Beauty Detox Foods

I recently became interested in cleansing/detoxing diets.  My online search led me to a book called The Beauty Detox Foods by Kimberly Snyder, a celebrity nutritionist.  I don’t usually like to follow the fad diets of celebrities, but this book had good reviews and seemed along the lines of Clean, the book I’d just used to complete my second cleanse.

After seeing diet change her skin, hair, and life, Snyder traveled the world for 3-years to learn about food and health.  These experiences led her to formulate an unconventional nutrition plan.  How it caught on with celebrities, I don’t know, but her program is endorsed by Dr. Oz, Drew Barrymore, Fergie, and Ben Stiller.  Her basic premise is that digestion takes up a lot of energy.  If we eat foods that contain enzymes to help with digestion (raw fruits and veggies) or are partially processed (smoothies and juices), we can free up energy to be used towards other bodily functions like detoxification and maintaining healthy skin and hair.  Her recommendations include:

• Eat more veggies–a lot more!!
• Eat fewer animal products, especially dairy (she is a vegan)
• Eat as much organic food as possible
• Eat more raw than cooked vegetables
• Eat high alkaline foods
• Avoid wheat and gluten.  Eat grains like quinoa, millet, and amaranth instead.
• Avoid sugars (she recommends Stevia, coconut nectar, dry fruit, raw honey, or organic pure maple syrup instead)
• Avoid soy
• Drink her glowing green smoothie at least once per day (blended spinach, romaine lettuce, celery, apple, pear, banana, lemon and optional cilantro or parsley).
• Consume fermented foods to provide probiotics and enzymes (she recommends a recipe for fermented cabbage)
• Consider supplementing with probiotics and digestive enzymes
• Have frequent, large bowel movements (she encourages supplements for this, or even gravity-centered colonics to cleanse the colon).

A few of her ideas that I haven’t been able to fully embrace include:

• Only eat fruit on an empty stomach.  Since it digests so quickly, consuming fruit with other foods causes it to ferment and acidify the entire meal.  But I don’t like to eat an apple by itself because sure enough, I get hungry 20 minutes later.  I prefer to eat it with some protein/fats (like nuts) to slow the digestion and feel satiated for longer.
• Eat alkaline first.  She suggests raw veggies or her glowing green smoothie.  I’ve never liked eating my salad alone first.  I prefer to eat it with my meal.
• Don’t eat anything in the morning if you’re not hungry.  This is fine if you don’t have a job or responsibilities.  Many people need to eat breakfast while they’re home so they can get on with their day and have the energy they need.  I may not be near a kitchen or food when my hunger strikes at 10am.
• Do not consume caffeine, even green tea (which I love and drink daily!)
• Limit beans because they contain protein and starch (which she does not want you to combine) so she therefore calls them “nature’s oops.”
• Do not consume polyunsaturated oils like canola, grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed, corn, and soybean.  We mostly use olive oil in our house, but she doesn’t care for that either.  Especially when it’s heated.
• She also has 3 specific phases of the diet, and you’re supposed to stay in the first phase for at least a month before moving on.  This is to ensure that detoxification occurs gradually and does not overwhelm your system.

All of the information up to this point was already included in her first book The Beauty Detox Solution.  However, starting with chapter 4, she finally includes something new.  This section I really enjoyed, because I love hearing about how good specific foods are for you.  She mentions specific foods that help with hair, skin, eyes, etc.  Many of them are already in our diet regularly–including bell peppers, avocados, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, celery, broccoli, kale, cabbage, banana, blueberries, apple, pineapple, lemon, almonds, walnuts, arugula, onions, and garlic.  A few of them I’m trying to incorporate like acai, coconuts, figs, pumpkin seeds, cilantro, quinoa, millet, chia seeds, and sunflower seeds.  Some of them won’t realistically be making it into our kitchen any time soon, like spirulina, chlorella, bee pollen, hemp seeds, and radishes.

The final section of the book is recipes.  We’ve tried some of them and they’re decent.  Some, like the Endurance Protein Bars, are definitely going to become a regular.  Others, like the mashed cauliflower (to mimic mashed potatoes) did not pass the family’s approval test.

I do find that eating a diet similar to the one she recommends has improved my skin and hair, as she promised.  My skin is tighter, the bags under my eyes less pronounced, my hair is softer.  However, it’s very challenging to eliminate dairy AND gluten.  Cutting out sugar hasn’t been nearly as hard, especially when I have her yummy protein bars (made with dates, figs, and maple syrup) for “dessert.”  Overall I would say this book is worth reading, although the diet Snyder recommends is really quite extreme and in my opinion, probably not sustainable.  But for now, I’m enjoying trying to follow it (the summer vacation in 6 weeks is certainly a big motivator!)