Memo on Your Detox Diet

When I was younger I never really cleaned my room.

Instead, I stuffed everything I could into my closet and underneath my bed, that way my room would have an appearance of tidiness. My dad would come in and give me a stern look of disapproval, telling me I could “dress a monkey in silk, but in the end it’s still a damn monkey”.

Flash forward a few weeks and I’m in college. Not surprisingly his adage still holds true. However this time, I’m not talking about my messy room but rather about “detox” diets being mislabeled as beneficial for your health.

Detox diets are extreme diet regimens that involve eating a scant variety of food items with the goal of weight loss and ridding the body of toxins.

I had an ex-girlfriend once eat nothing but maple syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper for 10 days. She called it the “Master Cleanse”; perhaps you’re familiar with the term. After a little research, I found the Master Cleanse diet was created by Stanley Burroughs in 1941 and made especially famous by Beyonce in 2006.

That’s right, 1941. A time when color television, computers, and (gasp) Facebook ceased to exist, and we were using penicillin and sulfonamides to cure just about everything.

I thought my ex was completely out of her mind.

I’m still puzzled by this phenomenon of reasonable and intelligent people believing they can “detox” their body by eating lemons, syrup and pepper; that one can make up for weeks of corporeal abuse, poor dietary habits, and a lack of regular physical activity by a means of flagrant starvation.

I can’t help but laugh to myself. People need to have a little more faith in the wonderful abilities of our lungs, kidneys and liver to keep our systems clean of the schmutz we put in it.

Or maybe, I am thinking, I am the one in need of a paradigm shift; maybe I am going about this all wrong.

I’m a broke college student, perhaps like the rest of the quacks in southern California, I need to cash in on peoples’ ignorance too!

Eureka! I’ll make a diet of my own! I’ll call it Memo’s Bitchin’ Koolaid Kleanse. Instead of lemons, syrup, and pepper, I’ll choose oranges, salt, and Koolaid ―everyone likes Koolaid.

I’ll claim the citric acid in the oranges will chelate heavy metals in your system, the salt will keep your electrolytes in check, and that Koolaid is extraordinarily high in vitamin K2― which is for Kleanse, of course.

Through this powerful triad of salutary glory you can lose 10 pounds in 10 days, while at the same time “Kleansing” your body of environmental toxins and unwanted hormones.

It’ll feel like Kool-Aid Man himself crashing into your system in a calamitous all-out assault on fat and toxins clinging like obstinate vermin to your body.

And to all the cynics who cry songs of borderline starvation, torturous deprivation, and protein energy malnutrition, I say nay! It’s not starvation! No no no, it’s “Kleansing”, it’s good for you!

And as I exploit the insecure populace who seek to hide the folly of unhealthy fasting under a banner of salubrious intent, I will always wonder how long it will take for them to see that beneath my elaborate layer of silk, lies just a damn monkey afterall.