For the last few weeks, Vivienne Zhao, an investment banker who lives and works in Manhattan, has spent each Monday on a cleanse, consuming over the course of the day five liquid-based meals delivered in single-serve plastic containers.
Among those typically included on the menu: pinto and black beans cooked with tomatoes and morsels of spinach and bok choy; garlicky carrots mixed with onions and alkaline water; and puréed pumpkin spiked with cardamom and Saigon cinnamon.
Like a growing number of people, Ms. Zhao came to the routine — known as souping, or going on a soup cleanse — after finding juice cleanses, which she tried several times, too extreme.
“The juice cleanses are difficult because you don’t chew, and you don’t feel like you’re eating anything for days at a time,” she said. “You’re just really hungry.”
Ms. Zhao orders from Splendid Spoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which offers vegan, gluten-free soups in single-day cleanses, with the option of adding five hearty soups as meal replacements over the course of a week. Around three-quarters of its clientele — predominantly women — choose the longer version, according to Nicole Chaszar, the company founder. Sales, she said, have tripled annually since the line was introduced in 2013.
In January, Soupure, a company that opened in Los Angeles in 2014, expanded from local delivery to shipping its cleanses nationally. It also operates a popular outpost in Brentwood Town Center there. In Philadelphia, Real Food Works, a meal delivery service, added a soup cleanse to its menu in late 2013.
The appeal of souping, in part, is that it promises an easier detox than a juice cleanse.
“When you do juice cleanses, your blood sugar can spike really high,” said Despina Hyde, a registered dietitian at NYU Langone Medical Center. “Soup cleanses are inherently lower in sugar over all because they’re using more vegetables and complex carbohydrates versus fruit. They also tend to be higher in fiber, which has so many good benefits.” (...)
Soup cleanses also tend to be quite low in calories, often hovering around the 1,200 mark for a day’s worth of soup.
“That’s right at the borderline,” said Ms. Hyde, the dietitian. “A lot of people I work with need between 1,400 and 1,600 calories a day. You’re going to lose weight on low-calorie diets, of course, but it can lead to muscle breakdown.” For that reason, she doesn’t advise souping for more than one full day at a time.
Among those typically included on the menu: pinto and black beans cooked with tomatoes and morsels of spinach and bok choy; garlicky carrots mixed with onions and alkaline water; and puréed pumpkin spiked with cardamom and Saigon cinnamon.
Like a growing number of people, Ms. Zhao came to the routine — known as souping, or going on a soup cleanse — after finding juice cleanses, which she tried several times, too extreme.“The juice cleanses are difficult because you don’t chew, and you don’t feel like you’re eating anything for days at a time,” she said. “You’re just really hungry.”
Ms. Zhao orders from Splendid Spoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which offers vegan, gluten-free soups in single-day cleanses, with the option of adding five hearty soups as meal replacements over the course of a week. Around three-quarters of its clientele — predominantly women — choose the longer version, according to Nicole Chaszar, the company founder. Sales, she said, have tripled annually since the line was introduced in 2013.
In January, Soupure, a company that opened in Los Angeles in 2014, expanded from local delivery to shipping its cleanses nationally. It also operates a popular outpost in Brentwood Town Center there. In Philadelphia, Real Food Works, a meal delivery service, added a soup cleanse to its menu in late 2013.
The appeal of souping, in part, is that it promises an easier detox than a juice cleanse.
“When you do juice cleanses, your blood sugar can spike really high,” said Despina Hyde, a registered dietitian at NYU Langone Medical Center. “Soup cleanses are inherently lower in sugar over all because they’re using more vegetables and complex carbohydrates versus fruit. They also tend to be higher in fiber, which has so many good benefits.” (...)
Soup cleanses also tend to be quite low in calories, often hovering around the 1,200 mark for a day’s worth of soup.
“That’s right at the borderline,” said Ms. Hyde, the dietitian. “A lot of people I work with need between 1,400 and 1,600 calories a day. You’re going to lose weight on low-calorie diets, of course, but it can lead to muscle breakdown.” For that reason, she doesn’t advise souping for more than one full day at a time.
by Rachel Felder, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Danny Ghitis 
