RACHEL BELLE

‘The Taco Cleanse’ could change how you think about dieting

Jan 19, 2016, 6:23 PM | Updated: Jan 20, 2016, 1:07 pm

A new book, called “The Taco Cleanse,” shuns juices and fasts for 30 days of tacos.(Cyn...

A new book, called "The Taco Cleanse," shuns juices and fasts for 30 days of tacos.(Cynthinee/Creative Commons)

(Cynthinee/Creative Commons)

It’s January, an optimistic time when seemingly everyone on the Internet is talking about juicing and cleansing. But unless that juice is made out of tacos, I’m not interested.

Lucky for me, and maybe you, there is a brand new book out called “The Taco Cleanse: The Tortilla Based Diet Proven to Change Your Life.”

“Taco Cleanse is about eating tacos at every meal for up to 30 days, if you want to do the full cleanse,” says one of the book’s authors, Molly Frisinger. “It’s just about living a better life. One of the taco cleansers grew a magnificent beard, some of us got a twinkle in our eyes and glowing skin and we all learned how to skip backwards.”

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Frisinger, who lives in the taco-centric city of Austin, Texas, ate nothing but tacos for 30 days in the name of health, happiness, and getting a book deal. And if you think one would tire of eating tacos three times a day for 30 days, you, my friend, have to stretch your personal definition of what a taco can be.

“We ate pizza tacos &#8212 cut up some pizza, put it in a taco,” Frisinger says. “I had a soup taco, I made really thick potato soup and ate that in a taco. We also had PadThaicos, it was pad Thai in a tortilla.”

The key to maintaining your taco cleanse, when you’re at a non-taco-serving restaurant or at a friend’s for dinner, is to BYOT. Or. as Molly puts it, ABC.

“Remember your ABC’s: Always Be Carrying tortillas.”

Like any good diet or cleanse, the book isn’t just recipes. It contains motivation, strategy and psychological tips.

“We found it really helpful to have a taco journal,” Frisinger says. “Both to sort of write about the feelings that come up when you’re taco cleansing, and also just to keep a record of the changes in your life. Everyone is going to have an improvement on the taco cleanse, but if you journal you can really see how much your life improves.”

Because all four authors of the book are vegan, all 75 taco recipes in the book are as well. Which might be what is appealing to some health conscious celebrities.

“Jennifer Aniston, apparently, is riveted by the Taco cleanse. So we were all really excited to hear that.”

The book has received a lot of press, because in a genius marketing move, it was released at cleanse-o’clock, at the beginning of the new year. But Molly says not all of the journalists are getting the tongue and cheek nature of the book.

“A lot of news places just don’t get that it’s a spoof on cleanses and they think that you’re actually going to lose weight or detox or any other benefit like that,” Frisinger says. “This is just about having fun and being happy.”

Despite the fact that all the recipes are vegan, the cleanse is definitely not for the most serious of health nuts. If you decide to taco cleanse in October, you’ll have to factor in Halloween.

“Halloween is a great time to do a lot of candy in your taco,” Frisinger says. “You want to make sure you’re getting enough candy at Halloween, because sometimes you’re in danger of not getting enough. I would just take a flour tortilla and fill it up with your favorites.”

You can even cleanse through the Jewish holidays.

“We actually have two tortillas in the book that can be okay for Passover. One of them is just a collard green leaf. The other is a tortilla made out of plantains which is actually a really great tortilla that’s a little bit of work to make. You can just fill those up with some of the traditional Passover foods. I like to do beets and horseradish and sometimes some of those bitter greens.”

Molly says before the cleanse she was having trouble getting pregnant, but now she has her very own bouncing baby boy.

“My son, one of his first words was taco.”

Get your own copy of The Taco Cleanse online, or at your favorite book store.

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