime feels a bit like pressing a reset button. But a 7-day detox will never make up for a permanently unhealthy lifestyle. It’s much more important for people to adapt their lifestyle towards being more healthy most of the time.”

While i agree that there is no quick fix to reverse the effects of over-indulging on sugar and alcohol, i encourage clients to alter their diet to accentuate their detoxifying systems.

“Detoxing isn’t something you can opt into for seven days,” she explains. “Our bodies are doing it day-in, day-out. There’s nothing wrong with supporting your body with these metabolic processes but it needs to be long term.”