Unlock the Truth About Hallelujah Diet Supplements: Honest In-Depth Review You Can't Miss!

In a world saturated with dietary advice, many individuals turn to religion for guidance on their eating habits. This can manifest in various forms, from organized religions with specific dietary prohibitions or prescriptions to faith-based approaches emphasizing prayer and divine partnership. Among these is the Hallelujah Diet, a program rooted in biblical principles and advocating a vegan, plant-based approach with a strong emphasis on raw foods and supplementation. This review delves into the Hallelujah Diet, its principles, potential benefits, drawbacks, and the scientific validity of its claims.

The Core Principles of the Hallelujah Diet

The Hallelujah Diet is a plant-based diet that’s mainly focused on raw fruits and vegetables and based on a passage from the Bible. Developed by Pastor George M. Malkmus after a cancer diagnosis, the diet seeks to harness the body's self-healing mechanisms through a primarily raw, plant-based approach. The diet is based on a passage from the Bible - Genesis 1:29 - which states: “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’" This passage is interpreted as advocating a diet centered on plant-based foods rather than animal products.

The diet replaces processed, refined, and animal-based foods with organic, clean, raw plant-based foods - mainly fruits and vegetables. It comprises a four-step plant-based diet and supplement kits meant to cleanse your body from toxins that make you sick. In addition to the program’s supplements, the diet provides natural juices, organic protein bars, exercise programs, webinars, and recipes as part of its educational resources.

The Hallelujah Diet emphasizes consuming 85% of food in its raw, natural state, believing that this maximizes nutrient intake and supports cellular restoration. The remaining 15% can consist of cooked plant-based foods. The program advocates for the use of supplements to address perceived nutritional deficiencies in modern foods due to factors like pollution, toxins, and pesticides.

The Four-Step Plan

The Hallelujah diet consists of consuming 85% raw plant-based foods and 15% cooked plant-based foods. Additionally, the program’s supplement kits are intended to help fill nutritional gaps to improve your health. The diet is divided into a four-step plan:

Read also: Hallelujah Diet Recipes

Step 1: Consuming primarily raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.
Step 2: Replacing meat, dairy, and refined carbs, sugar, and salt products - all of which are referred to as toxic foods - with healthier plant-based alternatives.
Step 3: Juicing and consuming the program’s BarleyMax supplement, an organic, unheated juice powder, to enhance nutrient absorption.
Step 4: Supplementation, which is intended to provide vitamin B12, vitamin D3, iodine, selenium, and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) to avoid deficiencies.

Food Categorization

The Hallelujah diet eliminates all processed and animal-based meals. Because the diet encourages a higher intake of raw foods, it divides food into three categories - raw foods, cooked foods, and foods to avoid.

Raw Foods (85% of Daily Intake)

Vegetables: All raw vegetables
Fruit: Fresh and unsulphured organic dried fruit; fruits are limited to no more than 15% of your daily food intake
Grains: Raw muesli, soaked oats, dehydrated crackers, and dehydrated granola
Beans: Peas, sprouted lentils, green beans, sprouted garbanzos, and sprouted mung beans
Protein-rich meat alternatives: Chia seeds, hemp seeds, and sprouted beans are listed as protein-rich plant foods
Nuts and seeds: Walnuts, sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, raw almonds, raw almond butter, pecans, pumpkin seeds, and tahini (sparingly)
Oils and fats: Virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, Udo’s Oil (a vegetarian omega-3 oil blend), flaxseed oil, and avocados
Dairy: Dairy alternatives only, including fresh almond milk, creamy banana milk, and frozen bananas, strawberry, or blueberry as “fruit creams”
Beverages: Distilled water, the diet’s juice powders, and freshly extracted vegetable juices; fruit juices high in natural sugars should be kept to a minimum
Seasonings: Fresh or dehydrated herbs, garlic, sweet onions, parsley, and salt-free seasonings
Soups: Raw, chilled soups made by blending vegetables and fruits
Sweets: Fruit smoothies, raw fruit pies with nut or date crusts, date-nut squares, etc.

Cooked Foods (15% of Daily Intake)

To ensure you don’t surpass this limit, the diet encourages you to fill up on raw foods first at all meals, then add cooked foods at one meal.

Vegetables: Any steamed or wok-cooked fresh or frozen vegetables, baked white, yellow, or sweet potatoes, squash, etc.
Fruit: Cooked and unsweetened frozen fruits
Grains: Whole grain cereals, pasta, bread, millet, brown rice, etc.
Beans: Lima, navy, adzuki, lentil, black, kidney, organic soy, pinto, and white
Protein-rich meat alternatives: Mushrooms, cooked beans, and grains, etc.
Nuts and seeds: Cashew and almonds that have been heat-treated for retail but not roasted or salted
Oils and fats: Vegan mayonnaise made from cold-pressed oils
Dairy: Nondairy and packaged cheese, almond milk, cashew cream, hemp milk, and rice milk (sparingly)
Beverages: Cereal-based coffee-like beverages, caffeine-free herbal teas, and bottled organic juices
Seasonings: Same as raw options
Soups: Soups made from scratch without fat, dairy, meat, or refined table salt
Sweets: Agave, raw honey, stevia, unsulphured molasses, sorghum, carob, maple syrup, palm sugar (all sparingly)

Foods to Avoid

These foods should be removed from your diet:

Vegetables: All canned vegetables with added salt or preservatives and vegetables fried in oil
Fruit: Canned and sweetened fruits, nonorganic, and sulfured dried fruits
Grains: Refined, bleached flour products, most cold breakfast cereals, and white rice
Beans: Genetically modified soy
Meats: Beef, fish, pork, turkey, chicken, eggs, hamburgers, bacon, hot dogs sausage, bologna, etc.
Nuts and seeds: All roasted or salted seeds and nuts
Oils and fats: All lard, margarine, shortenings, and anything containing hydrogenated oils or trans fats
Dairy: All milk, cheese, ice cream, whipped toppings, and nondairy creamers
Beverages: Alcohol, caffeinated teas, coffee, sports drinks, soda pop, etc. with preservatives, refined salt, sugar, and artificial sweeteners
Seasonings: Refined table salt and any seasonings containing it
Soups: All canned, packaged, or creamed soups containing salt, meat, or dairy products
Sweets: All refined white or brown sugar, artificial sweeteners, sugar syrups, chocolate, candy, gum, cookies, donuts, cakes, pies, etc.

Supplements and Other Resources

The Hallelujah Diet offers multiple supplement kits that vary depending on your health status. It’s broken down into four steps to help you transition to its suggested way of eating. The program also provides natural juices, organic protein bars, exercise programs, webinars, and recipes as part of its educational resources. What’s more, the diet offers the Hallelujah Recovery Diet and Rescue Plans for people with cancer, arthritis, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Alzheimer’s, and heart and autoimmune diseases. Rescue plans are intended to help your immune system reach maximum healing power. Furthermore, there’s a Perfect Cleanse plan, a fasting program that involves a 5-day cleanse, during which you solely consume 6 of their supplements, that’s to be done monthly for 3 months.

Potential Benefits of the Hallelujah Diet

Though the Hallelujah diet is not advertised as a weight loss program, its eating pattern creates a calorie deficit that likely leads to weight loss, if this is your goal. For instance, the diet eliminates all processed and refined foods, which are associated with excess weight. Additionally, research suggests that vegan diets like the Hallelujah diet are an efficient weight loss strategy, as well as that vegans often have a lower body mass index (BMI) than vegetarians and meat-eaters.

Following a diet rich in fruits and vegetables like the Hallelujah diet may offer additional health benefits, such as protection from type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Studies show that plant-based diets like the Hallelujah diet may help lower risk factors for type 2 diabetes, such as obesity and insulin resistance. Diets rich in vegetables lead to higher intakes of fiber and low glycemic index (GI) foods - foods that don’t spike your blood sugar levels - and lower intakes of fats, all of which are associated with a lower prevalence of type 2 diabetes.

As a vegan diet, the Hallelujah diet may successfully lower risk factors for heart disease. First, its high vegetable intake significantly increases fiber and antioxidant consumption, which are associated with lower blood triglycerides, total and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and body weight. Aside from the high fiber intake, the diet eliminates processed foods, which are high in sodium, and alcohol, two risk factors for high blood pressure.

Potential Drawbacks and Criticisms

While the Hallelujah Diet may offer some benefits, it also faces several criticisms and potential drawbacks:

Risk of Nutrient Deficiencies: Vegan diets are naturally low in vitamin B12. Although limited plant foods like mushrooms do contain very small amounts of this nutrient, the only reliable sources of vitamin B12 are animal-based foods or supplements. Vitamin B12 plays many critical roles in the body, and a deficiency is a risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases, which are those that cause your brain and nerves to deteriorate. Vegan diets are also often low in calcium, which may lead to low bone mineral density and increase your risk of fractures. Additionally, since the diet limits cooked foods consumption to once a day, it may lead to a low protein intake.
Reliance on Supplements: Supplements are meant to enhance or add nutrients to your diet. However, it’s generally best to get your nutrients from food and not rely on supplements too heavily. In fact, a recent study found that food-based nutrients were associated with a reduced risk of mortality, while excess nutrients from supplements could pose health hazards. Also, though the program’s supplements are certified organic, vegan, non-GMO, and gluten-free, it’s unclear whether supplements are manufactured in a facility that complies with current Good Manufacture Practices (cGMPs) set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The program also fails to mention whether the products undergo third-party quality testing, meaning that an external organization verifies a product’s purity, potency, dosage, and performance.
Cost: Since the supplements are needed to tackle the previously mentioned nutritional gaps, following the diet may become quite pricey.
Lack of Scientific Evidence: The diet makes some serious health statements regarding cleanses and the reversal of disease. However, there’s no scientific evidence to support that this diet - nor its supplements - may cure cancer or clear up health issues. As for the diet’s intent to cleanse your body of toxins, research on cleanses or detox diets is limited, and the few available studies have flawed methodologies and small sample sizes. Also, your body already has its own detox system.
Questionable Origins and Claims: The Hallelujah Diet originated with Rev. George Malkmus. Malkmus claims the diet cured his colon cancer, but that diagnosis is questionable; no biopsy was done, and the diagnosis was made by nutritionists and chiropractors. He claims not to have experienced any health problems since starting the diet, but admits he had a stroke. He refused medical treatment and treated himself with extra Barley Green and carrot juice. He reluctantly took drugs to control his high blood pressure but then tried to wean himself off medication. In 1988, the FDA ordered AIM (American Image Marketing, the multilevel marketing company that Malkmus was once a distributor for) to stop claiming that Barley Green would make people more energetic and was effective against cancer, arthritis, high blood pressure, obesity, depression, and many other health problems.

Read also: The Hoxsey Diet

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