Is it really better to drink your calories? The science behind soup and shake diets

When we think of liquid or meal replacement diets, it’s easy to think of the likes of the lemonade diet, and the cabbage soup diet. Emma Pike, deputy head of care at Diabetes UK, said the programme, available on the NHS, “gives people the support they need to lose weight and potentially put their type 2 diabetes in remission by providing low-calorie, total diet replacement products, such as soups and shakes for three months before a managed plan for reintroducing a healthy, balanced diet”. “This study is enormously exciting,” says Professor Roy Taylor, professor of medicine and metabolism at Newcastle University and author of Your Simple Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes. This is remission, because if people put on the weight they have lost, the diabetes will come back.” Type 2 diabetes aside, in 2018 researchers at Oxford University found obese adults who consumed around 800 calories a day, made up of weight-loss soups, shakes, bars and fibre supplements, lost over a stone more than regular dieters. open image in gallery Experts stress that liquid meal replacements and juice cleanses are not the same thing She goes on: “For example, those with type 2 diabetes; or who are obese or morbidly obese.