Juice Cleanse Review

If you've ever wished your body came with a reset button, take heart – you're not alone. I'm particularly overcome by the feeling on a Monday morning, when I'm expected to be a bright and sunshiny ball of energy despite not having fully recovered from the debauchery of Saturday night and the gluttony of Sunday brunch. These expectations are akin to hoping that Luis Suarez will never bite another player again, if left unpunished. They are inane, even laughable.

However, after a string of not-so-sprightly starts to the week and my digestive system in a flux, I decided that it was time for drastic measures. It was time for a detox, but not of the kinds in which I swore off mimosas for a week. It was time for a diet – a juice diet.

Juice diets are all the rage on the other side of the Atlantic but in Mumbai, I found only one option – Raw Pressery. The juices, that are cold pressed to preserve all the innate nutrients of the ingredients, are marketed to sound like they are the very elixir of life drawn from the Philosopher's Stone. I was hooked (perhaps, also for lack of choice) and placed an order for a one day cleanse – six juices for Rs 1500, including taxes.

The juice diet requires you to prep your body for at least two days before starting, but I'll admit that I began only the night before. My juices arrived early (Raw Pressery delivers between 6am-8am) and like a good social media junkie, I arranged my bottles as prettily as I could on my kitchen counter, Instagrammed them and then, took a closer look.

The first, a concoction called Trim, looked like blended turf and tasted like it too. It boasted of very healthy looking ingredient list (kale, spinach, doodhi, amla, celery, green apple, ginger, lemon) but as I pinched my nose and downed it, I felt dread settling over me like a thick blanket. Was this what my entire day would taste like?

The diet requires you to have a bottle of juice every two and a half hours and my enthusiastic colleagues were eager to see me take my 11.30 am meal, Run (pineapple, pear, chia seeds). I was half expecting acid reflux from hell thanks to the pineapple but this one pleasantly went down and stayed peacefully there.

The hours between Run and my 2pm meal, Flush (apple, beet, carrot, ginger, lemon) were most agonising, given that this is the time of the day when I'm most peckish. I gave my office coffee machine a stare reserved for lovers in bed and wondered if my local pakora pau man was missing my daily contribution to his business.

Lunch hour arrived and while my colleagues pulled out their unusually appetizing looking dabbas (cauliflower has NEVER looked as good), I opened Flush, a juice so frighteningly coloured, I'd imagine it'd fool even Edward Cullen. It wasn't love at first sip, but as the meal went on, I found myself wanting more as I finished my bottle.

Tea time rolled by and my 4.30pm meal was Shield (bell pepper, tomato, carrot, celery, basil, ginger, lemon). Unfortunately, this wasn't half as good as lunch, tasting like cold tomato soup from an office dispenser.

By 7pm, the hunger pangs had returned but they were not half as awful as I'd expected them to be after a full day's work. Glow (cucumber, coconut water, pineapple, lemongrass, aloe vera, lemon) was pleasant enough to taste and I was sated for the while.

The last juice of the day, Build (almonds, honey, cinnamon, water), had me most excited, given its seemingly yummy ingredients but was the biggest disappointment. It was sweet, watery and wholly unappetizing, and was only quickly finished because it marked the end of the diet.

The juice cleanse also requires that you slowly introduce proteins back into your diet after you've finished, and I faithfully did this for three days to make up for not adequately prepping myself before.

The cleanse worked wonderfully for my bad tummy. I felt no perceptible change in my energy levels though I did sleep soundly for at least a week after. I had a strange acne outbreak but apart from this, there were no adverse effects on my system.

So should you try it out? Sure. It's the kind of thing that I'd recommend after five days of wedding food or a week in Goa, but don't go in expecting it to erase all the sins of your indulgent past.

You can place an order online on www.rawpressery.com or call them on 022-49263333.