Are Juice Cleanses Encouraging Eating Disorders?

Calories are the enemy—or at least that’s what our fat-shaming culture has taught us. We’ve come to acknowledge that eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are bad, but with the recent phenomena of “juicing” going on in the past decade, it seems like extreme compulsive behavior and caloric restriction is OK so long as its in the form of something “green.” Jezebel’s Jenna Sauers breaks down a recent Marie Claire article that cites “juicing” as a gateway to eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. While Sauers doesn’t think juicing is that extreme, she does take issue with the dangers of rejecting solid foods entirely and consuming all of one’s calories and (not all of) one’s nutrients in the form of liquid veggies:

I think juice, though high in sugar, can be a part of a balanced diet. It's a "sometimes food." But I get uneasy whenever a friend tells me—and this happens with increasing frequency—that juice is all she's consuming. Talk about "toxins" and "cleansing" and "good" and "bad” foods just seems unwholesome—just another way of talking about elimination and control.