Trader Joe's Complete Body Cleanse

I love Trader Joe's so much that it's frankly embarrassing. I recognize, in my more lucid moments, that it's irrational and even bizarre to feel actual affection for what is, after all, a grocery store. But I cannot deny that I feel such affection every time I'm there, or when I see that name on one of my favorite products as I open it. It gives me a little Pavlovian jolt of pleasure. Whether I have conned myself into this one-sided love affair, or have been manipulated into it by the wily marketing folks at TJ's headquarters, I cannot say; the end result is the same either way.

But once in a while I find that TJ's has done or is doing something that I find vile and reprehensible--and this is one of those occasions.

About ten days ago, I saw a #TraderJoes tweet about a TJ's "cleanse," pointing to this newly posted YouTube video:



(Please note that my condemnation is not of the nice woman who made this video. I don't blame her for latching onto a common but incorrect view of how the body works. I squarely blame Trader Joe's for exploiting people's false beliefs.)

I had never heard of this product before or noticed it on the shelves. But as you can see from the three photos above, I easily found it in the Asheville store.

The first thing to note from the lists of ingredients of the three products is that the main constituents are basically the same for all three--namely, fiber, fiber, and more fiber, with a little glycerol thrown in. What varies between them are the minor components, which are just selections of plant extracts.

Here's the model that many people have of how the body works: You ingest various "toxins" along with your food. Some of these are "filtered" out by the liver. Others stay in the digestive tract and accumulate in the colon until flushed out by fiber or a purgative.

Trader Joe's labeling explicitly encourages this idea:

WHY CLEANSE? Support the body's ability to decrease toxins from external sources. Toxins may come from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, artificial hormones used in raising livestock and processed foods.

Side note: Trader Joe's sells tons and tons of processed foods. I guess we have to assume from this label that all of that cookie butter and soy chorizo and mac 'n' cheese is filling us all with unnamed "toxins," right?

Continuing:

WHY FIBER? Fiber's key role in Complete Body Cleanse is to absorb and eliminate toxins. Toxins bind to the fiber and are carried out of the body. Without fiber, toxins may be re-absorbed and you cannot thoroughly detoxify. 

This is bullshit. Trader Joe's is lying to you.

Let's talk about the liver first. Now, to be fair, TJ's labeling does not say anything specific about the liver's role in all of this. But the fact that they include a "liver capsule" strongly suggests that they want you to buy into the concept of the liver as a filter, which, like all filters, needs occasional cleaning to get rid of the gunk it has filtered out.

But that's not how the liver works. It is not a mechanical filter that gets clogged up with the stuff it has removed, like the air filter in your car or the lint filter in your dryer. It is a biochemical machine that actively destroys harmful compounds, breaking them down into smaller molecules that can be eliminated by the kidneys. There is nothing left behind to be cleaned out. What's more, it absolutely does not need the "support" of "milk thistle seed extract," "artichoke leaf extract," "dandelion root extract," or "licorice root and rhizome extract" to be able to do this.

As for fiber and the colon: By all means, get lots of fiber into you, both by dietary choices and by supplementation. Eat lots of leafy and cruciferous vegetables. Buy and use Metamucil, Citrucel, or whatever store brand you like. Fiber promotes bowel regularity and softens stools, thus reducing problems like constipation and hemorrhoids. It may even help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of colon cancer. I'm a big fan of fiber. Yay, FIBER! Go, FIBER!

But to get these benefits, you need to have a high intake of fiber consistently, for years and years. A big jolt of it now and then via a 14-day "cleanse," as Trader Joe's is expressly promoting here, does no good at all.

With the rare exceptions of some disease states, matter does not accumulate in your colon; it passes through. You can definitely affect the rate at which it passes through, but overall the input to the colon and the output from the colon must be equal.

If you buy and use TJ's Complete Body Cleanse, you will poop more for two weeks, and then you will go back to your previously scheduled pooping. You will not have had any permanent weight loss. Your liver and colon will not be any healthier or happier. The amount of "toxins" in your body will not be any different. Nothing else will have changed.

Oh, that's not quite true. Two other things will have changed: you will be $12.99 poorer, and Trader Joe's will be $12.99 richer.

This is the first and likely last time that I will write a review of a Trader Joe's product without having tried it. There's a sound reason for that: this stuff is a scam, and I refuse to be scammed, even--maybe especially--by a company that I love.

This item goes straight into my Bottom Ten, and I'm not even going to ask the question with which I traditionally conclude.