Chances are you've had a friend who went on a "juice cleanse" in hopes of losing weight or flushing out her system. The cleanse probably cost her upward of $200 and left her asking, "Was it worth it?" Angelenos Angela Blatteis and Vivienne Vella, creators of the new Soupure Souping diet system, would tell your friend, "No, it wasn't worth it."
Blatteis and Vella promote "Souping," an all-soup diet, as the healthier alternative to juicing. It sounds interesting, so we turned to some experts to get the full scoop.
Soup is healthy. Soup can be a wonderfully delicious way to achieve fullness and get disease-fighting antioxidants and phytochemicals. Vegetable and broth-based soups provide a big bang for their buck because of the high water content mixed with the carbs, fiber and protein from the ingredients. It's a high-volume meal, so you'll feel full longer as compared to a dense, low-volume food such as a protein bar, for example, according to Lisa Brown and Jennifer Medina of Brown & Medina Nutrition in New York.
But, not all soup is healthy. It is important to stay away from cream-based options because they tend to be loaded with saturated fat and calories, says Maria Bella of Top Balance Nutrition in New York.
Short-term diets often come up short. Turning to an all-soup diet isn't ideal, because short-term diets aren't usually long-lasting. "When you go 'on a diet,' you are bound to 'go off a diet'" Bella says. People often underestimate the power of making small changes to their daily diet. Bella speaks from experience, because she is an 80-pound weight-loss success story. By making healthy changes to her everyday diet, she has kept the weight off for 10 years.
Will a souping diet work? The moral of the story is that a soup cleanse probably won't return the results you're looking for, but incorporating vegetable and broth-based soups into an otherwise healthy diet is a great way to give your body loads of nutrients, antioxidants and phytochemicals (as well as keep you nice and full, too!).
If you're ready to start incorporating healthy soups into your diet, Brown and Medina provided us with two delicious recipes you're sure to love:
Vegetable Soup
Butternut Squash Soup
Soup's on!
