GRANDDAD WAS a great man for the nettle soup. Good for what ails you. Great for clearing out the system. Not that he had too much to purge, being a moderate drinker, and a passive smoker at the bingo halls.
Feeling neither moderate nor passive in my approach to boozing after a month of bank holidays, birthdays and festivals, and facing down the barrel of a month of weddings, my whimpering liver was begging for some TLC.
Unused since its purchase a few years ago, the Holford 9-Day Liver Detox,with its promise of "astonishing" results, would finally be put into practice.
I say unused: I’ve read it about once a year since buying it, usually after Christmas or at the end of a particularly good summer. The problem is, the book is split into two parts, and the first is enough to put off even the most determined of toxin-ridden readers.
It begins with the science, or pseudoscience, depending what side of the Holford debate you are on.
Most of us are “vertically ill”, Holford says. “We are upright but don’t feel great.”
At times like these, the balance between the level of toxins in our body and our body’s ability to detoxify is not at its best.
To redress this, the hardworking liver, a “clearing house” for potentially harmful toxins, asks nothing more than nine days a year of RR and the odd sup of milk thistle, apparently.
But with the best will in the world, by the time Holford starts into glucoronidation, sulphation and methylation, you’ll be reaching for the red wine.
Skip straight to the chapter titled “Start detoxing now!” or better still, for your first attempt, follow a few simple rules and don’t get too bogged down in the detail.
Five habits to break
Caffeine
No tea, no coffee, no cola, no Red Bull wings. Just headaches. For the first couple of days at least. Instead, the detox permits up to two weak cups of green tea, and, I quote, “using the same tea bag”.
Save yourself the humiliation and stick to Rooibos or herbal teas, available from most supermarkets and all health shops.
You’ll be tired and narky at first, but by day three or four you’ll be functioning fine without the caffeine, concentrating better and sleeping more soundly.
Dairy
It’s not so much the milk – sure there’s no coffee to pour it into any more – as the cheese, butter and yoghurt.
Glenisk surely noticed a dip in sales for about nine days last month, and nothing cuts a more lonely figure than the sight of a spud without a knob of Kerrygold.
As for sandwiches without cheese, that’s not much of a concern when wheat is also off the menu. There are alternatives, such as soya yoghurt (yeuch) and rice milk (if by milk you mean rice juice), but the only one you need to bother with is coconut milk. It’s great for curries and smoothies and tricks the brain into thinking it’s getting something creamy.
Wheat
This rules out bread, cakes, biscuits, cereals, pizza or pasta made from gluten grains. You are now at one with the coeliac. Your new best friends include rice, oats, buckwheat, corn and quinoa, and the occasional boiled potato. It’s not as prohibitive as it sounds. In the mornings, it’s all about the oats.
For lunch, rice or quinoa in a salad or buckwheat crepes are fine alternatives to bread. And for dinner, with more time on your hands, you have plenty of options.
Bad fats
Hidden under the heading of bad fats, along with all fried food, processed fat spreads and hydrogenated fats, is “all meat”. This might prove difficult were it not for the fact that fish and eggs are allowed.
If you’re not a fish eater, it’s going to be a tough – but not impossible – nine days. For those who do eat fish, the introduction of more seafood is one of the more enjoyable aspects to the detox.
Alcohol
If you’re considering a liver detox, you’re probably ready to get off the sauce for a week or so anyway.
Bear in mind your start day: begin early in the week so your nine days includes only one weekend. Or, if two weekends with an excuse not to drink is appealing, start on a Saturday. Either way, the new menu takes so much planning you’ll have little time to consider boozing.
And there is a lot to plan. But not as much as the book might have you believe. The days before you start are the most stressful. Hell hath no fury like a couple on the verge of a detox, shopping for superfoods.
As well as the five habits to break, you need to add to your daily diet a serving of essential seed mix, super greens mix and cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale).
You also need to eat foods rich in sulphur, such as garlic, onion and scallions, and drink a fresh juice or smoothie a day. And that’s before you take your antioxidant supplement and your digestive enzymes.
It’s enough to drive you to the drink, or the divorce courts. But it helps to do it with a friend, family member or colleague, if for no other reason than to share the cost – poor old granddad would have balked at the amount I spent on leaves alone.
Suffice it to say, it is impossible – and probably counter-intuitive – to stick entirely to the guidelines in the books. Your liver may end up in mint condition but the stress of getting to that point will be enough to finish you off.
Instead, do as much as you can: break the five bad habits, pick up a few good ones and drink plenty of water. By the end of the nine days, you will be sleeping better, have a spring in your step and a more even temper.
You will have learned some new recipes to take beyond the detox, while losing a few pounds at the same time. And your skin may have brightened, or that might just be the smug glow of overcoming your vices, even for a week or so.
5 good habits to adopt
Drink water in the morning to flush out toxins that build up overnight.
Drink some hot water with lemon with your breakfast.
Have a tablespoon a day of ground seeds.
Replace caffeine with herbal tea or Rooibos tea.
Steam fry (without oil) fish and vegetables to cut back on bad fats.
5 ways to prepare for first detox
Plan ahead and remove temptation from view, fill the fridge and cupboards with detox-friendly alternatives and stock up on Tupperware and jars, the latter for storing nuts and seeds.
Variety is the spice of life, but it will wear you out on your first detox – find a few dishes you’re happy with and modify them throughout the week.
Supplements (an antioxidant and digestive enzymes) tend to come in 30-day supplies – split the cost between two or three people.
Snack times and work lunches are the most difficult challenges – bring lunch and snacks such as oatcakes, nuts, fruits or an avocado from home.
5 recipes to get you started on the road to detoxing your liver
ESSENTIAL SEED MIX
The book calls for a jar half-filled with flax seeds and half-filled with a mixture of sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
Take a handful of the mix a day, grind and add to your breakfast. We cheated and bought a bag of ground flax seeds and didn’t bother grinding the others.
SUPER GREENS MIX
A good handful each of watercress, baby leaf spinach, basil leaves and parsley mixed with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice, blended together into a pesto.
Again, we made the pesto a couple of times to stir through rice, but mostly we added some onion, tomatoes and whatever else was handy, and ate it as a salad.
SMOOTHIE
Take a banana, half a punnet of strawberries (or berries of your choice) and blend with a can of coconut milk (shake first). By far the tastiest and easiest to make. Serves two.
SUPERFOOD SALAD
Heat the oven to 200 degrees and chop up two sweet potatoes (skin on), two small chopped onions (one red), a pepper, a small courgette, three cloves of garlic and a handful of mushrooms. Place on baking tray, drizzle with sesame oil and sprinkle with thyme leaves.
Bake for 30-40 minutes. Meanwhile, cook some quinoa. About 20 minutes into baking, add cherry tomatoes to the baking tray. Five minutes before everything is ready, place handful of pumpkin seeds on a hot pan for a few minutes until they start to pop.
Mix the quinoa, roasted vegetables and Super green mix (see previous recipe) together and top with pumpkin seed and hummus.
Reduce quantities as an accompaniment to fish. Serves two.
DESSERT
You’re allowed one or two over the course of the detox. The tastiest and easiest to make is the berry smoothie, which tastes more like a cross between frozen yoghurt and sorbet.
Quite simply: 400g of frozen berries (Marks and Spencer does a nice tub) blitzed with 400g of natural yoghurt (Glenisk full-fat is delicious). This makes enough for two to four servings, depending on your appetite for sweet stuff.
OTHER TIPS
Xylitol. The book recommends this sugar alternative, available from health shops. With all the fruit included in the diet, and by using cinnamon or desiccated coconut to sweeten breakfast, we didn’t need it.
Antioxidant foods .The top 10, according to Holford, are: pomegranate, blueberries, blackberries, kale, strawberries, baby spinach (raw), raspberries, broccoli, plums and alphasprouts.
Try your best to source local produce for maximum nutrition.
A hand-held blender is a useful piece of equipment for making smoothies and pestos. Less clean-up than a regular blender.
