Sue and I tried “juicing” for a full three days, eating nothing but frappe’ veggie drinks and fresh fruit in an attempt to detoxify, clear our skin, and feel “refreshed”. The only thing I felt was pain, however. I’m so addicted to diet soda, that I had a tension headache for 24 hours. Once that passed, the next 24 hours had me rolling on the floor when I should have been sleeping, instead forcing me to lament the intestinal rumbling that began at 5am and didn’t let go.

Working the subsequent morning wasn’t any better. Clutching my trash can for half the day was a challenge in meeting my customers’ expectations via phone service, but do-able. The nausea was intense for a few hours until voiding my bowels provided quick relief. My energy had been sapped, a peaceful feeling actually, that multiplied the effect of comfy chairs. The strength was certainly not gone, as would be symptomatic of a drop in blood-pressure, but the willpower was definitely knocked down a peg. Day 3 had me slogging through routine in a simulacrum of living, eyes heavy desipite 10 hours rest and bones acting both lazy and hollow. Because I felt lighter, a flight of stairs was a small obstacle, but my footsteps landed haphazardly and more erratic than I had remembered. My walking seemed almost arythmic through key points in the day.

Oddly, I had rarely been hungry during this experiment, the pulpy slime of varying hues seeming to meet (or suppress) my nutritional needs. My thirst, normally quenched by sodas, was reduced in tandem with this lack of hunger, proof-positive that you just don’t get anything out of carbonated drinks even with double the dosage. My skin felt dry but soft, the idea of animal hide being stretched across a drum springing to my mind. Contrary to what I predicted, my forehead was as oily as ever, a supposedly genetic predisposition being a possible explanation. To the very end, I experienced a pulsating scratchiness almost directly below the sternum. With the combination of whole fruits and low amounts of “thick” drinks, it’s not unlikely that my meals went down a little rough, but my daily 4-5 bottles of water would assumedly reduce the risk of that cause. I’m still curious as to what that was all about.

I'll attest that cat vomit is a top-shelf ingredient at any Whole Foods.

Synopsis: with a diet of fresh pineapple, coconut, bananas, strawberries, and grapes, interspersed with “smoothies” made of celery, guayava, sweet potatoes, carrots, mango, and more, I can assure you that the average hamburger-eater will feel like utter shit when switching away from more “traditional” American meals. This was mostly expected, but the intensity of these symptoms proved surprisingly more than I had signed up for. I’m mostly convinced that these problems would desist through continued persistence, but half of my “withdrawal” symptoms had me questioning what we had done wrong and what I could change to fix the experiment, it was so bad. I think the short answer would be: Dedication. Natural and Manufactured foods are indeed completely different worlds that a body can not simply “visit”. Residency in one or the other is required, unless one is to succumb to nausea.

It’s interesting how dependant we become on the commercial essence of a “fast” nation. I’m not coining “fast food nation” because I’ve even stopped going to the restaurants traditionally designated as such. Instead, I choose the term “fast” because that’s what we want, how we want it: immediately and within a 5 minute drive. Food is grown and produced in other states, frozen, and shipped via trucks, delivered to stores, and food simply lays around until you choose to eat it, even at home. The process takes so long that artificial preservatives are essential for most products’ journey.

In light of “newer” sugary foods dripping with flavor additives, natural meals just get the volume turned down, a healthy salad suddenly seeming boring and tasteless when compared to the pooling lipidity of spicy chicken wings. An apple’s sweetness pales to a glass of sugary Coke. This is all reversible however, for if you quit Coke the taste buds will eventually bounce back and you could once again take full pleasure in the brilliance of a simple apple. Assumedly, this is true for the full spectrum of man-made foods. I don’t debate why our current system is necessary to sustaining our teeming populous growth, but it’s nice to be reminded of how much we’re actually monkeying with biology, how much we’ve derailed the inherent order of what our bodies need, crave, and ultimately look like.

I’ll continue to eat quasi-poorly, the siren song of greasy restaurant entrees being too tasty to ignore, but I’ll also continue to conduct these tests of my own tolerance, to jog the body into recognizing the flaws in my nutritional system. I don’t have weight to lose, but I am not above attempting fad diets and mixing combinations of natural health food…. if only to whet my curiosity or quiz my personal resolve. I’ll suck down a detox drink or flush the system with a diuretic, just to alleviate the guilt of a week of burger-bingeing. After all, I want to know what options exist, instead of being herded unknowingly towards a singular lifestyle without explanation, like genetically-altered cattle to a meat-grinder. If I can’t make a permanent difference in my own health, I want to at least be aware of my choices’ impact. Juicing is not for the “casually concerned” such as myself, since a fine knowledge of preparation and planning are essential to a smooth transition, but some balance has to exist.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a pound of restaurant-made Fajitas and a liter of Coke to tear through. Hopefully my choice food’s reintroduction won’t tear me apart.