For most people, losing weight is an everyday struggle–but now a group of Youtubers have started a new diet trend that have nutritionists worried.
Called the Cotton Ball Diet, several Youtubers have advocated swallowing them as a way to stop people from eating more food–and therefore losing more weight. To add taste, they even recommend soaking the cotton balls first in a solution of orange juice or lemonade.
This, they say, expands in your stomach, filling you up without the calories.
But many health professionals say it’s a bad idea.
“You’re really kind of playing Russian roulette when you use these types of diets,” says Jennifer Lombardi, who works for the Eating Recovery Center of California. “The biggest concern is it can cause a blockage in the digestive system, and if that happens to a certain extent, they are going to end up in surgery. Just like with any extreme diet, it is very dangerous because you’re depleting your body of needed nutrients.”
And indeed, the risk is severe–although cotton balls may create the feeling of satiety, it contains virtually no nutrients or calories. Carry it out for the long term and chances are you’ll risk malnutrition, along with many other side effects eerily similar to anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder.
“The problem being that taking the non-nutritive foods is you’re not getting the vitamins, the minerals, the calories, the proteins, the fats that our bodies need to survive off of,” says Kourtney Gordon, manager of the Fairwinds Eating Disorder Program. “So you can have a lot of growth and development issues, you can have complications of being malnourished.”
Details of the Cotton Ball Diet
Made popular by videos posted on Youtube and message forums, the Cotton Ball Diet claims that people can lose weight just by swallowing a few cotton balls a day–something they claim acts as an appetite suppressant. To make it easier to digest, they also recommend dipping the cotton ball in a juice or lemonade, but the end result is always the same: The cotton ball expands inside the stomach, creating a false sense of fullness.
And this, say proponents of this diet, helps you eat less–or eat nothing at all.
“I’ve heard of people eating the cotton balls with the orange juice…they dip it in the orange juice and then they eat the cotton balls to help them feel full, because the cotton’s not doing anything,” says Bria Murphy, a professional model who first talked about the Cotton Ball Diet earlier this summer. “It’s just dissolving. And it makes you think you’re full, but you’re not.”
Despite its efficacy at keeping people full, many nutritionists say it doesn’t add any real calories or nutrients to the diet–something that may help people lose weight fast but do disastrous things to your health.
And this is why many health and eating disorder experts, such as Kourtney Gordon, don’t recommend the diet.
Should You Try It?
Losing weight fast by swallowing cotton balls may seem like a good idea at first, but for the long term this diet may do more harm than good. Bottom line? Eat food instead, not cotton balls–it’s a safer way to lose weight.
Readers: Would you try this diet?
Sources:
Model Horror Stories From Eddie Murphy’s Diet – RadarOnline.com
Cotton Ball Diet is Rotten, Say Nutritionists – CBSLocal.com
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