Cotton Ball Diet is Dangerous: Viral YouTube Fad Harmful to Health

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Wanting to lose weight is an admirable goal, but eating cotton balls soaked in juice to do it could turn deadly, reports ABC 10News.

The "cotton ball diet," a weight loss fad popularized via YouTube, involves a frightening dietary method that has alarmingly become widely practiced by young women who want to lose weight.  The cotton ball dieter soaks a cotton ball in juice or in any other beverage, and eats it in an effort to suppress hunger.  

Dietician Rachel Brogan warns, "A cotton ball has no vitamins, no minerals; when (cotton balls) sit in your stomach and intestines, it may not transition through. You may actually get blocked and have a lot of GI [Gastrointestinal] problems," according to ABC 10News.

CBS Atlanta reports that several Youtube videos have been uploaded by young girls, all claiming that the "cotton ball diet" has worked wonders for their weight loss goals. In the videos, the girls use orange juice or lemonade to soak the cotton balls with flavour. They then ingest the soaked balls to suppress their appetite, effectively limiting the frequency they eat during the day. These dieters believe that when the cotton ball reaches the stomach, it then expands, causing the person to feel full.

Treatment professional Jennifer Lombardi says that applying the "cotton ball diet" is like playing with one's life. "You're really kind of playing russian roulette when you use these types of diets; the biggest concern is it can cause a blockage in the digestive system, and if that happens to a certain extent, they are going to end up in surgery. Just like with any extreme diet, it is very dangerous because you're depleting your body of needed nutrients,"  she told CBS Atlanta. Lombardi works at the Eating Recovery Center of California.

One of the worst consequences from trying dangerous fad diets is that one may develop an eating disorder from the practice. The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) reports that "in the United States, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life." This occurrence stems from body dissatisfaction as well as abnormal eating attitudes and behaviours.