Modified Lemonade Diet

The Lemonade Diet, or Master Cleanse, is a well known alternative diet created and promoted by a man named Stanley Burroughs who encouraged people to drink nothing but a lemonade concoction for a number of days so that the body could naturally cleanse itself of built-up toxins. There is one standard mixture for the lemonade consumed during this Master Cleanse, but the modified lemonade diet removes one more thing from the equation that makes the diet even healthier: sugar.

Sugar-Free Maple Syrup

The Master Cleanse lemonade mixture calls for the juice from lemons, maple syrup and cayenne pepper mixed into two liters of water to be drunk all day long and be the only thing consumed, outside of a morning salt water flush that quickly clears your bowels.

However, with the modified lemonade diet, sugar-free maple syrup is used so that there is little to no sugar in the mixture. Although Burroughs says there are vitamins and minerals in the maple syrup that help cleanse your body, other people disagree and feel that the maple syrup is solely for taste as you go through the ordeal. The excess sugar, while not harmful for your body, certainly doesn't help and can easily be substituted with sugar-free maple syrup. The mixture just won't taste as sweet, which may make it more difficult to drink.

Other Modifications

You can use lemons and limes in the lemonade diet, as they basically perform the same cleanse, but limes are not as tart and easier to drink. When adding the sugar-free maple syrup, don't add as much as you would of the regular maple syrup containing sugar, since large amounts of the sugar-free maple syrup can cause diarrhea. It also contain sugar alcohols like Sorbitol, which don't digest completely, so they may be better for this diet than other sugars. Four or five packets of Sweet 'N Low or Equal are acceptable also as a sugar substitute, but they may inhibit the actual toxic cleansing process of the body, so it may be best to avoid adding anything like this at all.