Foods You Can Eat on the Master Cleanse Diet

Say the word "diet" and the first thing that may come to mind is what foods are permitted and which ones should be avoided. The Master Cleanse Diet has been around for decades, but in 2006 the diet experienced a revival when celebrities started using it for quick weight loss. What foods can you eat on the Master Cleanse Diet? The answer is: none.

Origins of the Master Cleanse

You may have heard about the Master Cleanse through celebrities such as Beyonce, who used the diet to lose a quick 20 pounds before she started shooting the movie "Dreamgirls" in 2006. But the original purpose of the Master Cleanse was not for weight loss: it was part of many dubious strategies employed by self-professed holistic healer Stanley Burroughs, creator of the Master Cleanse "lemonade" fast. According to Burrough's booklet on the topic, the fast was designed to "cleanse" the body of "toxins," which he claimed accumulated in various parts of the body and were responsible for aging, disease and death. Burroughs purported that the Master Cleanse solved chemical and alcohol dependency, impotence, depression, and even cancer. He recommended use of the fast for ten days, but up to 40 days for "extremely serious cases."

Master Cleanse: What's In It

The Master Cleanse is a liquid diet containing ingredients that make its "lemonade" drink palatable, but unfortunately the one thing missing from the diet is solid food. The original Master Cleanse diet recipe printed in Burrough's booklet includes: "2 Tablespoons of lemon or limejuice (sic), 2 Tablespoons genuine maple syrup, 1/10 Teaspoon cayenne pepper, and 8 oz water, room temperature." Burroughs specifies that cold water can be used if desired.

Doing the Master Cleanse

The original Master Cleanse diet allows six to 12 glasses of the "lemonade" daily. Burrough's booklet specifies that no vitamins are to be taken, nor is any other food during the period of the diet. The focus of the Master Cleanse diet is to increase "elimination" to more than three times per day. According to Burroughs, anything less than two bowel movements a day is "unhealthy." The Master Cleanse allows consumption of laxative tea. Alternately, cleansers are encouraged to drink a gallon of water and sea salt first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Salt water is an old wives' remedy for constipation.

What Health Experts Say

Ed Zimney, MD, is a Master Cleanse debunker, revealing the magical properties of the diet as largely mythical. According to Zimney, the diet derives its calories from the sugar contained in the maple syrup, and it is otherwise ineffective in "detoxifying" the kidneys or liver, as Burroughs initially claimed. The salt water flush is dangerously similar to over-the-counter laxative abuse. More recently, the Master Cleanse has been criticized by nutrition experts as being an unhealthy way to lose weight fast, and Bonnie Taub-Dix of the American Dietetic Association states that the diet's lack of protein makes it "nutritionally inadequate."

A Better Alternative

Joy Bauer, a New York dietitian and author of the book "Joy's Life Diet" points out in a USA Today interview that eschewing solid food in lieu of a liquid diet may be a false economy for dieters. Twelve glasses of the Master Cleanse lemonade, which contains around 1,300 calories, could easily be substituted by a full day's worth of healthy foods. But nutritionists and other health experts aren't the only ones weighing in on whether the Master Cleanse diet is the best way to address weight loss and prevent illness. In 1984, Master Cleanser Burroughs was charged and convicted by a California court for the second-degree felony murder of a young cancer patient through the use of unproven medical treatments. Part of Burrough's unorthodox methods included use of the Master Cleanse diet.