It's a new year and they are out there en masse.  Detox and body-cleansing diets that are designed to begin ridding your body of toxins, give you more energy and help you lose those unwanted pounds.

Colt-legged celebrities like Angelina Joile and Gwyneth Paltrow make these super-retrictive eating plans popular.  Beyonce Knowles attests that her 20-pound weight loss for a movie rold was die to the Mater Cleanse diet -- an elixir of lemon juice mixed with maple syrup, water and caynenne pepper, as well as salt water and a laxative tea, calling for 12 glasses of this concoction a day for ten days.

Referred to as the  “maple syrup diet” by nutrition guru Stanley Burroughs, the Master Cleanse places the body in an induced starvation mode in which fat cells are burned for energy. Toxins that have been stored in fat cells for years are supposed to be released and flushed away during this extreme regimen. After your body is traumatized by the 10-day cleanse, you are advised to gradually return to normal eating, using good sense in adding back only healthy foods. Oftentimes, however, the weight is regained in short order.

The plans are designed to last only a limited time and the idea is to rid the body of toxins absorbed from the environment and the less-than-healthy foods we eat. As a result they are supposed to leave dieters feeling healthier, with more energy.

Those of us who fondly remember Saturday Night Live’s ‘bloodletting skit’ with Steve Martin portraying the character, Theodoric of York may take heart in knowing that detoxifying or purifying the body of harmful substances has been around for centuries as well.  Bloodletting as a method of getting rid of the body’s ‘bad humors’ may not be to far akin from stringent diets such as the one mentioned above.

Nutrition experts do not shy away from making their opinions known over possible risks from lengthy or repeated fasts. They cite vitamin deficiencies, muscle breakdown and blood sugar problems (in addition to frequently disgusting bowel movements) as the downside to these foodless plans. It should be noted that people who continue the more radical fasts past the recommended ten days or two weeks may experience muscle breakdown and a shortage of many needed nutrients, effectively weakening the body’s ability to fight off infections.

Detox diet books are literally falling ( and flying) off the shelves of bookstores or online booksellers’ warehouses and each has its own take on how to cleanse the body. Some call for spices and fruit juices, others for vegetable purees, but no matter how you slice it, they tend to be very low-calorie, mostly liquid diets.

But do we need to go to these extremes to cleanse our insides? Most medical experts agree that the body does a perfectly good job of getting rid of toxins all by itself and find that these types of diets are neither necessary nor helpful.   

Still, some believe that calorie restriction can lead to longer life. A non-profit that wants the truth to be told about the upside AND downside of calorie restriction is the CR Society.  For a list of risks associated with calorie-restricted dieting, go to CRS Society’s web site at http://www.crsociety.org/Risks .

Pregnant women, children and older adults should steer clear of these extreme diet plans and instead consult their physicians for advice on healthy eating regimens.