People will do anything as long as it is positioned as a “secret trick” the toned folk have long kept hidden from the rest of us. We are drawn to conspiracy like moths to the flame of exploitation.
Let’s start with the good news. You will lose weight on the cabbage soup diet. That’s what happens when malnutrition occurs and you slowly starve to death. The weight melts off like butter.
It’s only seven days, I hear you say. True, but what happens when this fad diet “miraculously” sheds, let’s say, 4kg or 5kg in seven days? You’ll do it again because you will learn that by tricking yourself into feeling satiated with a low-calorie cabbage broth, you don’t need to eat because you can eat yourself instead — that's what’s happening at a very crass level.
When you do decide to stop, your metabolism will have gone on sabbatical while the hormone leptin will be as absent as local municipality governance. This means that when you start eating again and you spike your leptin levels, your weight will rebound faster than a Free State bank account.
Don’t like cabbage? There are other soup diets: the chicken soup diet, the keto soup diet, where you drink bacon, chicken, avo, nuts, mushrooms and more, and the Sacred Heart soup diet, or the broth of non-starchy vegetables. They are all militant — that’s all you eat, except for the keto soup diet where you are allowed butter in your coffee and an avo for breakfast.
Dear reader, behold the mighty yo-yo and the psychological turmoil and unhealthy food relationship that goes with it. This will happen for the rest of your life — just imagine the damage to your organs — unless you snap out of this “what’s the secret trick to rapid fat loss” nonsense.
Here’s the truth: cabbage soup and chicken soup are actually good for you and you should eat them. You should also be making vegetable soups.
I haven’t suddenly changed sides from an inclusive diet to radical eating trends (RET). I’ve always been in the progressive camp, the one led by science and common sense. Populist promises of radical, unbelievable results are just that: lies meant to exploit the desperate among us. That doesn’t mean the desperate can’t benefit from the same policies in a considered, mediated approach.
Science is full of studies that show soups are as close to nature’s elixir as you can get. The difference between adding soups to a good diet, and only eating soups, is that the former appreciates they have their limitations, not least that they do not include all the nutrients we need to survive.
A Psychology & Behaviour study published last month shows an inverse correlation between soup consumption and obesity. The more soup you eat, the less chance of obesity. This is most probably because of the finding in 2013 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition that found soups keep you feeling satiated for longer. This is probably the result of delayed gastric emptying, a greater glycemic response and faster access to nutrients.
That last point is of particular importance. Because of their nature, soups can get the good stuff into your bloodstream faster. A May 2020 study in Chest found chicken soup has anti-inflammatory properties and is useful in managing the symptoms of viral infections. They suggest giving it to Covid-19 patients.
Another 2020 study in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine found soup increases sympathetic nerve activity which helps lower blood pressure and heart rate, and goes on to suggest soups are good for those at risk of hypertension, heart disease and chronic inflammatory diseases.
If soups are so good for us, let’s not give them a bad name by abusing them and damaging our health. Eat cabbage soup and vegetable soup and if you eat meat, add chicken soup. Variety is the spice of life and, in this case, it supports life.
