The ultimate cleanse for people who hate cleanses (but still want to do one)

Image: You’ll never find anyone looking this happy on a juice cleanse. Soup, however… (Thinkstock)

DISCLAIMER: The Glow does not endorse crash diets as a form of weight-loss. We believe that lasting weight-loss can only come from healthy eating and exercising sustainably. 

I’ve always been suspicious of juice.

Not suspicious to the point where I’ve managed to avoid paying $9 for my favourite “kale and friends of kale” special at Cold Pressed Juices. But suspicious enough that I’ve never done a juice cleanse.

I just feel like if you’re going to live on juice, it shouldn’t come in cold-packs and be consumed while you’re living a normal life. You should have to go to an aquamarine Thai island where they make you eat clay and flush your bottom out with coffee enemas at the same time. Anything less just doesn’t seem right.

These celebrities love a bit of juice cleansing action…

But now there’s a cleanse I really, really want to do. And there’s no juicing involved. It’s a ‘Soup Cleanse’, and as the company states: “Turns out suffering isn’t a nutrient, so we didn’t include it.”

On this cleanse, instead of scolling back litre after litre of lemon, cayenne and sugar-loaded apple juice, you get to “enjoy all the healthy benefits of whole fruits and vegetables including their naturally-occurring fibrous skins, seeds and rinds.” Which sounds pretty ace to me.

And it’s also something I’m quite familiar with. Way back in the day, French Women Don’t Get Fat advocated a similar two day “magic leek soup kick off weekend” to help turbo-start your new and fabulous life of living like a French woman. The “magic leek soup” was meant to help you de-bloat and drop kilos over a couple of days, when you would eat as much of it as you liked, and nothing else.

I did that home-made soup cleanse several times in the mid-2000s, and I liked it every single time, so the idea of a someone-else-makes-it-and-brings-it-to-you version is very exciting.

Unfortunately, the company that’s offering this wondrous soup cleanse, the puntastically-named “Soupure” are currently delivering only in L.A.

Hopefully, as it often is with fun fads, a few Australian companies will pick up on the idea soon, and we’ll all be able to chow down on hot pulpy goodness. Locally, the horribly-named Schkinny Maninny do already offer a cleanse that includes hot soup as well as juices. I’ve never tried their cleanse personally, but a few of my cleanse-happy friends reckon it’s one of the best ones going.

But what I really want is soup and soup alone. Which means it’s back to the good old days of magic leek - luckily, the recipe is still online.

Of course, the jury is still very much out on whether or not cleanses actually have any material health benefit. But mentally, they can be a nice way to reset bad habits. Just don't do them all the time, or for longer than three days.

Have you ever tried a juice cleanse? Does a soup one sound more appealing?

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