The "cotton ball diet" has emerged as a dangerous fad, fueled by social media trends and the relentless pursuit of thinness. This alarming practice involves consuming cotton balls, often dipped in liquids, to create a false sense of fullness and severely restrict calorie intake. While the idea of tricking the stomach to reduce hunger may seem appealing to some, the cotton ball diet poses significant health risks and can have deadly consequences.
Understanding the Cotton Ball Diet
The cotton ball diet is a dangerous fad diet that involves dipping cotton balls in liquids including juices and smoothies and then consuming them. The goal of consuming cotton balls dipped in liquid is to trick the palate into believing that a person is consuming food. In the cotton ball diet, those in search of a smaller waistline eat cotton balls soaked in juice to curb their appetite and dramatically cut their daily calorie intake. It's where people are literally eating cotton balls. Sometimes they're dipped in juice first, but the goal is supposedly to feel full without gaining weight. The purpose of this is to cause the stomach to feel full while restricting calories in order to lose weight. It's thought that models have been eating cotton for years to stay thin, you can blame the internet for making it mainstream. This behavior is extremely dangerous and can result in serious health consequences or death.
Trying to not feel hungry when dieting is nothing new; however, there are healthier ways to accomplish this. Volumetrics calls for eating low calorie foods, such as fruits and non-starchy vegetables*, in high quantities in order to fill up your stomach and not leave room for high calorie, low volume foods, such as cake, cookies, fried meats, high fat cheeses, etc. While it is true that undigestible fiber helps you feel full, if you want to do it safely, just eat a few vegetables or some whole grains instead.
Why is the Cotton Ball Diet so Dangerous?
The cotton ball diet is dangerous for a number of reasons. This "diet" is not a safe way to lose weight-it is a dangerous form of disordered eating that may be a sign of an eating disorder. Here are just four ways it can cause you significant harm:
Choking Hazard
Cotton balls are not food and there is a risk of choking if they are consumed. And besides that there's the choking risk.
Read also: Ease Plantar Fasciitis Symptoms
Intestinal Obstruction and Bezoar Formation
Your body can’t digest cotton balls, so they remain in your stomach or intestines. When you consume something that cannot be digested, it mixes with mucus and other food particles to form a mass known as a bezoar. "They can form a bolus or a ball a larger cotton ball a snow ball if you like to the point where it may obstruct the stomach or the small bowel," said Dr. That's technically called a bezoar, a ball of hair or any foreign material. When something can’t be digested, it can obstruct the digestive tract. This bezoar can clog the digestive system, obstructing other food and liquids from passing through the body. An intestinal obstruction prevents food and liquids from passing through.
Initial signs of an obstruction include:
- Nausea
- Cramps
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- Abdominal distention (swelling)
- Abdominal pain
"When those liquids can't empty from the stomach they just backwash through your esophagus and backwash into your lungs," adds Dr. Left untreated, it can lead to the death of healthy tissues and infection. An intestinal obstruction is a medical emergency. Bezoars must be surgically removed.
Malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when people consume too few calories and other important nutrients. Extreme dieting always comes with risks.
Exposure to Harmful Chemicals
Cotton balls aren’t pure cotton, picked from an organically grown plant. Many cotton balls are not produced from cotton at all and are instead made from bleached polyester. The fibers are often processed with bleach and other chemicals, which have been found to create dioxins. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dioxins that come naturally through the food chain can lead to reproductive and developmental problems. They may also disrupt hormones, damage immune function, and even cause cancer. Dioxins are particularly dangerous because they’re chemically stable and can remain in the body for decades.
Read also: The Hoxsey Diet
The Psychological Aspect: Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders
Eating cotton balls - or any nonfood item - in an effort to lose weight isn’t a diet. It’s disordered eating. The "cotton ball diet" is not recognized as an eating disorder in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-5). Like eating disorders, disordered eating is often related to body dissatisfaction and a desire to lose weight. Eating disorders typically stem from body dissatisfaction. Nearly half of the people treated for eating disorders are also living with mood disorders such as depression, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. In other words, people who use approaches like the cotton ball diet could be dealing with some mental health conditions.
What Is Disordered Eating? Disordered eating often involves behaviors such as chronically restricting calories, binging and purging, or consuming non-food items as a way to feel full and reduce appetite. While consuming cotton balls to lose weight is not a distinct disorder, the behavior may occur as part of anorexia nervosa, which involves extreme calorie restriction in order to lose weight. An eating and psychological disorder, anorexia nervosa involves an extreme fear of gaining weight. People with anorexia will go to potentially deadly extremes in order to lose weight and keep it off. Though excessive weight loss may be one of the early signs of anorexia, symptoms can also include: bloatingabnormal hair growthamenorrhea, or the absence of menstruationfatigueosteoporosisabnormal heart rhythms Among eating disorders, anorexia has one of the highest death rates, due to medical complications including organ failure, as well as substance use and suicide, the last of which accounts for 25% of all deaths related to anorexia.
The Role of Diet Culture and the "Thin Ideal"
Given the risks of the cotton ball diet, many people might wonder exactly why someone might engage in this dangerous behavior. Diet culture and the glorification of the “thin ideal” plays a major role in dangerous disordered eating trends like the cotton ball diet. These ideals suggest that being thin is the only way to be beautiful. These attitudes contribute to low self-esteem, negative thinking, and an intense desire to lose weight.
Pica and the Cotton Ball Diet
Could Pica Play a Role? The consumption of non-food substances that have no nutritional value may be a symptom of a rare but serious eating disorder called pica. While the cotton ball diet involves consuming non-food items that have no nutritional value, weight loss is the intended goal. People with pica generally do not have a reason for their eating behavior.
Treatment and Seeking Help
Eating disorders and disordered eating-including the cotton ball diet-are often treated with a combination of psychotherapy, nutritional education, psychosocial support, and sometimes medications. The focus of treatment is to help change the thoughts and behaviors that contribute to disordered eating behavior.
Read also: Walnut Keto Guide
Healthy and Sustainable Weight Loss
If you are trying to lose weight, it is important to focus on eating a healthy diet and getting regular physical activity. Long-term weight loss and maintenance can be achieved through a healthy diet and regular exercise.
For 10 weeks in 2010, a Kansas State University nutrition professor cut down on their daily calories and ate mostly Twinkies, powdered doughnuts, and other junk food. They lost 27 pounds. This may sound crazy, but they showed the basic rule of weight loss: Burn more calories than you eat, no matter what that might be. Bad news for junk food junkies, though. The lack of nutrition in this diet makes it a lousy idea for your overall health.
Other Dangerous Weight Loss Fads to Avoid
Over the years, people have tried some crazy (and dangerous) things in the name of weight loss. Cotton balls are just one of the latest. You can add "Cotton Ball Diet" to the list of stupid ideas on the internet. Here are some more:
- Ear Stapling: Put down the office supplies. This is dangerous, and it doesn’t work. The idea is a lot like acupuncture: A surgical staple is placed in the bowl of your ear. Some people say it decreases their appetite and helps them lose weight. But there’s no science to back that up, and it can lead to infection and may even change the shape of your ear.
- The hCG Diet: This combines severe calorie cuts with a drug mainly used to help women get pregnant: human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Studies show it doesn’t help you lose weight, and it can have side effects. It might make you feel super tired, grumpy, restless, or depressed. It could also lead to fluid buildup in your body and even blood clots. Need more reasons to skip this? Doctors say drastic calorie cuts can be bad for you.
- Apple Cider Vinegar: Some people say they sip a bit before meals to curb their appetite and burn fat, but there’s little proof it works. It’s mostly harmless, but it could stop insulin and some blood pressure meds from working the way they should. There have been adverse events reported with apple cider vinegar tablets and with vinegar taken daily for several years. The risks for hypoglycemia or hypokalemia are also concerns with long-term use or when used with some prescription medications, over-the-counter medications, and herbal supplements. Plus, all that acid can be bad for your throat.
- The Cigarette Diet: In the 1920s, Lucky Strike cigarette company told Americans to “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” And, boy, did they. Cigarette sales zoomed, and the idea that smoking prevents snacking is with us to this day. Whether that’s true is unclear.
- The Tapeworm Diet: Yes, there are people who swallow a tapeworm -- on purpose -- to lose weight. An adult worm can live up to 30 years in your body. It stays alive by stealing nutrients from your food. Its eggs can cause cysts and infections. Just say no.
- Coffee Diet: Guzzling gallons of coffee may curb your appetite and help you burn a few more calories, but not enough to make you lose much weight. Plus, too much caffeine can boost your blood pressure, make you sick to your stomach, and keep you up all night. The result: Those extra pounds come right back. And some caffeinated beverages, like soft drinks and special coffees, are high in calories, fat, or both.
- Baby Food Diet: There are many versions of this diet on the Internet. Some have you replace one or two meals a day with a couple of jars of baby food and have an “adult meal” for dinner. Others tell you to eat a jar of baby food every couple of hours. Most jars have less than 100 calories and don’t contain enough of the nutrients adults need. So you’re likely to be hungry a lot. That can be a recipe for overeating.
- Cabbage Soup Diet: The soup you’d eat two to three times a day in this diet is relatively healthy. But you have only the soup and a few other foods, depending on which day of the plan you’re in (for example, fruit on the first day, and beef and vegetables on the fifth). You get as little as 1,000 calories a day. Any fewer than that will put your body in “starvation mode,” which can slow your metabolism. That won’t help you slim down.
- Raw Food Diet: Most of us could stand to eat more fruits, vegetables, and nuts. But this diet lets you eat only plant foods that haven’t been heated to more than 116 F. So food safety can be an issue. People who eat exclusively raw end up with low levels of important nutrients like vitamin B-12. It’s also hard to get the calories your body needs. You may lose weight at first. But you’re likely to feel less than your best.
- Cookie Diet: Eat cookies and lose weight. It sounds fun, but don’t bet on it as a slim-down strategy. Under this diet, you’d eat nine 60-calorie cookies and one 500- to 700-calorie meal a day. It may help you slim down in the short term. But chances are you’ll get too few vitamins, minerals, and calories. And dieters actually swallow cotton balls dipped in various juices.