New Corporate Bonding Tactic: Juice Cleanse

It's a corporate trend that's likely to make your stomach growl. Group juice cleanses are apparently the hippest new way for co-workers in NYC and beyond to bond, or so says the New York Times, which spoke with a handful people who have taken part. It means partaking in nothing but juice for as long as five days, and if that sounds like something that would make you cranky, well, with good reason. One company's three-day group journey clocked in at 1,200 calories a day. The upside? "We thought, 'We’re all in this together.'"

The corporate cleansing craze is helped along in part because a juicer is no longer needed, thanks to juice companies (like Cooler Cleanse, co-founded by Salma Hayek) that bring the concoctions to you; Cooler Cleanse and Organic Avenue both say company orders (from the likes of Merrill Lynch and the Carlyle Group) now make up about a third of their business. Of course, a number of health experts continue to pooh-pooh the touted health benefits of a cleanse, insisting our liver and kidneys were custom-made to deal with toxins. That could be in part why, as the Times notes, office cleanses typically aren't sponsored or paid for by the company. (More company bonding stories.)