Popular Fad Diets: The New Cabbage Soup

The 7 Day Cabbage Soup Diet has been around for 20+ years and has now been updated to the New Cabbage Soup Diet because taste of the main source of nourishment – cabbage soup (big surprise!) – has been improved. The Cabbage Soup Diet has three main premises:

The main food is the cabbage soup. Actually, I’ve eaten the soup and it isn’t bad. The newer recipe allows the addition of an envelope of dried onion soup which adds a lot of flavor over the original recipe.

The diet is for seven days and is to be followed exactly.

If you do follow it, you will lose "up to" (there’s that phrase again!) 10 pounds.

The 7 Day Cabbage Soup Diet Plan

Day One On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

Except for bananas, you can eat as much soup and fruit as your heart desires.

Day Two On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

Naturally, you can eat all the soup you want, plus all the veggies you can stuff in and … oh, joy! … a baked potato. That’s one of my favorite foods in the world.

Day Three On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

Eat as much as you want of cabbage soup, veggies and fruit – except for, sadly – potatoes and bananas.

Day Four On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

On this day, bananas are back, although you’re limited to eight (8 bananas in one day?), plus skim milk and cabbage soup. I’m a vegan and don’t drink milk so I wonder if a liquid like almond milk or rice milk would be OK if I ever went on this diet?

Day Five On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

Today’s menu – bet you’ll be surprised by this one – includes cabbage soup. In addition, you can eat up to 20 ounces of beef and six tomatoes. Again, vegetarians and vegans would find this a tough day since we don’t eat animal flesh. Perhaps a veggie burger would be a good substitute?

Day Six On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

Day six includes the ever-present cabbage soup along with unlimited beef and unlimited veggies, except for my beloved potatoes. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Day Seven On The Cabbage Soup Diet:

This day adds one of my favorite foods, brown rice. Along with our cabbage soup we can have unlimited veggies, except for potatoes, and as much as we want of unsweetened fruit juice.

Cabbage Soup Diet Recipes

I used the plural for ‘recipes’ because the versions of cabbage soup vary. Here is a common recipe, though. It’s obvious how few calories are in this basic recipe: very few

* 6 large green onions
* 2 green bell peppers
* 1 or 2 cans of tomatoes (14.5 ounce size, diced or whole)
* 1 bunch celery, sliced
* 1/2 head cabbage, chopped
* 1 package (Lipton) onion soup mix
* 1 or 2 cubes bouillon (optional)
* 1 48 oz can V8 juice, or 6 cups water or broth
* Season to taste with whatever turns you on

Simply put all of the above in a pot and simmer until it’s tender. Nutritionally speaking, the less cooking, the better.

Verdict On The Cabbage Soup Diet

THE GOOD: the nutritional content of the menu above isn’t bad. Following this for a week should harm no one.

THE BAD: I don’t know about you, but I would go stark raving mad with the monotony of the soup and the restrictive menu!

THE BAD: Weight lost that fast will most likely return, especially if we go back to our ‘normal’ eating, as soon as we get ‘off’ the diet.

Popular fad diets all sell hope. The hope is that they can solve a long-time problem, with roots deep in our psyches, in a brief time. They can’t. They never will. And a week on the Cabbage Soup Diet – even if you can manage to follow it – isn’t going to miraculously change anyone to a naturally thin person, which is what we all want.