Celery Diet: Healthy Or Not?

Fun fact about celery: it actually has fewer than zero calories because it takes more energy to digest than it contains. While this at first sounds like the golden ticket to weight loss and healthy living, this veggie is more complex than you may think.

Celery’s Nutritional Benefits 

Because it’s more concentrated without all the fiber of the veggie in its whole form, celery juice is more nutritious than solid celery. The juice is super concentrated in Vitamin K, delivering up to 74% of your recommended daily intake in a single serving. Keep in mind, though, that vitamin K is fat-soluble, meaning you need to consume it with fat to absorb it properly. Some other vitamins and nutrients in celery include:

• Calcium
• Magnesium
• Phosphorus
• Potassium
• Sodium
• Vitamin A
• Biotin 
• Vitamin C
• Zinc
• Copper
• Folate
• Antioxidants 

Celery’s Affect on Inflammation 

Inflammation is part of our body’s defense mechanism and plays an important role in the healing process. The swelling and redness that comes with inflammation is a physical sign of your immune system’s defense against harmful bacteria and viruses. 

Although some short-term (acute) inflammation is crucial to our body’s health, long-term (chronic) inflammation can cause or be caused by major issues. An anti-inflammatory diet can help to manage symptoms of both acute and chronic inflammation.

Celery is a natural anti-inflammatory food that can help manage flare-ups of chronic inflammation and prevent and lessen the effects of acute inflammation. 

Juice Cleanses: Benefits and Risks 

There is little concrete evidence from scientific studies supporting the effectiveness of juice cleanses as a detox or diet. They claim to help with weight loss and gut bacteria changes. While juicing can be a quick fix to bloating, it is not a long-term solution. 

Some other purported benefits of juicing include:

• Nutrient-boosting
• Anti-inflammatory juices increase energy
• Immune-boosting
• Detox the body (unsupported by science)

In a study that found the gut bacteria of participants to be improved following a juice cleanse, they also found that people following this diet are at risk for kidney damage or failure due to the high levels of oxalate, an organic acid found in plants, which is a nephrotoxin that attacks the cells in the kidneys. Other risks of juicing include:

• Increased weight gain immediately following the end of the cleanse, when you go back to your normal diet or overindulge after all the restriction.
• Unpasteurized juices present a risk of illness, especially for younger and older people and those with weakened or compromised immune systems.
• Many juices cleanses include laxatives, which can cause dehydration and imbalanced electrolytes.
• Low blood sugar as a result of only consuming juices can cause fainting, weakness, dehydration, headaches, and hunger.

What is the Celery Diet? 

The celery diet is a juice cleanse during which a person consumes only celery juice for a period of several days to a week. There are many ways to prepare celery juice, from simply juicing raw stocks to blending them with water and flavorful add-ins like apples or ginger. 

How Effective is the Celery Diet?

There is no scientific evidence to prove celery is detoxifying. Because of the extremely low caloric value of celery, the diet will put your body into a caloric deficit, which causes weight loss. However, because celery contains almost no fat, any nutritional benefits of the plant would not take effect since the body needs fat to process nutrients into usable energy. It is better to take a more balanced approach to weight loss using celery.