As the newest health trends come and go it’s well-worth your weight in gold to do some intensive research regarding whatever your next diet plan might be. That said, what diets allow you to drink coffee?
Regardless of what your health concerns really are, that’s the most important question anyway.
Maybe you’re getting ready for this summers beach season. If you’re prepping for a juice cleanse and are interested in the effects that coffee will have on you, then this is your guide.
What Does A Juice Cleanse Accomplish?
It’s likely you’ve heard of the juice cleanse before. However, if you’re asking what all the rage is about, then this is a good starting place for learning about the juice cleanse.
A cleanse aims to detoxify, as many of these juice companies will tell you. What it really means though is that the central goal is to return the body to a state of less acidity and balance the PH. This is thought to occur in two pivotal ways:
First, some juice cleansing aficionados describe the energy that your body requires for digestion to be taking away efforts towards cell repair and other priorities. Digestion is relieved by consuming only liquids. Every time you eat, energy is diverted from other things such as repairing cells and getting your immune system up to par.
This is thought to be experienced when a tired spell comes over you after eating a larger meal.
When you consume only liquids, the body is relieved of those mundane tasks and can concentrate on its other jobs.
Secondly, and onwards to our internal pH balance. As with most things, especially food and drink, there’s a scale of acidity. With the body, we call it the range of alkaline to acidic.
Fats, sugars, and dense foods are typically on the acidic scale. This is why those foods tend to make us feel worse in large quantities. Even in small quantities, we could be doing some damage. The jury is mostly out on that one, but it’s easy to see why eating more raw fruits and vegetables bring the body to a more alkaline state.
This is the culprit when many health nuts associate the feeling of vibrancy and strength with those whole foods. This is the idea behind curing disease with raw foods and vegetables.
So How Does the Juice Cleanse Work?
Just as fruits and vegetables are capable of delivering a mass amount of nutrients per serving and because the bulk is removed from juice, you can consume many more vegetables throughout the day. In one juice alone you can pack in the nutrients of a pound of kale plus loads of other veggies. This means you can affect your body’s ph much more effectively than trying to eat an enormous amount of salads each day (we’re speaking about hundreds of salads too).
Juicing is likely to deliver you the nutrients you need. It’s also got the PH stabilizing goodness that a juice cleanse requires.
So that begs the question about coffee, which is thought of as being a notoriously acidic beverage.
Cut Down Your Caffeine Intake
For best results, while cleansing, we want to bring your body into a more alkaline state. So the issue of coffee consumption during a cleanse is one that is quite complicated.
If you typically enjoy coffee or drink soda, take measures to wean off of these highly acidic, caffeinated beverages before your cleanse.
For coffee-lovers, if cutting coffee out of your diet is not a personal goal, it is not essential to completely eliminate it during your cleanse. As a solution, you may opt to drink a low-acid, cold-brew coffee, choose to upgrade your cleanse with or transition to a matcha green tea as a way to still get a bit of caffeine without disrupting your alkalinity levels.
Drinking More Water Is The Key
Cleansing reconnects you with your body’s needs.
As dehydration is commonly mistaken for hunger, drinking more water will help to keep your cells hydrated and eliminate false hunger. Drinking water is also an important first step in preparing for your juice cleanse because it transports nutrients to your cells.
One of the primary purposes of a juice cleanse is to give your body a break and try to “clean out” or encourage increased and natural detoxification with vegetables. Here’s where the effects of coffee become questionable.
The Verdict on Coffee Consumption
Caffeine is a substance that is metabolized by our liver by a process that includes oxidation. This means that our liver is hard at work when processing caffeine. Ingesting caffeine will give your body more work to do and could, therefore, hinder or lessen the overall effectiveness of the cleanse to an extent.
We aren’t totally sure why this works, but if you’re concerned about your liver then some of the experts think that drinking warm water with a lemon first thing in the morning is an incredible way to being the cleansing process before you even have your first sip of juice (or coffee).
Some experts will encourage you to avoid drinking caffeine while on your cleanse altogether. Warm lemon water or not.
However, if you drink coffee daily, we strongly recommend weaning yourself off in the days leading up to your juice cleanse or if you’re drinking coffee during the juice cleanse then maybe it’s best to keep it to a minimum.
Detox symptoms from lack of caffeine are no fun at all, and if you’re as coffee obsessed as we are, then it’s likely that you’ll still want to partake during your cleanse. Coffee is a part of our lifestyles!
Cutting coffee out cold turkey can lead to your body focusing more on searching for its caffeine source rather than enjoying the benefits of a juice cleanse and its rapid nutrient absorption.
So, if the elimination of coffee is not an option, we recommend using organic coffee or as we will discuss later, some of the darker blends out there. Additionally, if you do want to go about drinking coffee, it’s best to not use any cream or sugar whatsoever. If you’ve started a cleanse, and there’s no going back, stick to the black coffee.
Getting accustomed to simple black coffee can be enough of a process for some though. Read our guide for more tips on getting used to black coffee.
Many in the juicing community will encourage you to avoid drinking caffeine while on your cleanse.
However, if you drink coffee daily, it’s best to start weaning yourself off in the days leading up or during your juice cleanse. Detox symptoms from lack of caffeine can be pretty hard on the body and psyche. If you are like us, and elimination of coffee is not an option, we recommend using organic coffee or tea with no added creamers or sugars. We have a flash brewed coffee combined with our nut milk that is a great substitute. You can also get an extra nut milk to use as your creamer for your coffee and tea.
Cutting coffee out cold turkey can lead to your body focusing more on searching for its caffeine source rather than enjoying the benefits of rapid nutrient absorption.
What Kind of Coffee Should I Make for My Juice Cleanse
For coffee-lovers, if cutting coffee out of your diet is not a personal goal, it is not essential to completely eliminate it during your cleanse. As a solution, you may opt to drink a low-acid, cold-brew coffee, choose to upgrade your cleanse with
The idea of a juice cleanse is that your body is getting a chance to lose all the toxins you’ve built up over the years. Whether it’s from alcohol or just saturated fats in your diet then you’ll be wanting to stick to an organic coffee blend or something that lower in toxins.
Toxins in coffee?
Many juice cleanse experts report that coffee is just as much a toxin as anything else. However, there’s some misguided information when it comes to this subject, and with that comes a wide variety of opinions. So the supposed toxins are actually a much more convoluted situation. What we think that means is coffee that contains mold.
So where does that mold stem from?
That will likely stem from older and more stale beans. Often the way commercially mass-produced coffee beans are processed leads to mistreatment, and if you aren’t careful, your coffee will be treated very poorly during storage. This can lead to some agitation of your stomach and during a juice cleanse this could be one of the worst things for your situation.
It’s therefore very important to know the mechanics of mold and stale coffee. This is what’s hindering you from really being able to have your daily brew of coffee during a cleanse with success.
Keep in mind that caffeine is a natural anti-insect and antifungal defense mechanism for the plant. It deters mold and other organisms from growing on the beans. While traces of mold may be everywhere, the caffeine helps prevent it from growing on the beans while they’re in storage. When you remove the caffeine, your beans are defenseless.
Thus, decaf coffee is higher in both aflatoxin and ochratoxin. That’s really just fancy talk for impurities that will affect your coffee and ultimately your cleanse. If you’re thinking that caffeine is the problem with coffee this probably isn’t the case.
So decaf coffee is off the menu during a juice cleanse.
Maybe you’re thinking that the expensive kinds of coffee will be good for you, but this isn’t the answer either. What you’re actually looking for can be broken down by kind of bean and roast.
Arabica beans are typically less moldy than robusta beans. This has many factors but unlike Robust it actually has less caffeine content. Contrary as is discussed above. However, the caffeine levels here will be much more suitable for our juice cleanse purposes anyway. Robusta is what you find in Folgers and cheaper coffee. But even expensive types of coffee are usually processed with methods that allow mold to grow.
Dark coffee is less acidic than other roasts of coffee. So make that your mainstay. If you can get coffee that is organic or locally roasted (as to cut down the storage time, and thus mold development time) this is your way to go.
Keep in mind that coffee can affect your digestive system so there is a likelihood that you’ll be feeling those effects during your cleanse, for better or worse.
Only Black Coffee On A Juice Cleanse?
If you absolutely crave caffeine but can’t get past the flavor of black coffee then here are the doctors’ orders.
Dairy-based and artificial creamers are what we’re trying to avoid and are not recommended at all. Many of the health experts that recommend juicing will likely tell you to avoid these kinds of coffee additives anyway. So get in the habit of having a black coffee, with no additives.
That said, there are a few workarounds for those who aren’t able to get past the bitter black taste of simply brewed, drip coffee.
Plant-based kinds of milk like cashew, hemp, coconut, and almond are good alternatives to regular milk or artificial creamers. If you must sweeten your coffee try coconut palm sugar. Coconut palm sugar still has minerals in it so it doesn’t take from your body’s storehouse of minerals in order to digest, as white sugar does.
White sugar is the one to avoid in the juice cleanse scenario and you’ll find that most coffee sweeteners in your dairy section contain that.
Can I Drink Coffee On A Keto Diet?
While we tread the waters of diets, one recent diet that could affect the partakers of coffee is the Keto Diet. If you’re interested in losing weight but the juice cleanse sounds like the Mount Everest of diets, then what is all the rage in the diet realm right now is the keto diet.
This involves removing the starches and carbs from your diet and consuming only fats and proteins. This is a hotly debated subject, but what we will say is that coffee is still on the menu with this fad diet. So if you’re a fan of heavy whipping cream in your coffee or even grass-fed butter, this could be an option.
The Keto diet has been shown to draw coffee lovers into its orbit because it’s such a staple of American life that most people simply don’t want to live without it. So we don’t blame you for wanting to enjoy your morning brew.
It seems that the verdict is finally in. If you feel like you need caffeine during your cleanse then its suggested to continuing drinking your coffee black with no creamer or sweetener. Drinking black coffee is a much better option than going through caffeine withdrawal while you are cleansing. Check out our review of how coffee affects the body, in its many ways, to really get a good understanding of what will be happening when you consume coffee on your next diet.
Regardless of what diet you want to go with, there’s plenty of research out there to sway you either way. So while you’re doing your homework, why not grab a fresh cup of coffee and/or peruse our reviews of great coffee making gear. It might just help you get through that marathon of diet you’re planning on tackling this month.
