While many people focus on what foods they should eat during a detox program, it is just as important for you to know what foods to avoid! Certain foods, even foods you may consider healthy, can sabotage your detox efforts. Below, we tell you about 7 of these food groups and then tell you why you need to avoid them all for a successful detox.

Sugar

We probably don't need to tell you to avoid things like candy, cake, soda pop, and sweetened coffee creamers during your detox. Obviously, these low nutrient foods with lots of added sugar (sucrose) are very hard on the detoxification systems in your body and should be completely eliminated from your diet during your detox! This especially includes the highly processed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). However, you may not realize that natural sugars you may consider "healthy" should also be completely eliminated or at least drastically reduced. These include all types of fruit due to the high fructose content plus honey, including wild honey, agave, molasses, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and raw organic sugar. All sugar, in every form, is very difficult for the body to process and should be eliminated during detox.

Wine and Alcohol

Red wine has gotten a lot of flattery in the popular press lately. It contains the antioxidant resveratrol that is supposed to have a whole cascade of health benefits including improving insulin sensitivity, improving cardiovascular function, helping you lose weight, and even serving as a powerful anti-aging agent. You may have also heard that almost any alcohol in small amounts can lower your anxiety, help you sleep better, and elevate your mood overall. However, regardless of the potential health benefits, all alcohol, even red wine, requires the liver to put a great deal of effort into detoxification! Therefore, you should abstain 100 percent from all types of alcohol during your detox.

Dairy Products

 

The lactose in milk, just like other sugars, should be completely avoided during detox. Furthermore, many people are a bit lactose intolerant and don't even know it! These people tend to get away with eating dairy products but at a price of these dairy foods being extremely burdensome to their digestive tract. Furthermore, the fat in milk, even in low fat milk, makes it harder to digest.

Gluten Products Like Wheat Bread

While wheat bread is often marketed as a healthy bread, it contains just as much gluten as white bread! Even if you do not have a gluten sensitivity, you should eliminate it during a detox because it is incredibly difficult for your body to digest because it just wasn't designed to do so. Gluten often causes inflammation too and this can interfere with the detox process.

Processed Foods 

Have you ever taken a good look at the number of grams of sugar in a single granola bar? How about a single container of yogurt? In fact, many of these so called "healthy" foods, contain high amounts of high fructose corn syrup! They also contain trans fats, food flavoring additives, artificial preservatives, and other chemicals just stuck in there to create a certain look or texture! All of these make processed foods a big "no no" when you are detoxing! You're better off eating whole fresh foods that don't have a food label like fresh kale, zucchini, cucumbers, celery, and parsley!

Processed Carbs

Many other processed carbs are marketed as healthy, when in fact, they really aren't and should be avoided on a detox diet and as much as possible other times too. These include so called "healthy cereals" that contain not only sugar and food additives but very often trans fat. Furthermore, the carbs are often processed at such high temperatures that both the macronutrients and micronutrients are denatured. This not only robs you of nutrition, it makes your detoxification systems kick in and work really hard to get rid of them.

MSG

While there are many food additives in processed foods, MSG ranks as one of the worst in terms of forcing the body into full press detox mode so we are singling it out. Be sure to read your food labels carefully to completely avoid this harmful ingredient. Be aware, however, that MSG goes by many other names or is contained in many other ingredients because the FDA does not require labeling of MSG when it is used as a processor of other ingredients. These include monosodium glutamate, monoammonium glutamate, magnesium glutamate, processed free glutamic acid, yeast powder, hydrolyzed protein, textured protein, whey powder, soy protein, soy sauce, Even ingredients like corn starch, modified food starch, dextrose, and milk powder can contain MSG! The only way to really avoid MSG is to stop eating processed foods!

Final Thoughts

The human body is well designed for detoxification. The liver, kidneys, lungs, gastrointestinal system, and immune system all work cooperatively on this important task. However, in the modern world of processed food, over indulging, and environmental contaminants, our bodies simply can't keep up so toxins do accumulate, even in people who look otherwise healthy. This is why it is so important to detox on a regular basis.
Not only do we need to get the toxins out of our system by detoxing, we need to get our overtaxed detox systems a chance to rest occasionally. This is why it's important to eliminate all the foods above during a detox. It allows these systems to get rid of the accumulated toxins as well as take a break from detoxing at full capacity all the time!