Super Size Me is a very entertaining, documentary that shows what happens when the central character, Morgan Spurlock, goes on a 30-day McDonald’s-only diet. For 30 days, he eats breakfast, lunch and dinner at McDonald’s. Nothing passes his lips that is not purchased at McDonald’s. And whenever they ask him if he wants it super-sized, he answers yes and eats it all.
At the beginning of the movie, we see Morgan getting his medical exam results. All these results are normal and he is given a clean bill of health. Yet, after just three weeks, one doctor is shocked at how much worse his liver function has become and encourages him to go off the diet. Another doctor is amazed that the diet alone had such dramatic effect in destroying his health so rapidly and hands him the number for the hospital emergency room and insists he call if he experiences any symptoms of a heart attack!
Not only does Morgan gain more weight than expected, but we watch the deterioration in his complexion and mental attitude as well as learn about it from the results of his later blood tests. There are segments where he talks about his worsened mental attitude. His girlfriend, a vegan chef, also talks about his diminished sexual capability.
Another scene shows how children with learning and attitude problems change for the better when they are not fed processed food in their school cafeteria. As an experiment in the commentary, French fries, a hamburger and a sandwich from McDonald’s are put in separate glass domes as is a fresh-ground hamburger and hand-cut French fries from a local restaurant. The fresh-ground hamburger and hand-cut French fries decompose as you would expect because they are not refrigerated. However, even without refrigeration, the McDonald’s fries have no visible decomposition even after six weeks! If this fast food does not decompose like real/nutritional food, what does your body do with it?
Your body uses the food you eat to feed your body & blood and build new cells. When you eat something that contains artificial preservatives, colors or flavors, your body has to eliminate it, but before it can be eliminated, it must neutralize these “non-nutritional” items. This job is handled by the liver.
However, when the liver is overwhelmed, it stores those “non-nutritional” toxins in fat cells in the liver to process later. When the liver runs out of room to store these, it releases them into the body for the body to create fat cells and store the toxins in those fat cells until the liver can process these items.
Given the importance of the liver, what keeps it strong and healthy? Blood from the colon is fed directly to the liver to nourish it. However, when the body accumulates uneliminated toxins especially in the large intestine (colon), where blood has to filter through these toxins and poisons to get to the liver, the whole body is fed “dirty blood.” This is like trying to wash your hands in paint to get them clean. This is what medicine refers to as “autointoxication”: not “intoxication” as in happily relaxed, but as in self-poisoned. (Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management, Bernard Jensen, DC, ND, Ph.D., 1980)
Symptoms of autointoxication include headaches, nausea, mental depression, irritability, stress, tension, tiredness, sluggishness, mental fogginess, indecision, insomnia, and susceptibility to other illnesses.
Americans are eating and drinking these toxins daily which are causing our obesity “epidemic.” Our bodies cannot handle the volume of toxins we consume on a daily basis. Think processed food does not have toxins? In the article “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good,” published in The Atlantic Monthly in January 2001, by Eric Schlosser, the author says, “About 90 percent of the money that Americans now spend on food goes to buy processed food.” He goes on to say that natural/real flavor is replaced with chemicals to add flavor that will not go rancid or putrefy. For example, there are approximately 350 different chemicals in high-quality artificial strawberry flavor.
Further in his article, Schlosser says, “One of the most widely used color additives …, cochineal extract … is made from the [dried] bodies of [a small] female … insect harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The bug feeds on red cactus berries, and color from the berries accumulates in the females and their [eggs]. The insects are collected, dried, and ground into a pigment. It takes about 70,000 of them to produce a pound of carmine, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, and so do many frozen fruit bars, candies, fruit fillings and Ocean Spray pink-grapefruit juice drink.” (www.rense.com/general7/whyy.htm)
The artificial sweetener, Aspartame, also sold as NutraSweet, Equal, Equal Measure and Spoonful, is another good example. The Food and Drug Administration has a system for people to report bad health reactions to food and drugs. According to David Rietz’ website (www.dorway.com), in February of 1994, Aspartame accounted for more than 75 percent of all bad reactions reported!
A Plane and Pilot magazine article in January 1990 on food additives explained that diet soft drinks are sweetened artificially by Aspartame as NutraSweet or Equal. Aspartame contains ten percent methanol, a poison that is released at temperatures above 86 degrees or if left on the shelf for a long time. The article explains that methanol destroys the brain a little at a time. Immediate effects can either be severe (epileptic seizures, blindness, or chest palpitations) or less noticeable (blurred vision, bright flashes, tunnel vision, ringing or buzzing in ears, migraine headaches, dizziness, loss of equilibrium, or lip/mouth reactions). In that article, an Air Force pilot directly traced the patterns of tremors and seizures he suffered for two years to his consuming NutraSweet in beverages. When he quit drinking NutraSweet, his medical problems ceased.
Worse yet, on 27 June 1996, without public notice, the FDA removed all restrictions on Aspartame, allowing it to be used in any food, including all heated and baked goods. (webhome.idirect.com/~wolfnowl/aspartame.htm)
Even when you go on a diet and eat less, forcing the body to burn fat, as soon as you go off the diet, the fat returns because the body must create more fat cells to protect itself from the toxins. The only effective way to eliminate the fat is to eliminate the toxins. This is why the Master Cleanse is so effective for not only losing weight, but also increasing energy and making people happier.
In an informal survey I did in 2005 of 141 people who had done or were on the Master Cleanse, about 80 percent reported having more energy and more than 90 percent reported being happier! This should be no surprise since toxins are known to headaches, tiredness, irritability and aches and pains.
So, in answer to the question “Why cleanse?,” I answer “Why would you not want to cleanse?”
[This excerpt is from Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days which has been translated into 7 foreign languages and has been on Amazon’s  Preventative Medicine bestseller list for more than 10 years.]