Juice Plus Research Blog

Katz Study Shows Lack of Effect of Juice Plus on Cardiovascular Function

2009-04-23T01:36:00.004-04:00

The results of a study conducted by David Katz[1] and funded by Juice Plus manufacturer National Safety Associates (NSA) showed that subjects taking Juice Plus for 8 weeks had no significant changes in various parameters of cardiovascular health. In a November 29, 2004 article published by Yale Daily News,[2] it was announced that NSA gave Katz $200,000 to conduct the research. It was planned that the study would enroll 40 overweight insulin-resistant adults over 12 months.

The study was never published; however, a July 2008 news report by The Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center[3] announced that the study had in fact been completed and that it showed that Juice Plus had no effects whatsoever on cardiovascular function. According to the Center:

“Participants took the Juice Plus capsules, or a placebo, daily for eight weeks. At the end of that period, endothelial function improved slightly in all groups; no difference as seen between placebo and supplementation, nor did we find a significant difference serum insulin, blood glucose, body weight, total cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol. A number of studies of Juice Plus on various disease status markers have been carried out (www.juiceplus.com); however, while some of these studies suggest cardiovascular benefits associated with Juice Plus, our study did not show that endothelial function is affected by Juice Plus consumption.”

Although the study was concluded at least 9 months ago, NSA’s Juice Plus website still lists it as “research underway” and does not mention the study’s negative conclusions.[4]

Katz’s business relationship with NSA has continued however. The company gave Katz yet another grant, this time to produce a child-targeted DVD entitled “Nutrition Detectives”, which is promoted by NSA and sells for $5 per copy on Katz website.[5]

References

Readers Respond: David Katz and Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; April 29, 2008.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/04/readers-respond-david-katz-and-juice.html
Kahn S. Pill May Supplement Fruits, Vegetables. Yale Daily News; November 29, 2004.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/12439
The Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center Newsflash. July, 2008.
http://www.yalegriffinprc.org/downloads/newsflash/Newsflash_7.08.pdf
Juice Plus Clinical Research Currently Underway. National Safety Associates. https://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/content/ResearchUnderway.soa
Nutrition Detectives. David L. Katz homepage.
http://www.davidkatzmd.com/nutritiondetectives.aspx

Juice Plus Cycling Team's Funding Evaporates

2009-02-24T19:26:00.004-05:00

Cyclists on the Juice Plus racing team were left high and dry after their official sponsor announced this month that it was suspending the team’s funding, cycling magazine VeloNews reported last week.

Cyclists Laura Van Gilder and Rebecca Larson, two of eight women on the now defunct Juice Plus roster, said that they signed contracts with team director and manager Bill Short in November 2008 after beginning talks with him in October. They each received an e-mail from Short on February 7 notifying them that the team had lost their sponsorship.

“Bill had said that he had this great program set up … he had secured sponsorship from numerous other sponsors, especially Juice Plus, so everything seemed great," Larson explained, but “last Saturday (February 7), he sent an e-mail to us saying that we were all released and the team was no longer,” Van Gilder added.

According to VeloNews, Van Gilder said she wrote Short right after receiving the e-mail about the team folding and asked to speak with him; he texted back that he would call, but she never heard from him. Short has not spoken to Van Gilder or Larson since that e-mail, though there has been e-mail communication. Larson confirmed that she has referred the matter to an attorney.

References

Reid, Kathie. Juice Plus Folds in the 11th Hour. VeloNews
http://www.velonews.com/article/88172

Readers Respond (February 22, 2009)

2009-02-22T13:03:00.001-05:00

From: Anonymous (Received February 20, 2009)

A pushy St Louis area woman badgered me into ordering some of this crap. I was soon covered in hives, had numbness in my feet and was bathroom dependent for days. I'll never be sold anything ever again. I'll stick to Centrum or something recommended by a pharmacist.

Readers Respond (December 17, 2008)

2008-12-17T21:22:00.001-05:00

From: Anonymous (Received December 12, 2008)

I had never heard of this stuff before but a friend of mine started selling it recently. She emailed me and asked me to go to a Saturday morning info session about it which, not happening. Then I went to the movies with her a few months later and she unfortunately spent that entire time trying to convince me that Juice Plus could somehow regrow the cartilage in my knees (a youth spent in too many high impact exercise classes) and my Dad's Diabetes. But that's not all-it cured Rheumatoid Arthritis in a friend of a friend of her distributor. I tried to change the topic several times but she kept on about how they crush the vegetable, research at Yale, blah blah blah. It was such an awkward evening I was so glad when she left.

A cursory Googling just proved that I was right to be skeptical which is almost inevitably the case. And a look at the website made me sick: $40 bucks and change a month with a 4 month minimum order? I didn't get rid of my osteoarthritis but I have one less friend now. Anyways, thanks for your blog. I hate to see people taken advantage of. She's fallen onto some hard financial times and is completely sucked in.

Anyways, thanks for your blog. I hate to see people taken advantage of. She's fallen onto some hard financial times and is completely sucked in.

Readers Respond (December 01, 2008)

2008-12-01T01:01:00.005-05:00

From: Name Withheld By Request (Received November 12, 2008)
I know this is long and winded but I REALLY needed to vent!

What do you do when you feel like your child has been the victim of a well meaning predatory Juice Plus “friend”? You go to lengths to research, then you go to the presentation anyway. My daughter has oral allergy syndrome and can’t eat most raw fruits and vegetables, although cooked ones are fine. She came home and said “I want to try these because this is the answer to my veggie problem.” What problem? “Well, mom- geez, once they’re cooked I might as well not bother” oh really? Since when? Since she talked to the Juice Plus rep that’s when!!

As I sat in the room I thought, “am I the only one who thinks this is a farce?” The speaker was very likeable, and did quote good information on food structure, but fell off the deep end with a few things. I was assured it was just a health lecture -- but lo and behold at the end of the lecture BAM a big ‘ol picture of Juice Plus on the screen. I concluded that the general population of North America that aren’t sick just don’t know it yet. AND news flash -- microwaves are only suitable as boat anchors. A study on cats was referred to- where they were fed cooked food and died… the only study I could find was the Pottenger study -- done in 1932-1942 -- in which the cats decline was marked on cooked food -- when there were no microwave ovens.

This was listening to dietary radicalism at its finest. A page of fear mongering stats, telling us the decline of the population is inevitable and telling us that this supplement may, n conjunction with the suggested good eating plan, ward off the inevitable. Well geez -- am I the only one who sees that if we all started eating 80% veggies, 20% lean protein/grains etc, drank 8 glasses of water a day and exercised 30 minutes/day 5 days a week, laid off the fatty sugary foods -- wait a minute -- sounds like a plan before the pills…

I also noted the general health of all the juice-plus reps and their families. Surprisingly typical cross-section considering they should all be religiously following the full regimen since they are so concerned about their health and yours. We touched on several deep end theories all in one talk -- no microwave (remember the cats), no milk (what other animal drinks another animals milk?), eat organic (you guessed it -– the soil depletion thing), no white (white sugar, flour, fat, milk, rice), eat 13 servings of fruits/veggies a day -- that’s 13 fist-size portions. And of course supplement it all with pills because we are all human and though we try, we just need a little help. And then the big C. Don’t get me started on the cancer angle -- especially since my sister-in-law is currently undergoing chemo. And when you think you are armed with information- don’t bother to challenge; they give you the patent answer for everything you say. For every study listed at this talk there is one that has been done at a reputable institution and refutes what they say. “Oh, no no no, those are put out by the competitors.” What about all the fiber removed? (oh, no, no, no, the fiber is still in there).

The person doing the talk is not paid by Juice Plus but acknowledges the charitable foundation she heads is in partnership with them. Does the charitable foundation pay her then? Someone must! Everyone there truly believes she travels around the world giving nutritional talks for Juice Plus out of the goodness of her heart. I repeat am I the only one? Heaven help me I’ve stumbled into the twilight zone of health care!!!

Readers Respond (October 07, 2008)

2008-10-07T17:02:00.004-04:00

From Josie (October 07, 2008)
Here is a story for you. I think you will find it interesting. I was diagnosed with MS a couple of years ago....before going on any of the pharm meds I wanted to be sure I tried everything else, natural. I went to a naturopathic Dr, who I really liked. I read books on diets and drastically changed that and started taking the vitamins they say help people with MS. After a year of doing this, I still declined and decided to go on the drugs (with continuation of everything else). After a year of being on the drugs, I broke out in severe hives and decided to go off of the meds, as advised by my MS Doc. I was going to a general practitioner for the hives and was on and off of Steriods until they finally subsided.

This is when it gets weird. A couple of months later I get a call from the Dr's office saying they wanted me to come in for extensive blood work. I got excited because I wanted them to do this in order to find out if I was allergic to anything besides the MS meds, which were helping. I thought...great, I finally got a Dr who is being proactive with my health. I got there and they took 8 vials of blood. WOW....the Dr., who I have never seen before, came in and sat down and started talking about treating me as a whole and getting to the root of my problem. He then started to talk about Whole Food vitamins. I told him I took one already that I get from Whole Foods. He then told me about Juice Plus and wanted me to buy some and gave me the information with the website. I just sat there and looked at him...and thought this is weird. Did he call me in here for this???!!!! He really can't belong to one of those pyramid scheme things can he...??? A Dr??...Well, sure enough, it looks like he was/is. I of course didn't order any of it.

This Dr saw that I had MS and is trying to take advantage of someone with a chronic illness. It makes me sick!!! Luckily I am an educated person in regards to my illness and these types of things. He actually poked jabs at my MS Dr and said most of these specialists are only concerned with getting you on pharm drugs. I think it is important for Dr's to make their patients aware of the benefits of being healthy and taking vitamins, but to me this crossed the line. He saw my report from my last MRI come across his desk...noticed I had MS and probably got excited about making a few bucks. Is this even legal??!!!!

JPRB Reply
Thanks for writing Josie. We most definitely find the story interesting. There is no question that the physician’s actions were highly unethical. As to the legal ramifications, if he contacted you after looking at your test results or patient information without your consent, then it would in all likelihood be a legal violation. It would also be illegal if the physician is a Juice Plus distributor and made claims implying that Juice Plus could cure or treat MS or its symptoms.

We suggest that you report the incident immediately to the American Medical Association and your state medical board. A call to the Office of the Inspector General and your State Attorney might not be a bad idea either. You may also wish to let your regular MS specialist know that this other physician was bad mouthing him and pushing Juice Plus on you. It might help if an incident like this were to come up again with one of your regular doctor's patients.

It would also be helpful if you could provide us with the physician's name so that others can be warned of their predatory and unethical behavior. We will be happy to followup by researching the background of this physician and we can offer our assistance if you wish to file a complaint.

Readers Respond (August 27, 2008)

2008-08-27T20:31:00.007-04:00

From MagMcA (August 27, 2008)
We have been on JP since 1994 -- and distributors soon thereafter to keep our cost down -- hubby is a chiropractor so we sold a bit to patients -- but we're not the MLM type --- it's a turn off to us so we were low key and made very little off it -- just liked what we thought was a great concept to augment our diets -- we have 6 kids -- so it was used to bridge the gap between how we do eat and how we should eat ....or so we thought.

Well...I feel lied to and cheated -- and I feel sick to my stomach about selling it to anyone. I have cancelled my autoship orders and am trying to formulate a letter to customers and friends and patients that have bought JP from us. The deciding factor is that for the cost, the benefit is not significant enough to warrant our continued association with the company. I feel like we are not getting what we thought we were getting. We have discovered that the whole food concentrate is just too small a component of the total capsule. There are added vitamins -- I can get them in my multi for a better cost, and in quantities that I trust, from a source I can rely upon.

Sincerely,
Mrs M

P.S. Have you seen any letters from distributors/doctors to their customers about the revelations that have led to our decision? I need a hand here! I'd like them to cancel their orders and resolve to eat the real thing -- exercise, drink enough water, get good sleep, manage stress and maintain a healthy weight...take a multivitamin/mineral if they want to and be happy!

JPRB Reply
We feel for you. What you are planning surely won’t be easy, but it is a noble and responsible course of action. We don’t know of any other distributors who have issued a letter of this kind to their customers. Perhaps you will be the first to do so. If you need any help drafting a letter to you clientele, just let us know and we will be happy to give you our input. And we can post it here as a resource for others who may be wish to follow suit.

Trading in Juice Plus Manufacturer’s Stock Drops 50% Since News of FDA Complaints; Company Executives Get Salary Increases

2008-07-10T20:36:00.003-04:00

Trading in Natural Alternatives International, Inc. (manufacturer of Juice Plus products) stock has fallen more than 50% since the JPRB filed an April 5, 2008 report[1] on a decline in the company’s stock price that may have been connected with recent FDA complaints about Juice Plus by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (see Juice Plus Manufacturer’s Stock Price Tumbles: NAI Among Thursday’s Leading Small-Cap Losers).

The JPRB report noted that on April 3, 2008, NAI stock (NASDAQ ticker symbol NAII) was among the day’s top percentage losers for small capitalization companies, dropping more than 15% in value (from $9.00 to $7.60). Since then, the stock’s price bottomed out at $6.51 on April 24, and then gradually clawed back to today’s closing price of $7.85. However, the 90-day average trade volume of NAI stock has now dropped by more than 50% compared to the volume back in April. On April 5, the stock was trading at a 90-day average volume of more than 8,000 shares per day. As of today, the average trade volume has sunk to 3,522 shares.

Surprisingly, despite the poor recent performance of NAI’s stock and widespread economic concerns among U.S. investors over rising fuel prices, declining home values, depreciation of the U.S. dollar, and a likely recession, NAI’s board of directors approved pay increases last month for company president Randell Weaver and vice president of operations, Alvin McCurdy.
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/080703/naii8-k.html

References

Juice Plus Manufacturer’s Stock Price Tumbles: NAI Among Thursday’s Leading Small-Cap Losers. Juice Plus Research Blog. April 05, 2008. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008_04_05_archive.html
SEC Form 8-K for Natural Alternatives International. July 03, 2008.
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/080703/naii8-k.html

Readers Respond (June 08, 2008)

2008-06-08T21:47:00.005-04:00

From Big Gay Al (June 04, 2008)
I’m so sick and tired of Juice Plus – it’s beyond a joke; it’s a travesty. Everywhere I go, I see some chiropractor, masseuse, gym trainer, crystal therapist, or colonic technician trying to sell this stuff – all the bottom feeders (no pun intended) in the health and “wellness” realm. If they’re not pushing Juice Plus, than it’s some other idiotic insanely priced snakeoil wonder-fruit tonic or “ancient Chinese secret” supplement, and they all say the same things about curing cancer etc. (my god who knew it was so easy…and it was lurking under our noses all this time..LOL). If you do the unthinkable and actually ask basic questions (like, oh say, what’s actually in it and why isn’t it on the label) or challenge them on any of their ridiculous fabricated claims, they get angry and defensive and accuse you of being ignorant – it’s all very cult-like. It must be a sign of the sagging economy that people are turning to such desperate measures to supplement their incomes.

Half the people in the Juice Plus organization are lying through their teeth and the other half are varying shades of gullible, uneducated, and greedy. None of them know their asses from their elbows when it comes to health and nutrition. It’s a very appealing concept for some people – all it takes is for some wank chiropractor to anoint you at a Prevention Plus meeting and presto – you’re now a Juice Plus distributor, empowered with the healing touch and a mandate to plug “magic capsules” that will save the world from disease and eventually make you rich while you sit on you ass watching others work under you. Ya right! If this company was in such good shape their stock wouldn’t be down and they wouldn’t have had to hire an internet optimization expert to boost their Google rankings or a worn out hack like Isadore Rosenfeld to pitch for them. It’s all so laughable. I bet more people come here for information on Juice Plus then they do to the company's website. They are on thin ice and you guys are punching holes around them with a sledgehammer. Juice Plus will sink sooner or later.

I almost (but not quite) pity the distributors because only those who are truly desperate would try to make a business selling this scandalous shit. It must be getting a lot harder for them to con people since the JPRB started their investigative reporting. Good on ya!

From Old Doc Brown (June 09, 2008)
Amen Al! That letter really resonated with me. I’ve been to those Prevention Plus talks and let me tell you all, they are just like the old time traveling medicine shows that gave rise to the term snakeoil. These people have no shame. The entire “health seminar” was just a setup for the Juice Plus sales pitch and as Al mentioned, with lots of talk about cancer and diseases and about how Juice Plus was the simple answer to everything.

But I disagree with you Al on one point. Some people do make money “sitting on their asses” while people toil under them – it’s the national marketing directors that are giving those seminars. The entire scam seems to be designed so that they and a few higher-ups in the pyramid can con other (naïve) people into supporting them financially. All of the distributor training focuses on keeping the bottom level distributors eager and motivated, but it barely pays lip service to teaching them about the product (the less they know, the better for NSA) and what they are legally allowed to say about it.

But one of the things that gall me most about Juice Plus is that distributors are encouraged to target their own families for sales and to recruit them as distributors. That’s simply unforgivable. I’ve seen the harm that it causes first hand. The company preaches all this garbage about families this and families that, but the truth is, they only care about their own families – they don’t give a darn about anyone else’s. In practical terms, the organization behind Juice Plus is decidedly anti-family. They’ll lie to parents to make their kids take corn-syrup laden vitamin-deficient gummies, they’ll lie to pregnant mothers to get them to take Juice Plus as a prenatal supplement, and they’ll lie to cancer patients and risk their lives by telling them that they should take Juice Plus. They really have sold their souls for the almighty dollar.

Readers Respond: David Katz and Juice Plus

2008-04-29T21:45:00.006-04:00

From Ginger Sue (April 29, 2008) Re: David Katz and Juice Plus
Have you seen his reference to Juice Plus in a recent article on vitamins?[1] Whether Juice Plus has any benefit or not, it is my opinion that he should not be involved in this. Does he have anything to gain?

JPRB Response
David Katz has a lot to gain. Katz, an associate professor adjunct at Yale University School of Public Health, was featured on the cover of the Spring 2004 issue of Prevention Plus, a Juice Plus promotional magazine published by manufacturer National Safety Associates (NSA). In November 2004, Yale University News reported that Katz was approached by NSA at a nutritional conference and offered more than $200,000 to conduct a study on Juice Plus.[2] Documents from Griffin Hospital, an affiliate of Yale University, confirm the exact amount as $200,850.[3] The one-year study Katz was paid to conduct was scheduled to begin on or before January 2005 but has not been published to date.

In April 2006, Katz was one of four featured speakers at an NSA-sponsored meeting[4] of the American Nutraceutical Association (ANA), held in Phoenix in conjunction with a Juice Plus national sales training meeting. The ANA meeting was chaired by the organization's leader Mark C. Houston, who had also previously received funding from NSA to conduct a Juice Plus study, published 2 months prior to the ANA meeting.[5] Houston serves as editor-in-chief of the ANA’s journal (JANA), publisher of the infamous and poorly-designed 2005 pregnancy study conducted by Juice Plus distributor C. Doug Odom.[6]

In the article mentioned above by Ginger Sue,[1] which was published earlier this month, Katz makes a vague, non-committal pitch for Juice Plus, saying: “I also like a supplement called Juice Plus, which compresses the nutrients from fruits and vegetables into capsule form, while preserving their native proportions.” Unfortunately, Katz’s statement does not make it clear that Juice Plus contains vitamin additives, and it is the same type of misleading claim that recently got NSA into hot water with the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Food & Drug Administration (FDA).[7]

Others agree with Ginger Sue that Katz should not be involved with Juice Plus. That’s why he was nominated for a Rotten Tomato in 2006.[8]

References:

Katz, D. Do you need an antioxidant supplement? Shine; Apr 17, 2008.
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/is-your-multivitamin-hurting-you-3f-160328
Kahn, S. Pill may supplement fruits, vegetables. Yale Daily News; November 29, 2004.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/12439
Research Report. Griffin Hospital Departments of Medicine and Preventive Medicine.
July 25, 2005.
http://www.griffinmeded.org/downloads/ResearchReport2004to2005.pdf
The role of nutraceuticals, diet and nutrition in disease prevention. American Nutraceutical Association Spring 2006 Conference (Nutraceuticals and Medicine); April 1, 2006, Phoenix, AZ.
Houston MC, Cooil B, Olafsson BJ, Raggi P. Juice powder concentrate and systemic blood pressure, progression of coronary artery calcium and antioxidant status in hypertensive subjects: a pilot study. eCAM. 2006.
http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/nel108v1
Odom CD. et al. Phytonutrients may decrease obstetric complications: a retrospective study. JANA. 2006; 9(1):23-27.
http://www.ana-jana.org/reprints/JANA9-1ReprintOdomrevised9-15-061.pdf
FDA Advised to Halt Marketing of Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; March 12, 2008.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/fda-advised-to-put-end-to-juice-plus.html
Rotten Tomato Awards. Juice Plus Research Blog; July 29, 2006.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2006/07/rotten-tomato-awards.html

NSA Distributors Misrepresent Consumer Lab Juice Plus Analysis

2008-04-23T21:10:00.015-04:00

Did Oprah Winfrey and Consumer Lab endorse Juice Plus? Juice Plus distributors are saying they did, but are their claims true or is this just another case of deceptive marketing? This week’s special investigative report by the JPRB provides the details about what Oprah and Consumer Lab really had to say about Juice Plus, and the truth is far different from what consumers have been told.

What O Magazine Really Said About Juice Plus
The June 2004 issue of O, a magazine published by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo, Inc., featured an article entitled “A Dose of Reality”, which summarized some of the results of an analysis of several brands of multivitamins conducted by Consumer Lab, a leading independent product testing organization. The main text of the O magazine article did not mention Juice Plus; however, the product was listed in a table along with 6 other brands of supplements, in addition to this statement “Passed: These supplements live up to their label for the ingredients they were tested for.” No other information on Juice Plus was provided. What the ingredients were that Juice Pus was tested for, Oprah’s article never said, but the Consumer Lab website did, and the results were not all consistent with what the Juice Plus distributors were saying in their sales pitches.

What Consumer Lab’s Analysis Really Showed
Until late 2007, Consumer Lab had posted on their website the full results of the multivitamin analysis alluded to in O magazine; it was available to online subscribers only and the JPRB has archived copies of the report obtained during that time. The online report has since been replaced with a more recent multivitamin analysis, which did not include Juice Plus; however, the original Juice Plus analysis can still be obtained by contacting Consumer Lab directly.

Unlike many of the other multivitamins analyzed by Consumer Lab, Juice Plus, at that time, did not list any ingredient amounts on the bottle label (this has since changed and at least some of the bottles sold in the U.S. now list ingredient amounts, as % RDA, for 6 vitamins: folate; vitamins A, C, and E; iron and calcium). The details of the report revealed that, since no nutrient amounts were listed on the Juice Plus bottles provided, Consumer Lab used special criteria to evaluate the product -- they analyzed the capsules contents and compared the results with NSAs claim that Juice Plus contains “the beta-carotene of 3 raw carrots; the vitamin C of 4 oranges, and the vitamin E of more than several 1 cup servings of spinach and broccoli." The report states that “the values shown (for Juice Plus) are actual amounts found in combination of one capsule of each, as none were listed”. All other brands of supplements in the test were judged based on their listed nutrient amounts by weight.

Consumer Lab analyzed the combined nutrient content of 1 capsule of Orchard Blend together with 1 capsule of Garden Blend. According to their results, Juice Plus met with NSA’s claim about “the beta-carotene of 3 raw carrots; the vitamin C of 4 oranges, and the vitamin E of more than several one-cup servings of spinach and broccoli", and on that basis the product was given a passing grade (i.e., it did not underpromise for those 3 ingredients). However, the full profile for the 12 nutrients actually reported in Consumer Lab’s analysis paints a very different picture. The results of the analysis are summarized in the following table (click on image for full-size version).

Figure 1: Juice Plus nutrient amounts: Consumer Lab analysis results compared with bottle label claims and U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance.
1 Amounts reported verbatim by Consumer Lab (values are for a combination of one capsule Orchard Blend and one capsule Garden Blend (2 capsules total).
2 Amounts contained in the 4-capsule daily Juice Plus regimen (2 Orchard Blend + 2 Garden Blend) calculated by doubling the amounts listed in column 1.
3 Percentage of the amount in 4 capsules, according to Consumer Lab, relative to the amounts claimed on Juice Plus bottle labels. The corresponding amounts by weight were calculated by multiplying [% RDA listed on bottle (4 capsules)] x [RDA by weight (mg or µg)] (data not shown). Note that Juice Plus U.S. bottle labels prior to 2006 did not list the amounts of any ingredients. Post-2006, the labels still do not specify any ingredient amounts by weight, but now specify the amounts for 6 nutrients (beta-carotene, vitamins A/C/E, calcium and iron) as a percentage of of the U.S. recommended daily allowance (RDA).
4 The percentage of nutrient RDAs in Juice Plus 4-capsule regime calculated based on Consumer Lab’s data.

Juice Plus Found to Contain 5-Times More Vitamin C Than Advertised
According to information on Juice Plus bottle labels, the combined daily 4-capsule regimen provides (as % RDA): 250% beta-carotene, 390% vitamin C, 150% vitamin E, 105% folate, 6% calcium, and 4% iron. According to Consumer Lab, the 4-capsule regimen provides roughly the advertised amount of beta-carotene, vitamin E, folate, calcium, and iron, but the vitamin C content was roughly 20 times higher than the RDA and 5-fold higher than the amount claimed by the manufacturer. The 4-capsule regimen has a weight of 3 grams (750 mg per capsule); therefore, the Consumer Lab test results show that Juice Plus capsules contains 40% vitamin C by weight. According to the manufacturer-claimed amount, they should only contain about 8% vitamin C by weight.

Juice Plus Found to Be Deficient in Most Nutrients
Consumer Lab’s tests reported the amounts of several nutrients that are not listed as ingredients on Juice Plus bottle labels (i.e. magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper, phosphorous, manganese, and chromium). With the exception of manganese (17% RDA) Juice Plus failed to provide more than 6% of RDA for these nutrients, as well as calcium and iron -- 8 nutrients in total. Six of these nutrients are present in most retail multivitamins at amounts meeting RDA.

Juice Plus Distributors Misrepresent O Magazine and Consumer Lab Report
The following are promotional statements from Juice Plus distributors regarding the O magazine story and Consumer Lab tests.

“Their only claim is that is is (sic) made from 17 fruits, vegetables and grains, which has been proven through several studies including one conducted by Consumer Labs (sic), and (sic) independent watchdog organization, and published in Oprah’s O Magazine."[3]
Jessica L. Long, Juice Plus Distributor[4]

This was far from proven. The Consumer Lab report never even tested whether Juice Plus was made from 17 fruits, vegetables and grains, nor did they make any comment remotely like the one made by Ms. Long.

“Juice Plus was even included in Oprah’s June issue as one of only seven supplements that passed rigorous testing for ingredient authenticity by Consumer Labs…Do you know what you are feeding your family? With Juice Plus, you know”.[5]
Donna Partow, Juice Plus Distributor[6]

Apprently, Juice Plus customers don't know what they are actually feeding their family because NSA and their distributors were never forthcoming about Consumer Lab’s test results. Additionally, the Consumer Lab report did not include any testing, rigorous or otherwise, for ingredient authenticity.

"In an article in Oprah Magazine, a “watchdog” group tested many supplements and found JUICE PLUS to be one of the few that actually did and was what it claimed!"[7]
Jane T. Kelley, Juice Plus Distributor[8]

Consumer Lab never commented on what Juice Plus did, only whether what was in it matched NSA’s claim regarding the amount of beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E relative to carrots, oranges, and broccoli, respectively.

"Juice Plus was 1 of the 7 supplements out of 100 tested that passed Oprah's tests - to determine if they were safe, and if it contained what it said on the label."[9]
Cindy Nabicht, Juice Plus Distributor[10]

First, they were not Oprah's tests, they were conducted independently by Consumer Lab. Secondly, no attempt at all was made to determine if Juice Plus or any of the other supplements were safe. Lastly, the report included 40 supplements, not hundreds. That’s 3 swings and 3 misses.

“Oprah Magazine exclusively released a study by ConsumerLab.com, an independent watchdog group, that found that Juice Plus was among a small group of daily vitamins that actually deliver on their promises.”[11]
Teresa Hall, Juice Plus Distributor[12]

Juice Plus promises a lot of things but Consumer Lab never tested the veracity of NSA’s various farfetched promises.

“It was also featured in Oprah's magazine as being one of the best supplements.”[13]
Lori, Juice Plus Distributor[14]

O magazine didn’t come even remotely close to saying that Juice Plus was one of the best supplements.

Conclusion
Distributors have been actively misquoting and passing out copies of the O magazine article and misleading people into believing that Consumer's Lab's Juice Plus analysis showed favorable results, when in fact it clearly did not. The amount of vitamin C, a very inexpensive ingredient, was 5-times higher than what is claimed on the Juice Plus bottle label. The product was also deficient in a variety of nutrients, many of which can be obtained at RDA amounts from an inexpensive multivitamin. The poor nutrient profile shown in the Consumer Lab analysis confirms previous crticism regarding the product's lack of value and benefit. It also raises serious issues about poor manufacturing quality control, undisclosed changes in ingredients, and mislabeling of the product.

References

O Magazine; June 2004:135-138.
2006 Multivitamin/multimineral product review: ingredient comparison tables. Consumer Lab.
http://www.consumerlab.com/
Comment in: Central Florida Green Guide.
http://centralfloridagreenguide.com/2007/09/24/let-food-be-thy-medicine-with-dr-cannizzaro-sep-27-at-7pm
Jessica L. Long -- Juice Plus distributor webpage. National Safety Associates. http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=jl02327
Partow, Donna. Don't have time to eat healthy? Donna Partow Ministries.
http://www.donnapartow.com/jp.html
Donna Partow -- Juice Plus distributor webpage. National Safety Associates.
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=dp83785
Comment in: Juice Plus, a knockout way to improve your health. Knockout Ideas.
http://www.knockoutideas.com/healthbody.html
Jane T. Kelley -- Juice Plus distributor webpage. National Safety Associates.
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=jk10491
Comment by Cindy in: Twinstuff Forums; January 28 2008.
http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=56548
Cindy Nabicht -- Juice Plus distributor webpage. National Safety Associates.
http://www.everydayprevention.com/
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=cn63290
Hall, Teresa. Pro Health Views.
http://www.prohealthviews.com/html/html_phv/content_13store.html
Teresa Hall -- Juice Plus distributor webpage. National Safety Associates.
http://www.jpscience.com/
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=th83452
Comment by Lori in: Celiac Chicago. Blogspot.com; October 9, 2007.
http://celiacchicago.blogspot.com/2007/10/is-your-medicine-gluten-free.html
Lori -- Juice Plus distributor webpage. National Safety Associates.
http://www.addsomejuice.com http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=lb12631

Juice Plus Executive Finances 14-Year Old Croatian Tennis Player, Gets Endorsement Deal and Management Contract in Return

2008-04-23T20:12:00.006-04:00

How did the face of rising women’s tennis star Ana Ivanovic recently end up on a Juice Plus brochure? The answer, in a nutshell, is that Ivanovic was roped into an endorsement deal by a European Juice Plus executive who, years earlier, had become her financier and manager.

News reports describe that Ivanovic, now 20 years old, was an unknown, cash-strapped, junior women’s tennis player in Croatia when she first met Dan Holzmann, a chief executive of NSA AG,[1] a European subsidiary of National Safety Associates. Holzmann’s holding company purchased NSA’s German and Swiss subsidiaries in 1996 from the parent company NSA International, Inc. (based in Tennessee) for the sum of $1.5 million paid over 7 years.[2]

At the age of 14, Ivanovic, whose manager at the time was facing bankruptcy, visited Holzmann at his home in Basel, Switzerland for a meeting. According to Holzmann, he saw a driven, talented young athlete who also "had the personality and looks to nudge any other princess from the marketing throne".[3] Holzmann said, “Ivanovic was grateful, to a fault, for some smaller favors,” adding that “she was overcome once when he gave her $100 in pocket money, and never used it.”[3] After that first meeting, Holzmann admitted “I was smitten at that moment”.[4]

Soon after their initial meeting in Switzerland, Holzmann agreed to finance Ivanovic and manage her career. At the time, Holzmann was 32 and Ivanovic was 15 and he had never managed a tennis player.[5] Over the next few years Holzmann provided Ana with funds and covered all of her expenses; an investment that reportedly totaled about $500,000.[6] However, Holzmann stated:

“She paid back everything. I’m in plus now, not in the minus--not in minus--she paid back and she paid back much more than that or lets say her business paid back much more than that. It took her about two years to pay the money back.”[7]

Juice Plus advertising brochures featuring Ivanovic’s picture[7] began appearing in 2007. To date, we are unaware of any Juice advertising in which Ivanovic claims to actually use or support the use of the products.

References:

NSA AG Homepage.
http://www.nsa.ch/index.php?lang=en&path=unternehmen
NSA International, Inc.: 8-K (9/2/96) -- SEC File 0-19487/Accession Number 950144-96-6409. Securities and Exchange Commission; September 17, 1996.
http://www.secinfo.com/dsVsf.9686.htm
DeSimone, B. Ivanovic working on the complete package. ESPN; June 8, 2007.
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/french07/columns/story?columnist=desimone_bonnie&id=2897619
Robson, D. Ivanovic sets stage for success in US Open. USA Today; July 15, 2007.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/tennis/2007-07-15-ivanovic_N.htm
Thirty-something benefactor credited with bankrolling Ana Ivanovic career. Sport by Brooks.
http://sportsbybrooks.com/30something-benefactor-credited-with-bankrolling-ana-ivanovic-career-13691
DH Management AG Homepage.
http://www.dh-m.com/index.php?path=history
Rovell, D. Ana Ivanovic: last post for now (but maybe not!). CNBC Sportsbiz; August 28, 2007
http://www.cnbc.com/id/20476107

Readers Respond (April 23, 2008): Juice Plus Distributor Reconsiders and Quits the Business

2008-04-23T18:03:00.004-04:00

From Melissa Evans (April 23, 2008)
OK, I admit it. I liked the idea of JP+ enough to sell it (well, not really; just become a distributor so I could get the discount for my family, I don't like selling anything). A friend mentioned his skepticism towards the product and when I asked why, he sent me a lot of information - your blog, of course, being included.

First, thank you for the information you offer. I really appreciate the Golden Apple Awards, What Is (and Is Not) in Juice Plus, and many of the articles in the archives. I have to admit though, it was tough for me to get to them as I was going through many of the entries. It felt like so much was too bitter to be anything but a grudge for people who lack other outlets; a contest to see who could look the most sophisticated while beating the product to a pulp (pun sort of intended). It would have been easier for me, and perhaps others, if the venom were left out and just the amazing facts you have were presented.

Again, thank you. My renewal just came up (and for the record, it's only been one year) and I won't be wasting my money.

JPRB Reply
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and kind praise for our blog. We are thrilled that you found the information on the site useful and that it helped you to make an informed decision to drop out of the Juice Plus business. Your point about venom-free articles is duly noted. However, bear in mind that we like to give our core contributors and respondents some latitude to express their displeasure with Juice Plus and related entities, since there are very few venues where people can vent about Juice Plus to a receptive and like-minded audience. But rest assured that the vast majority of our content has been and will continue to be based on cold, dry analyses of information in the public domain, and whenever factual claims are made, they will be backed up by reliable citations that can easily be confirmed by anyone who cares to do so.

Readers Respond (April 18, 2008): Juice Plus Evangelism and Disease Treatment Claims

2008-04-17T23:15:00.005-04:00

From Anonymous April 18, 2008
On one hand I am really, really glad you publish this blog. On the other it kind of breaks my heart. I know that sounds dramatic, but there is just so much proof of the downright dishonesty of this company. It is obviously easily seen, but it is nice to have a concentrated resource like this.

My in-laws have become followers of the cult of Juice Plus to the point that it is scary. I was roped into attending one of their "Nutritional Seminars" recently. I would have rather sat through a Southern Baptist tent revival than sit there and watch people get roped in based on false "research" and magical cures. The keynote speaker was a medical doctor (and even had a picture of her office on her poorly put together PowerPoint presentation) and as I am sure you know the routine. Shocking statistics about how unhealthy Americans are, the benefits of fresh fruits, the inconvenience of fresh fruits and vegetables, the ultimate pitch to just buy Juice Plus.

This speaker took things too far a few different times. At one point she said besides the fact that real fruits and vegetables are too expensive, once they are shipped and put on store shelves there is NO nutrition left in them. I can understand this bs theory coming from the individual resellers, not from the a paid spokesperson at a company sponsored event.

From Name Witheld by User's Request (April 17, 2008)
I want to thank you for the research and work you do to expose Juice Plus for what it is. I appreciate your web site and the knowledge I have gained from it. I found your web site several months ago after I was approached by a Juice Plus distributor. I found the claims that Juice Plus cures and prevents nearly everything unbelievable, so I set out to learn more about this product. I am deeply troubled by the number of friends who have fallen victim to this product.

Keep up the good work.

Readers Respond (April 16, 2008): NSA Tries to Block EBay Sales of Juice Plus

2008-04-17T00:56:00.012-04:00

From Anonymous (April 15, 2008)
I was talked into Juice Plus against my better judgment in a weak moment when my son had contracted an infection, was in the hospital, and nothing seemed to be working. My neighbor is a distributor and she helpfully got us signed up for their automatic shipments. We tried the stuff for a couple of months, realized it was absolutely worthless, but neglected to cancel the order--partly because I did not want to get into it with my neighbor who is a 'true believer' in this stuff. Over time, I had several boxes of unopened Juice Plus that I knew we would never use. Canceling the auto shipments has been a nightmare, so I can only imagine how successful my attempts at getting a refund for unopened product would have been. But the worst part of doing business with these people is their overly-aggressive legal department. I listed the unopened still-in-the-shipping-boxes Juice Plus I had sitting in my cupboards on Ebay for considerably less than I paid for it. It was that or throw it out. I received this letter from NSA 'Internal Affairs':

"Hi [ ], It has recently come to our attention that you have placed an offer to sell Juice Plus+® products on the eBay auction website. This email letter is to inform you that our products are not to be sold by unauthorized individuals for your protection.

Juice Plus+® and other NSA products can only be sold through Independent Distributors. Any use of company trade names or trademarks without permission from NSA is strictly prohibited. NSA Inc. Juice Plus+® is a member of the eBay Vero program and we enforce the right to protect our trademarks.

In light of the foregoing, we request that you Please remove your auction and cease any future offers to sell Juice Plus+® products on the auction website.Please call 1-800-347-6350 with your sales order number during business hours. We are open Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm CST. Let the representative know you removed your auction from eBay for a refund. We can issue you a refund for all of your remaining unopened products.

Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
--
Jennifer Drenzek
Internal Affairs
NSA Home Office...USA
140 Crescent Drive
Collierville, TN 38017
j.drenzek@nsai.com
(901) 850-3000"

For the record, there is no trademark protection that prevents private individuals from selling items they own (purchased from any company) to each other or everybody who has ever had a garage sale would be in violation of intellectual property laws. Had I sold a product that was similar to, but not actually Juice Plus, and represented it as Juice Plus, that would have been a trademark violation. As it is, I sold their product, clearly identified as their product, as a private individual--and at a loss. As they must surely know, they have no case for trademark infringement, so the purpose of these letters is intimidation, pure and simple. Their reference to Ebay's Vero program is a joke. Their 'partnership' with Ebay consists of a link where they spell out their desire that their products be sold only by distributors. This is their preferred business model and they have a right to it. However, it is not the law. Juice Plus is not a prescription item, so they can suggest a distribution model, but they can not legally enforce it. Can you imagine Coca-cola or Revlon or any other legitimate company resorting to these tactics? There is a frightening element of fanaticism in their sales force, and clear bullying and strong-arm tactics in their business tactics. My advice to others--run, don't walk, away from these people.

JPRB Reply
Others have also complained about NSA’s use of bullying tactics to thwart the sale of Juice Plus on Ebay.[1][2] It’s unclear as to why NSA would make such an effort to intimidate people who merely want to recoup some of the money they wasted buying Juice Plus. It is possible that NSA simply doesn’t want to draw general attention to Juice Plus because it would inevitably lead to closer scrutiny and more criticism. It is much more effective and safer for NSA to selectively target their product message at the suckers who are culled from among the friends and relatives of Juice Plus distributors -- this is a fundamental feature of the Juice Plus MLM business model. If Juice Plus were to be sold by retailers, rather than through a below-the-radar MLM network, and continued to be promoted using the same misleading and often flagrantly illegal claims that its distributors have routinely been making, the FDA would shut NSA down in a heartbeat.

It’s also likely that NSA doesn’t want Ebayers selling Juice Plus because they typically offer it at a price below that charged by distributors. Consistently undercutting prices would cripple the ability of Juice Plus distributors to unload product, and with that, the pyramid (uh, excuse us, MLM network) would collapse.

It is surprising that NSA would even have an Internal Affairs department, and it is downright baffling as to why a department bearing this name would deal with Ebay transactions, which are obviously not internal affairs at all but rather external affairs. It would be more customary to have a consumer relations, legal, or business affairs department handle such matters. Perhaps NSA likes the title Internal Affairs because it sounds more intimidating, and anyone who can be fooled into buying Juice Plus is probably also gullible enough to be cowed into submission by the fear of NSA’s Internal Affairs stormtroopers coming after them. Even the name NSA is intimidating -- it's the same acronym used by the U.S. National Security Agency.

The senior staff at NSA’s Internal Affairs department include (or did at one time) Elton DuBose, who heads the department, and assistant director Todd White.[2][3] Aside from Jennifer Drenzek, who wrote the threatening email above, the only other NSA Internal Affairs employee we know of is Jennifer Harris. Her name came up in connection within another warning letter written to a Juice Plus Ebayer.[2][4]

NSA’s efforts to thwart the sale of Juice Plus on Ebay do not seem to be effective -- there are more than 80 Ebay auction listings for Juice Plus as of today.

Postscript: Regarding the refunds NSA has offered to EBay sellers, it seems that they are not as easy to get as the company would have us believe. In one case, an EBay seller was offered only a partial refund,[1] and in another, NSA kept the returned merchandise and never issued a refund.[2] In response to the latter case, Tabberone’s Hall of Shame had this to say:

"So, boys and girls, what can we deduce from this? In our opinion, not only are the IP people at Juice Plus stupid in their attitude, approach, and knowledge of trademark law, but they are also cheats and not to be trusted."[2]

References

Why can't I sell Juice Plus? Health & Beauty Discussion Forums; April 5, 2008.
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000547696&tstart=0&mod=1208041744432
Juice Plus. Tabberone’s Hall of Shame; December 18, 2006 (updated April 3, 2007).
http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/HallOfShame/JuicePlus/JuicePlus.shtml
Correspondence from Todd White (NSA Assistant Director of Internal Affairs) regarding EBay auction of Juice Plus, Tabberone’s Hall of Shame; December 4, 2006.
http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/HallOfShame/JuicePlus/emails/fromJuicePlus20061204.html
Correspondence from Jennifer White (NSA Internal Affairs) regarding EBay auction of Juice Plus, Tabberone’s Hall of Shame; December 1, 2006.
http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/HallOfShame/JuicePlus/emails/fromJuicePlus20061201.html

Readers Respond (April 08, 2008)

2008-04-08T20:05:00.005-04:00

From Anonymous (April 08, 2008)
Oh my! I am glad you allow anonymous posts because I am not sure I want my name associated with my past mistakes.

I tried the “Juice Plus” product out of “unending devotion, concern, and deep love” by a Juice Plus relative. I thought I was getting something as part of a “free” children’s research program. It turned out that the children’s product was free, so long as I purchased an equivalent amount for myself. I let this go on for multiple years; and I ended up about $1,000 poorer as a result.

To compound my embarrassment: Just prior to my Juice Plus experience I was swindled in a used-car sale; paid $2,000 for a vacuum cleaner that I didn’t like; and my son convinced me that Encarta took the word “gullible” out of its dictionary. I realized I had some kind of genetic defect; and had to be on-guard against snake-oil salesman.

Even with this life experience, I fell for the Juice Plus story. After all, someone LOVED ME! They really LOVED ME (hint: Nora Desmond)!

I have learned the truth in recent months. I talked to an attorney about possibly recouping my $1,000 for Juice Plus; and I was encouraged to submit a compliant with my state’s consumer regulatory agency.

Frankly, the stories on your website have eased my anguish.

I am convinced that the side-effects of Juice Plus include: foul-language, spelling errors, a fascination with body functions and oral copulation, and overcompensation for physical shortcomings (in men, specifically).

Can you PLEASE publish more of your pro-JP letters (with your notation)? I could use a good laugh.

From Anonymous (April 07, 2008)
Hi, thanks for this website. I was approached by a Juice Plus representative who got me interested in Juice Plus. A way to get all the nutrients of all those fruits and veggies, without all the work and effort involved in actually eating the recommended amount of fruits/veggies each day? Count me in! Of course, it would be stupid of me to soley rely on Juice Plus's advertising in making a decision to buy their product, so I just googled Juice Plus. What I found was a firestorm of criticism aimed not only at JP's multi-level-marketting techniques, but also at the inefficacy of their product.

This blog sealed the nail in the coffin for me when it comes to Juice Plus. I'll be damned if they get any of my money! I'll just stick with putting fresh fruits and veggies in a blender and drinking the resulting concoction if I want a quick and easy way to get the nutrition of fruits and veggies. Thanks, Juice Plus Research Blog.

Juice Plus Manufacturer’s Stock Price Tumbles: NAI Among Thursday’s Leading Small-Cap Losers

2008-04-05T12:28:00.007-04:00

After several weeks of sluggish trading, Natural Alternatives International (NAI) stock took a nosedive on Thursday April 3, dropping in value by more than 15%, and was among the day’s top percentage losers for small capitalization companies.[1] NAI’s stock, which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol NAII, closed at $7.60 per share, down from the previous day's closing price of $9.00. NAI stock has been trading at an average daily volume of roughly 8,000 shares, but trading activity rose to 22,829 shares in the midst of Thursday’s sell off.

It is unclear what sparked the decline in NAI’s stock price; however, a complaint filed recently with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may have been the catalyst. On March 12, 2008, the Juice Plus Research Blog reported that the Center for Science in the Public Interest had petitioned the FDA to halt the marketing of Juice Plus because the products were adulterated, misbranded, and misleadingly promoted.[2] No shares of NAI stock were traded over the next two days, and during the following week the stock went 3 consecutive days without a single share traded. The last time NAI’s stock went 3 consecutive days with no trades was in January 2002, when it was valued at $2.02 per share.[3]

References

American Biltrite, X-Rite and IntriCon lead small-cap percentage losers. Yahoo Finance. April 3, 2008. http://biz.yahoo.com/smallcapinvestor/080403/8190.html?.v=1
FDA advised to halt marketing of Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; March 12, 2008. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/fda-advised-to-put-end-to-juice-plus.htm
Historical Prices -- Natural Alternatives International Inc. (NAII). Yahoo Finance.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=NAII&a=09&b=28&c=1993&d=03&e=5&f=2002&g=d

FDA Advised to Halt Marketing of Juice Plus

2008-03-12T20:41:00.007-04:00

The FDA should halt the marketing of NSA's Juice Plus Orchard Blend and Garden Blend capsules because the products are adulterated and misbranded, says the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).[1] According to The Tan Sheet, a publication that monitors nonprescription pharmaceutical and nutritional products, CSPI notified the FDA on December 12, 2007, advising the agency that Juice Plus vitamin supplements are being deceptively marketed to consumers.

CSPI says it is concerned that the products' claim, "the next best thing to fruits and vegetables," may lead consumers to believe the pills are "closer to real fruits and vegetables than is likely to be the case." CSPI explained that the labels indicate that the capsules contain high levels of vitamins A and C and folate naturally, and do not disclose that these vitamins and minerals are added to the capsules during processing. CSPI also published a highly critical special report on Juice Plus (see Center for Science in the Public Interest Crucifies Juice Plus)[2] in the December 2007 edition of the organization’s Nutrition Action Healthletter.[3]

CSPI has been prominently featured in news headlines in the past month as a result of their role as co-counsel in a $23.3 million class action settlement against the manufacturers of Airborne -- a multivitamin and herbal supplement whose labels and ads falsely claimed that the product cures and prevents colds.[4] Airborne is now under scrutiny by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 24 State Attorneys General.

CSPI’s negative opinion of Juice Plus is shared by many nutrition experts and several major health organizations, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,[5] University of Pennsylvania’s Abrahamson Cancer Center,[6] Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter,[7] University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter,[8][9] the Better Business Bureau and Consumer Reports.[10] If CSPI is successful in persuading the FDA to take enforcement action against Juice Plus, National Safety Associates (NSA), the privately-held company responsible for marketing Juice Plus, may be subject to fines and/or seizure of products and marketing materials.

References

CSPI targets juice capsules. The Tan Sheet. FDC Reports. December 17, 2007;15(051).
http://www.thetansheet.com
Center for Science in the Public Interest crucifies Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; February 18, 2008.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/02/center-for-science-in-public-interest.html
Special report: Lost in translation -- Why real fruit and vegetables beat juices, powder, and purees. Nutrition Action Healthletter (December, 2007). Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
http://www.cspinet.org/nah/12_07/special.pdf
Airborne agrees to pay $23.3 million to settle lawsuit over false advertising of its "miracle cold buster": company now under scrutiny by FTC & 24 State Attorneys General. Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). March 3, 2008
http://www.cspinet.org/new/200803032.html
Juice Plus. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/69270.cfm
Juice Plus Supplement: OncoLink Ask The Experts (Katrina Claghorn). Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania.
http://www.oncolink.com/experts/article.cfm?c=1&s=3&ss=3&id=2390
Tufts University dismisses Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; March 04, 2008.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/tufts-university-dismisses-juice-plus.html
Juice Plus — and minus. University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter. 2000;17(2):2-3.
http://www.berkeleywellness.com/subCorner/pdf/2000/0011.pdf
Juice Plus: Wellness guide to dietary supplements. University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter.
http://www.berkeleywellness.com/html/ds/dsJuicePlus.php
How product testimonials bend the rules. Consumer Reports.
http://money.aol.com/consreports/smartshopping/electronics/_a/how-product-testimonials-bend-the-rules/20060106133109990001

Readers Respond (March 7, 2007): Letter of the Week

2008-03-07T10:57:00.000-05:00

From Susan (March 7, 2008)
Juice plus is total bull shit. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that it has any health benefits whatsoever. Additionally, its representatives are white collar criminals that continue to bill your account long after you've terminated your agreement. This company is BIG TROUBLE!

Tufts University Dismisses Juice Plus

2008-03-04T20:20:00.015-05:00

Nutritionists at Tufts University in Boston don’t think very highly of the vitamin supplement Juice Plus, according to a 2006 report[1] published in the University’s widely read Health & Nutrition Letter.[2] Tufts’ critique, entitled The Minuses of Juice Plus, adds to a rapidly growing, unanimous body of unbiased expert commentary condemning the product, marketed by National Safety Associates (NSA).

In addition to poking holes in NSA’s claims about the disease-fighting benefits of Juice Plus, Tufts was critical of the company’s marketing tactics, noting that “in 2005, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus advised NSA to change its advertising to stop implying that Juice Plus Gummies, a chewable pill for children, is a nutritionally comparable alternative to vegetables and fruits.”[3]

Citing a critical commentary by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC),[4] the Tufts newsletter also reported that "none of the scientific studies undertaken have sought to prove that Juice Plus is more effective or more bioavailable than other supplements” and “no studies exist to compare the physiologic effects of supplementation with Juice Plus and eating whole fresh fruits and vegetables”. The Center also cautioned “Juice Plus is distributed through a multi-tiered marketing scheme with exaggerated value and cost" and the Tufts nutritionists agreed, noting that NSA relies “on a network of distributors…along with personal testimonials to their products' effectiveness. Testimonials, however, do not equal scientific evidence.”

The Tufts newsletter concluded that Juice Plus doesn’t offer the benefits of fruit and vegetables -- “you're missing out on the fiber of the real thing; you're also leaving a gap in your daily diet that's likely to be filled in part with fatty foods.”

References

The minuses of Juice Plus: Ask the Experts. Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter. Aug. 1, 2006;24(6): S1,4 [ISSN: 1526-0143].
Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter wesbite. The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
http://healthletter.tufts.edu/
How product testimonials bend the rules. Consumer Reports.
http://money.aol.com/consreports/smartshopping/electronics/_a/how-product-testimonials-bend-the-rules/20060106133109990001
Juice Plus. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/69270.cfm

Readers Respond (March 1, 2008): More on Morons, Juice Plus, and Pregnancy

2008-03-01T13:37:00.005-05:00

From Chantal (March 1, 2008)
I can’t thank you enough for the information you are posting here. I was livid after reading your comments about how Juice Plus is being fraudulently promoted as a replacement for prenatal vitamins. I just passed the first trimester of my pregnancy and am taking prenatal vitamins as my doctor recommended (he didn’t plug any particular brand).

Well, hubby treated me to a day at the spa a few weeks ago, and one of the girls who worked there (an aesthetician!!!) was trying to railroad me into buying Juice Plus from her. She said that there was clinical research showing that they were far more effective than prenatal vitamins, and that prenatal vitamins can actually be toxic to the fetus. I understand from my research and the articles on this blog that both of her statements were completely false. She also said that she knew other moms (well actually it was more like “a friend of a friend” that had told her) who had safely taken Juice Plus throughout their pregnancies and that they had amazing results.

She also claimed the exact same story about the midwife commenting on how healthy the umbilical cord was (what a load of crap). As I understand it, she was also wrong when she said that Juice Plus is safe for pregnancy – supplements don’t go through any safety testing and no safety research has been done on Juice Plus, for pregnant women or anyone else.

What’s worse than all her BS was her attitude when I told her I wasn’t interested in buying any Juice Plus. She basically told me that I was gambling with my baby’s health by not taking Juice Plus, essentially accusing me of being cheap and an unfit mother (something to the effect of “isn’t your baby’s health worth it”), and that better doctors than my OB/GYN (who is a truly outstanding physician) all supported Juice Plus as a prenatal supplement. I was so offended I wanted to slap her across the face but resisted the urge. I just politely declined and then fumed about it to my husband for the next few days. Then I found your blog, thankfully. After reading your information, I have no doubt in my mind that what the Juice Plus folks are doing is irresponsible at least and criminal at worst. How can these idiots be so greedy as to jeopardize the health of unborn children just to make a few more dollars? They are scum in my opinion and nothing they can say will change that.

What I wanted to point out to you, in case you haven’t seen it already, is the BS that Mitra Ray has been writing about Juice Plus as a prenatal vitamin. Here is the URL to one of her documents. I would love to hear your opinion. http://www.fromheretolongevity.com/adx/asp/adxGetMedia.asp?DocID=78,87,1,Documents&MediaID=331&Filename=Dr_Ray_Prenatal_Nutition_2008.pdf

Keep up the fight JPRB. My husband and I love you guys and support you 100% in your efforts. If anyone ever launches legal action against the makers of Juice Plus, please count me in because I would be happy to testify about the deceptive and predatory tactics that are being used to sell the product.

Nutritionist for Seattle Television Program Latest Expert to Advise Against Juice Plus

2008-02-23T16:48:00.003-05:00

Hot on the heels of the latest critical report on Juice Plus vitamin supplements by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI),[1] a Seattle nutritionist issued a statement last Sunday similarly advising consumers to avoid Juice Plus.

Nutritionist Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D., appeared on the television program AM Northwest, a popular news and entertainment show aired by ABC network affiliate KATU in Seattle. The program, which has been on the air since 1976, featured a report by Somer (Foods That Fool),[2] posted on the KATU website on Sunday, which reiterated serious flaws in the marketing and scientific validity of Juice Plus products.

“Juice Plus may be touted as the ‘next best thing to fruits and vegetables,’ but don’t be fooled”, Somer warned. “Dehydrating produce shrinks it by about 90%, but it still would take 15 capsules to supply the equivalent of a half cup serving of broccoli, while Juice Plus recommends 4 capsules a day”, she said, musing “hmmm, that’s about as much broccoli as you’d get in a small sprig.”

Somer noted that “yes, the company adds some extra vitamin C, beta carotene, and other nutrients to make up the difference”, but she cautioned “you’ll still be missing out on the fiber and 12,000 health-enhancing phytochemicals identified so far in produce, not to mention the cost to your pocketbook”.

Rather than taking Juice Plus, Somer strongly advised “just bite the bullet and make a pact with yourself to include at least 2 servings of real fruits and vegetables at every meal and at least 1 at every snack – period.”

References

Center for Science in the Public Interest crucifies Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog. February, 18, 2007.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/02/center-for-science-in-public-interest.html
Elizabeth Somer. Foods That Fool. AM Northwest; Station KATU (Seattle, WA): February 18, 2008.
http://www.amnorthwest.tv/display.cfm?CID=949

Foul-Mouthed Juice Plus National Marketing Director Issues Stunning Statement to JPRB

2008-02-21T21:10:00.010-05:00

Shortly after publishing the results of a scathingly critical review of Juice Plus vitamin supplements by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI),[1] the Juice Plus Research Blog (JPRB) received a lewd and sexually explicit e-mail from an irate Juice Plus national marketing director.

The individual in question, Douglas Barlow,[2] operates Shining Star International[3] (in conjunction with his wife Sanghmitra “Mitra” Ray), a support and training service for Juice Plus distributors. Ray, who has been the subject of previous articles by the JPRB,[4][5] is an official Juice Plus spokesperson,[6][7] and the couple conducts Juice Plus promotional seminars for National Safety Associates (NSA),[8] the products’ manufacturer. Ray and Barlow are also Juice Plus distributors.[9][10] The complete unedited text of Barlow’s letter to the JPRB follows:

From Douglas Barlow (dougbarlow@ssintl.org) 2/21/08:

“Blow Me: You clowns probably read the national enquirer and think it’s all true as well – get a life! So glad you are out crusading for “consumer interest”. Oops, gotta go rip off some more people, cuz that’s my mission in life, just like you disgruntled folks. Thanks for the laugh and don’t forget to swallow. Best wishes, Doug.”

Several aspects of Barlow’s communiqué are startling. Most notably, Barlow’s invitation to perform fellatio is grossly inappropriate, especially considering that he is a Juice Plus national marketing director. We are shocked to see such unprofessional conduct from someone as senior in the Juice Plus organization as Barlow – or at least we should be shocked, but sadly, this type of rude and idiotic behavior emanating from the highest levels of the Juice Plus pyramid does not seem to be the exception but rather the rule.

What we found most surprising is that Barlow attempted to denigrate the sources of information cited by the JPRB as being somehow equivalent in quality to the National Enquirer. Again, this type of head-in-the-sand denial is commonplace at all levels of the Juice Plus organization. The JPRB recently published an article describing the details of a critical review of Juice Plus by CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest Crucifies Juice Plus), an organization with an absolutely stellar reputation for scientific integrity and protecting the public interest. Barlow’s equating CSPI with the National Enquirer is unfathomably idiotic. Without any real ammunition to diffuse well-founded criticism, his comment seems desperate and pathetic.

We thank Barlow for providing us the opportunity to hold up his disgraceful comments for the entire virtual world to see, proving once again the low moral standards of those involved at the highest levels in the promotion and distribution of Juice Plus products. Consumers should now be asking is a guy like Douglas Barlow someone who deserves your patronage and is this the kind of person who you would trust for health and nutritional advice for your family and friends.

References

Center for Science in the Public Interest crucifies Juice Plus. Juice Plus Research Blog; February 18, 2008.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2008/02/center-for-science-in-public-interest.html

Doug Barlow. Shining Star International.
http://www.ssintl.org/Default.aspx?DN=62,5,1,Documents

Shining Star International homepage.
http://www.ssintl.org/

Readers respond: Mitra Ray. Juice Plus Research Blog; June 02, 2007. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2007/06/readers-respond-june-2-2007-mitra-ray.html

Mitra Ray: Rotten Tomato awards. Juice Plus Research Blog; July 29, 2006.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2006/07/rotten-tomato-awards.html

Mitra Ray bio: what health professionals say. National Safety Associates.
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/MitraRay.soa

Mitra Ray video: what health professionals say. National Safety Associates.
http://www.juiceplus.com/uploads/Flash/flv/Ray/VideoPlayer.html

8th annual NSA European leadership convention. From Here to Longevity.
http://www.fromheretolongevity.com/index.aspx?DN=63,29,6,1,Documents

Doug Barlow: Juice Plus distributor webpage.
http://www.juiceplus.co.uk/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=mr027021

Shining Star International: Juice Plus distributor webpage.
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=sr46450

Center for Science in the Public Interest Crucifies Juice Plus

2008-02-18T21:35:00.013-05:00

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)[1] recently joined ranks with other major American health organizations in criticizing the vitamin supplement Juice Plus. The Center’s landmark special report[2] (Lost in translation: Why real fruit and vegetables beat juices, powder, and purees), published in December 2007, included an analysis of Juice Plus marketing claims and research. The CSPI report reaffirmed criticism leveled previously by many other expert sources, including the Juice Plus Research Blog.

The CSPI report dismissed promotional claims that “Juice Plus is the next best thing to fruits and vegetables”. The company that markets Juice Plus (National Safety Associates; NSA) “is coy when it comes to how many servings of fruits and vegetables are in a daily dose (4 capsules) of Juice Plus”, the report noted, and the product cannot possibly provide a significant amount of fruit and vegetables, since a single serving of fruit or vegetable alone “would fill some 15 capsules”.

The CSPI report highlighted that Juice Plus is distributed through a costly and inefficient multi-level marketing network whereby "people find friends and relatives to sell Juice Plus; those people find friends and relatives, and everybody gets a cut of the money made by the people downstream from them".

Regarding the use of vitamin additives in Juice Plus, the CSPI report concluded “there’s no way to know how much of the 12,500 IU of beta-carotene, 230 mg of vitamin C, 45 IU of vitamin E, and 420 µg of folate in a daily dose of Juice Plus comes from its fruit and vegetable powders and how much is added by NSA” and that “if those nutrients matter, you can buy them far more cheaply elsewhere”.

Commenting on the research conducted to date on Juice Plus, CSPI noted that all of it was company-funded and that it does not support marketing claims quoted by NSA vice-president John Blair. According to CSPI “only half of the studies compared Juice Plus to a placebo, and Juice Plus wasn’t always better at increasing antioxidant levels or lowering oxidative stress. What’s more, there’s no solid evidence that high antioxidant levels can prevent disease.”

The report also examined one of NSAs latest company-funded research projects,[3] a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study published in 2006 by Meri Nantz and Susan Percival of the University of Florida, for which NSA paid Percival $76,590.[4] The only Juice Plus study to date that actually looked at illness outcomes (e.g. colds/flu symptoms), Percival’s research showed that “Juice Plus takers got sick just as often as the placebo takers”, according to the CSPI report.

In closing, CSPI stated Juice Plus “will cost you $40 a month, with a minimum purchase of a 4-month supply”, and cautioned consumers “don’t rely on juices or foods with added fruit or vegetable purées or powders for your daily servings”.

References

Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): About CSPI.
http://www.cspinet.org/about/index.html
Special report: Lost in translation -- Why real fruit and vegetables beat juices, powder, and purees. Nutrition Action Healthletter (December, 2007). Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).
http://www.cspinet.org/nah/12_07/special.pdf
Nantz MP, Rowe CA, Nieves C Jr, Percival SS. Immunity and antioxidant capacity in humans is enhanced by consumption of a dried, encapsulated fruit and vegetable juice concentrate. J Nutr. 2006;136:2606-10.
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/136/10/2606
Campus research programs: 2004 annual research report for the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. University of Florida, IFAS; p. 97.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://research.ifas.ufl.edu/re/annualReports/2004/04ARR_Text03.pdf

Readers Respond (Feb. 14, 2008): Side Effects, Distributors With Attitude, and More Misleading Claims

2008-02-14T09:55:00.028-05:00

From Anonymous (February 14, 2008)
Well I used Juice Plus based on the fact that my mother is using Juice Plus and doing well on it. I was taking the product for about six months or so and suddenly started having trouble with extremely heavy and painful periods. I went to the doctor and he wanted me to stop taking all vitamins, minerals and well, Juice Plus. I had the tests he required and everything is normal.Interesting thing happened. Less than thirty days of not taking Juice Plus, my cycle is back to normal. No pain, no heavy bleeding, nothing.

Here's what I didn't like. I told my distributor that my doctor wants me off all vitamins and Juice Plus until he can find out what's going on. She got extremely defensive and told me that I need to go to a seminar and hear a speaker who's a doctor talk about Juice Plus.

As she put it "He's a doctor, not some amateur doctor." Well I corrected her up and down the sun and reminded her that SHE's not a doctor. I've googled some of the doctors Juice Plus claims to be experts in this field. They're not what they claim. One claims to be an expert in exercise science when in fact he's a psychologist, and the other has some shady past.

Thanks for this blogspot. I plan to visit more often :)

Response from the JPRB
Mind boggling isn't it? Thanks for sharing your story and we are glad to hear that you recovered after discontinuing Juice Plus. To our knowledge, this is the first report of dysmenorrhea as a potential adverse effect of Juice Plus. We look forward to hearing from you again.

From Name Witheld At User's Request (February 14, 2008)
Hi, Dr. Juice Plus!I found your blog after my mother and aunt became JuicePlus distributors. My mother is seriously overboard on this stuff, and I found 99% of her claims hard to believe BEFORE ever reading any of the criticisms that you've posted. When I present her with a rational argument against JuicePlus, true to JP distributor form, she crosses her arms and says she just wants me to be healthy. Honestly, it can be uncomfortable at times.

Anyway, I thought I'd share just one of the incredulous/possibly dangerous juice plus claims that I've seen. My mom forwarded my wife the attached email and picture showing how Juice Plus makes umbilical cords super strong and healthy. Okay, great, a little pregnancy conjecture never hurts ... right? Can't be any worse than say rubbing salt on your elbow or some other old wive's tale?

Well, that is until, she started saying to take Juice Plus INSTEAD of prenatal vitamins. I wish I was joking, but she's said this on more than one occasion. I cringe every time I hear mention of Juice Plus. Luckily, my wife knows enough to shrug her off. See attached email and picture. Please redact my name--after all I did order a dose of Juice Plus from my mom just to make her happy... I couldn't finish it though, and I refuse to order any more.

Response from the JPRB
We appreciate your bringing these issues to our attention. We have seen other examples of distributors who claim that Juice Plus is a suitable substitute for prenatal vitamins. Sadly, these claims are false, irresponsible, and potentially dangerous.

We examined the nutrient profile of Juice Plus (based on U.S. bottle labels)[1] and compared it with 2 randomly chosen retail prenatal vitamin supplements[2][3][4] and with widely accepted guidelines for prenatal formulations (i.e. the Cleveland Clinic’s recommended nutrient amounts for prenatal vitamins).[5] What we found conclusively demonstrated the following:

Juice Plus provides far less than the recommended amounts of some nutrients that are critical for fetal development, such as folate, iron and calcium.
Juice Plus provides excessive amounts of vitamins A, C, and E.
Juice Plus contains a far narrower range of critical nutrients as compared with commercially available prenatal supplements (vitamins D, B1, B2, B6, B12; niacin, and zinc appear to be absent)
Juice Plus costs roughly 10 to 50 times more per day than other commercially available prenatal supplements.
Juice Plus contains several antioxidant additives that are not included in retail prenatal formulations, nor are they recommended for prenatal supplementation by any reputable experts or organizations.

Table 1: Nutrient and cost comparison of Juice Plus Orchard/Garden Blend (4 capsules per day) versus 2 randomly-selected retail prenatal vitamin formulations (Click on image for full size version). The nutrient profile of Juice Plus is compared with that of Nature Made and Puritan’s Pride prenatal vitamins (identified as first 2 hits on Google search for "prenatal vitamins") and relative to the Cleveland Clinic’s recommended nutrient amounts for prenatal vitamins (second column italicized). All of the nutrient amounts for Juice Plus either exceeded (vitamins A, C and E) or were below (folic acid, iron, and calcium) the Cleveland Clinic’s recommendations or are not listed as ingredients by the manufacturer (denoted by “--”). In contrast, Nature Made and Puritan’s Pride more closely met the Cleveland Clinic’s recommendations. Puritan’s Pride had the lowest daily cost (3 cents per day; $2.98 for a 100-day supply) followed by Nature Made (13 cents per day; $11.99 for a 90-day supply), while, at $1.38 per day ($166 for a 120-day supply), Juice Plus was by far the most expensive; 46 times and 11 times more expensive than Puritan’s Pride and Nature Made, respectively.

Some Nutrients Are Deficient or Absent in Juice Plus
1. Folic Acid/Folate: All medical authorities recommend a daily dose of 400 µg starting at least 1 month before conception and at least 600 µg/day during pregnancy (in addition to the folic acid consumed from food, which is actually not as easily absorbed as synthetic folate in a supplement).[6] Research has shown that consuming the recommended amount of folate during pregnancy can reduce the risk of neural tube defects in babies by up to 70%.

Most prenatal vitamins provide between 600 and 1000 µg/day of folic acid, which is more or less consistent with the Cleveland Clinic’s recommendation that prenatal vitamins should provide between 800 and 1000 µg/day folate. The 2 representative prenatal supplements used for our comparisons (Puritan’s Pride and Nature Made) provide an acceptable amount of folate (800 µg/day). However, Juice Plus provides a mere 320 µg/day folate, which falls far short (roughly 1/2 to 1/3) of the Clinic’s recommended amount.

2. Iron: The amount recommended during pregnancy is 27 mg/day, 50% more than the amount needed for people who are not pregnant. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that all pregnant women start taking a low-dose iron supplement of 30 mg at the first prenatal visit, either as an individual supplement or in a prenatal vitamin.[6]

Most prenatal vitamins contain between 27 and 60 mg of iron. Puritan’s Pride and Nature Made both fell within the acceptable range, providing 27 mg/day iron. However, once again, Juice Plus fell short, providing less than 1 mg/day of iron – less than 3% of the lower range recommended by the Cleveland Clinic.

3. Calcium: Most prenatal vitamins contain between 100 and 200 mg of calcium, but some don't contain any.[6] The Cleveland Clinic recommends that prenatal supplements should ideally provide between 200 and 300 mg/day calcium. Puritan’s Pride and Nature Made both fell within the acceptable range, providing 200 mg/day calcium. But Juice Plus again fell short, providing only 61 mg/day calcium – less than 1/3 of the lower range recommended by the Cleveland Clinic.

4. Other Nutrients: According to the manufacturer, Juice Plus does not contain any vitamin D, B1, B2, B6, B12; niacin, or zinc. The Cleveland Clinic’s guidelines for prenatal supplements establish recommended amounts for each of these nutrients, and the two representative products in our comparison fully met these guidelines for all but 2 of these nutrients (zinc and B12 amounts were higher than the Clinic's recommendations and vitamin E was slightly lower).

Juice Plus Contains Excessive Amounts of 3 Nutrients
The American Pregnancy Association advises that taking more than 100% the RDA of any nutrient should be avoided during pregnancy.[7] In comparison with the Cleveland Clinic guidelines, Juice Plus contains 3 nutrients (vitamins A, C, and E) at levels that vastly exceed 100% of the recommended amounts. The amounts of all 3 nutrients were at least double or more than the amounts suggested by the Cleveland Clinic. In contrast, the two representative prenatal supplements in our comparison generally did not exceed the Clinic’s guidelines (with the exception of zinc and B12).

Cost Differential
The cost per day of Juice Plus was compared with that of Puritans’ Pride and Nature Made prenatal formulations. Juice Plus is sold as a 4-month supply (480 capsules) at a cost of $166 USD (taxes not included). Puritans’ Pride is available as a 100-day supply (100 tablets) for $2.98, and Nature Made is sold for $11.99 for a 90-day supply (90 tablets). The daily cost of Juice Plus is $1.38 versus 3 cents for Puritan’s Pride and 13 cents for Nature Made; Juice Plus was 11 to 46 times more expensive than the 2 prenatal supplements.

Juice Plus Contains Ingredients Not Typically Recommended During Pregnancy
Juice Plus contains several synthetic antioxidant nutrient additives that are not typically recommended for or included in prenatal vitamin supplements. These include: anthocyanins, allicin, lycopene, polyphenol catechins, and indole carbinols.[1] The effects of these compounds prior to conception and on the developing fetus are largely unknown, and supplement doses that are safe or optimal during pregnancy have not yet been established.

Conclusions
Juice Plus should never be taken as a replacement for prenatal vitamins because it contains deficient amounts of 3 important nutrients for fetal development (i.e. folate, iron, and calcium). It appears to completely lack or contains undisclosed amounts of 7 other important nutrients (niacin, zinc, and vitamins D, B1, B2, B6, B12), and it contains excessive amounts of 3 other nutrients (vitamins A, C, and E). Since most experts and organizations advise against taking supplements with vitamin amounts that exceed the doses recommended for pregnancy, Juice Plus should never be combined with prenatal vitamins, since doing so would result in unnecessarily excessive doses of vitamins A, C, and E. Prenatal supplements that are widely available at retail outlets offer optimal levels of nutrients and sell for only a fraction of the cost of Juice Plus (a multilevel marketed product).

References

European Juice Plus Brochure Reveals Product’s Contents

2007-11-18T19:49:00.001-05:00

A document posted online at the site of a European Juice Plus distributor discloses key details, previously unavailable to American consumers, about the contents of Juice Plus capsules. The JPRB was forwarded an Internet link to a Juice Plus promotional brochure published by National Safety Associates Limited (based in Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, and the UK). The company's official PDF document[1] reveals that Juice Plus capsules contain a variety of synthetic vitamin additives and non-nutritive fillers and only about 25% juice powders by weight. For the purpose of scientific discussion and in keeping with fair use policies, we have reproduced the labels as shown in the brochure.

Figure 1 (Click on images for full size versions. Ingredients are listed in descending order by amount)--Ingredients in Juice Plus Orchard Blend (upper panel) and Garden Blend (lower panel) capsules marketed in Europe by National Safety Associates Ltd. The labels identify various synthetic vitamin additives including vitamin C (as ascorbic acid), vitamin E (as d-alpha tocopherol succinate), niacin (as nicotinamide), beta-carotene, vitamin B6 (as pyridoxine hydrochloride), coenzyme Q, riboflavin, thiamin (as hydrochloride), and folacin (as folic acid). Mineral additives include zinc, manganese, selenium, and chromium. Other constituents include gelatine, anticaking agents such as calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, guar gum as a thickening agent, algae (Dunaliella salina), and orange peel (the third listed ingredient by amount). The products contain only 26.3% to 26.8% fruit juice powder by weight.

1. Juice Plus contains synthetic vitamin additives and very low amounts of juice powders
The European labels indicate that that many exogenous vitamins are added to the products. Notably, these additives are not natural source vitamins but rather purified chemical forms, such as d-alpha tocopherol succinate, nicotinamide, beta-carotene, pyridoxine hydrochloride, coenzyme Q, thiamin hydrochloride, and folic acid.

2. Is European Juice Plus the same product as Juice Plus in the U.S.?
The nutrient information listed for Juice Plus Orchard and Garden Blend in Europe differs substantially from the label information in the U.S -- the U.S ingredient list does not mention vitamin and mineral additives, anticaking agents, thickening agents, or the amount of juice powder (see Wikipedia[2]). The discrepancy indicates that either (a) the product marketed in Europe is substantially different from the version marketed in the U.S. or (b) the product composition is the same in both regional markets, and the U.S. labels simply include less information about the ingredients. The inconsistencies between the European and U.S. labels raise a variety of critical questions about the product.

3. Research invalidated?
The possibility that the U.S. and European versions of Juice Plus do in fact have different compositions raises serious issues about the product's expected effects and the validity of past research. If these are different products, then consumers in the U.S. and Europe cannot expect the same results with their respective versions of Juice Plus. It also would greatly complicate the interpretation of research. Was the U.S. version used for some studies and the European version in others? If so, then the results are not comparable. Several published studies were conducted by investigators outside of the U.S. (e.g. two studies in Italy, one in the UK, one in Australia). Several more company-sponsored studies now in progress are being performed by investigators overseas. None of the published studies provided complete descriptions of the product's contents, making it impossible to determine which versions of Juice Plus were studied.

3. Are U.S. consumers being deceived?
It is possible that the product composition is identical in the U.S. and Europe and that the differences in labeling are attributable to the more stringent standards of European regulations. If they are the same products, then U.S. consumers are being misled. They are told that Juice Plus capsules are an all-natural, whole-food product, containing only fruit and vegetables, when in fact it contains only one-quarter juice powder and a variety of synthetic vitamin additives.

4. A poor supplement with poor value?
The nutrient composition listed in European Juice Plus labels indicates that, compared with a multivitamin, the product contains a relatively narrow range of nutrients, most of which appear to be synthetic, and the juice powder content is insignificantly low. Given the obvious similarities and possible inferiority of Juice Plus relative to conventional multivitamins, there is no apparent justification for their vast difference in price (Juice Plus has a daily cost of $1.37 in the U.S. vs. 5-10 cents for a good quality generic multivitamin).

References

Science & Juice Plus: The Scientific Research. National Safety Associates Ltd (IR, BE, NL, UK). July 25, 2005.
Juice Plus. Wkipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Plus

Readers Respond: How To Report Illegal Disease Treatment and Prevention Claims

2007-11-18T19:14:00.000-05:00

From Name Witheld At User's Request (November 6, 2007)
I love your site!!! My brother’s wife is a Juice Plus distributor. She makes me loathe family get togethers because she just never shuts up about Juice Plus. She is a brainwashed idiot – she used to work as a receptionist at a gym and knows absolutely nothing about nutrition, but now she thinks she’s an expert because she read a few Juice Plus brochures and went to some of the company’s “training” seminars. She tells stories about how a friend of a friend cured this disease or that disease with Juice Plus and nobody on it ever gets sick. I’ve heard her telling people, including my friends and family, that they should get off medications their doctor prescribed and take Juice Plus instead. It makes me furious and I’m worried she’s going to end up hurting somebody, or worse. I tried talking to her about it and I’ve even shown her some of the criticism of Juice Plus that I found on the Internet but she just shrugs it off and keeps repeating phrases from the brochures

Is it actually illegal for her to promote Juice Plus for preventing diseases? I found several websites where other Juice Plus distributors are making these kinds of claims. I can’t rat out my sister-in-law to the authorities because it would cause a rift in my family, but I would love to report some of the other bastards who are saying that it can cure cancer etc. Who should I report them to and what kind of details do they need? Is it the FDA, FTC, BBB, etc.? Do I have to give my name to file a report? I don’t want my brother or his wife to hear about this. Thanks…you are doing a great job! Keep it up.

Reply From the JPRB
Sadly, that’s an all too familiar story, as you may have noticed from some of our articles and the comments of other reader’s who have responded here.

In answer to your questions:

Implicit or explicit claims that Juice Plus can prevent, treat, cure, or mitigate the symptoms of any disease are illegal according to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Marketing Juice Plus for such purposes means that it is being illegally promoted as a new drug in violation of section 201(g)(1) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) [21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(1)] and section 201(p) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321(p)].
Suspected violations of the Act can and should be reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. They have a very convenient online reporting form[1] or you can phone a regional complaint coordinator.[2] It only takes a few minutes to file a complaint online and any personal information provided to the FDA is considered strictly confidential.
Identify the product as the dietary supplement Juice Plus and include in your report a quote of the offending statements (any implicit or explicit disease cure/prevention/treatment claims) and mention that the statement violates the sections of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act mentioned above. Include the URL of the webpage where the statement was found and the name and address of the distributor/website owner, if available. Provide a URL to the distributor's Juice Plus sales website if it is linked anywhere on the offending website. Statements from bulletin boards and chat rooms may be difficult to investigate but they should be reported if linked to a specific distributor’s webpage. Don’t bother reporting anything from anonymous sources. Sites with prohibited claims that are registered to or clearly identified with a particular individual(s) are easier for the FDA to investigate. If you aren’t sure who a site is registered to, you can find the site's IP and contact information by searching the URL at Network Solutions,[3] although sometimes this will just list an administrative contact for the host web service provider, rather than the identity of the person who actually operates the website. If the adverisment lists a distributor's phone number, it can often be traced to the subscriber's name and/or address using White Page's reverse phone search.[4]

References

U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Reporting Unlawful Sales of Medical Products on the Internet. http://www.fda.gov/oc/buyonline/buyonlineform.htm
U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Consumer Complaint Coordinators. http://www.fda.gov/opacom/backgrounders/complain.html
Network Solutions Whois Search. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
White Pages Reverse Phone Search. http://www.whitepages.com/reverse-lookup

Juice Plus: Prohibited Advertising Complaints

2007-11-17T12:49:00.000-05:00

Despite official claims by National Safety Associates that Juice Plus is not promoted for the treatment, cure, or prevention of diseases, consumers have noted that such claims, which are prohibited by the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, are common. The latest apparent violation brought to our attention was posted on a Yahoo financial chat room and contains a link to the website of Juice Plus distributors Therese and Greg Belardi from Virginia Beach, VA.[1] The post claimed:

“Juice Plus not only provides energy and strength, but is proven in Medical Journals to alleviate or prevent symptoms of cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and many other chronic problems. Sign on as a client, a distributor, or both. Clients get healthy, distributors get wealthy (very much so, in fact), and if you do both. . . well, you become both. Check out www.juiceplus.com/+tb23832 for more information.”[2]

In addition to being illegal, these claims are completely false. Juice Plus has never been proven to alleviate or prevent the symptoms of any disease, including cancer, heart disease, arthritis, or “chronic problems”.

Illegal disease treatment and prevention claims are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Consumers can forward complaints about Juice Plus DSHEA violations or other issues of concern to the FDA online[3] or by directly contacting the FDA's consumer complaint coordinator for your state.[4] All reports received by the FDA are kept confidential.

References

National Safety Associates Juice Plus Distributor Website: Therese & Greg Belardi. http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=tb23832
Yahoo Finance: Groups - Juice Plus. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Juice_Plus/#ans
U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Reporting Unlawful Sales of Medical Products on the Internet. http://www.fda.gov/oc/buyonline/buyonlineform.htm
U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Consumer Complaint Coordinators. http://www.fda.gov/opacom/backgrounders/complain.html

Deceptive Juice Plus Advertising Continues

2007-11-10T16:23:00.000-05:00

During a recent round of web surfing, we tripped over some more fraudulent Juice Plus advertising that will be of interest to our many readers.

Misleading Juice Plus Gummies Brochure
One of the sites in question had posted on it an official Juice Plus Gummies promotional brochure that contained several deceptive and misleading statements.[1] The brochure’s introduction uses the typical NSA tactic of playing on parents’ fear and guilt about the health of their children. The brochure states:

“So when you let a child become obese from not enough exercise and an incorrect diet, you should feel guilty as a parent, because it is the responsibility of a parent to give their children the best nutritional start in life. We need to try and help our children develop healthy eating patterns which will help them build good habits for the rest of their life.”

The Gummies brochure claims “Juice Plus: the next best thing to fruits and vegetables”, which is exactly the same claim that led to a charge by the Better Business Bureau against NSA for misleading advertising in other Juice Plus Gummies brochures that featured Dr. Bill Sears.[2] According to Consumer Reports NSA had promised to modify the ads and stop referring to Gummies as the next best thing to fruits and vegetables, but apparently promotional brochures featuring this statement are still being used distributors.

The most deceptive portion of the Gummies brochure was a statement which suggested that studies had shown that nutrients in Juice Plus Gummies are bioavailable, when in fact the only study ever published on Juice Plus Gummies showed exactly the opposite. The brochure claims:
"The bio-availability of Juice Plus has been proven by numerous scientific studies. Scientific studies prove that the nutritional elements in Juice Plus are readily absorbed and effectively used by the body, confirming the increase of the antioxidant levels in the blood."

Stewart and colleagues at the University of Utah published a study in 2002 showing that Juice Plus Gummies had no antioxidant effects in children, according to 6 different tests of antioxidant status.[3] The bioavailability claim in NSA’s Juice Plus Gummies brochure is directly contradicted by the conclusions of Stewart et al., which were as follows:

“It is also possible that the supplement did not contain enough of the proper antioxidants to make a significant difference or that the antioxidants extracted in the fruit/vegetable extract were not bioavailable… We conclude that there is no detectable treatment effect of a phytochemical antioxidant supplement on healthy children’s oxidative stress levels as assessed by several indicators”

Interestingly, the study by Stewart et al. also included a chemical analysis of Juice Plus Gummies and reported that they contain a whopping 85% corn syrup. The other main ingredient is gelatin (10%); thus, they consist of 95% harmful or inert ingredients. Nonetheless, NSAs Gummies brochure claims the following:

“Delicious nutritional support: The Juice Plus Gummies are a nutritional support, an ideal addition to healthy diets of our children… and deliciously healthy for everyone…”

Some readers might be wondering if NSA was aware of Stewart's 2002 study when they wrote this misleading brochure (which bears a date of January 2006). The answer is yes, they were certainly aware – we know this because NSA actually paid for the Juice Plus Gummies research but took the company's name off the study when the results turned out be damaging, and they have withheld those results from the pubic ever since, never once mentioning the study or commenting on its findings (see our August 12 article Supression of Negative Findings in Company-Funded Juice Plus Research Studies[4])

Bryn Walsh – Prohibited Disease Treatment Claims?
The second flagrant example of deceptive advertising comes from a newsletter published in the Spring of 2007 by Juice Plus distributor Bryn Walsh,[5] a massage therapist/acupuncturist based in Acton, Massachusetts. Walsh’s newsletter contained the following statements:

“Taking Juice Plus capsules every day provides the nutritional foundation we so desperately need that is so lacking in our diets today. This is taken from the JuicePlus website. In addition to capsules it also comes as chewables and gummies. I especially like the gummies.

The more you read the more you see how important it is to eat you fruit and veggies. If you are worried about the C disease take JuicePlus, or the H disease or the D disease or any disease. Since taking JP I noticed that my energy is more even, I get less colds and I have happier joints. My husband loves his JuicePlus. You can buy JuicePlus from me.”[6]

Walsh makes several implied disease treatment claims, which are illegal according to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act[7] and and the US Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR Part 101),[8] and she also appears to have falsely implied that NSA’s website corroborates that Juice Plus can cure diseases.

The websites discussed in today's article unfortunately are not isolated examples but rather, add to a large and growing body of evidence that Juice Plus products are widely promoted using deceptive and illegal advertising.

References

Juice Plus Gummies Brochure. http://www.timhjrogers.com/JPGummiesBrochure.pdf
How product testimonials bend the rules. Consumer Reports; January, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060721171257/http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/personal-finance/producttestimonialtricks-of-the-trade-106/index.htm
Stewart RJ, Askew EW, McDonald CM, Metos J, Jackson WD, Balon TW, Prior RL. Antioxidant status of young children: response to an antioxidant supplement. J Am Diet Assoc. 2002; 102 (11):1652-7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12449290
Suppression of negative findings in company-funded Juice Plus research studies. Juice Plus Research Blog; August 12, 2007. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2007_08_12_archive.html
Bryn Walsh. Juice Plus Distributor Webpage. http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=bw03541
Bryn Walsh. Juice Plus. Acupuncture Plus, Spring 2007. http://www.brynwalsh.com/newsletter/AcupuncturePlus-Newsletter-May07.pdf
Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act -- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/dietsupp.html
Regulations on statements made for dietary supplements concerning the effect of the product on the structure or function of the body; final rule (21 CFR Part 101) -- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr000106.html

Readers Respond (Nov. 9, 2007)

2007-11-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

From Anonymous (November 6, 2007)
I love it being a true 12 stepper, AA for years! They have their hooks into my sister who thinks she will finally get her pot of gold from selling this junk. She's constantly harassing me to buy it, put my kids in that gimmick of a children's study, and "push" the stuff for her. I will never give it to my children or buy it. I would rather give her $40 a month! She even spent money she does not have to go to the annual convention in Memphis. It's all pipe dreams.

From Anonymous (November 9, 2007)
Yes, my mother-in-law is into this stuff big time, and the good thing about her involvement is that she has made huge lifestyle changes for her and her husband and they have lost lots of weight and claim to feel great. They eat LOTS of real fruits and veggies and power walk everyday.

Unfortunately they think it's mostly due to the Juice Plus they take. Like I said they made huge lifestyle changes over the past few months. Of course they think that is only a small part of it. She tells people its all due to the Juice Plus, so of course her naive friends and moms in the community all think it’s due to this miracle magic bullet pill. They totally prey upon people's fears, uncertainties, and doubts.

My MIL even believes she is NOT into an MLM or pyramid... she believes it is her own home-based business. I think when you add up all the time and money spent, she is barely making minimum wage.

If this product was so great, wouldn't you think it'd be sold in places like Wal-Mart, Sam's, Walgreens, etc? If it was such a miracle, don't you think huge companies like Pfizer would knock it off and sell it with their sales force? Of course, she then brings up the whole "drug companies don't want you to get well conspiracy theory"

Her plan is to team up with the local quack chiropractor to really boost sales... Calgon take me away and remove me from all this quackery!!!

The Juice Plus 12-Step Program For Fleecing Consumers

2007-11-02T21:28:00.000-04:00

Show scary statistics to raise anxiety about cancer and chronic diseases.
Talk about research that shows fruit and vegetables are good for us and can lower the risk of some diseases, then exaggerate like hell and try to convince people that fruits and vegetables are a cure-all for everything.
Scare people who don’t eat a lot of fruits and vegetables into believing that they are going to get sick and die if they don’t take Juice Plus.
Offer a few pennies worth of low-grade fruit and vegetables in a capsule combined with a bunch of added vitamins, pass if off as a solution for a crummy diet, then sell it to people for a ridiculously inflated price – and lock them into a mandatory 4-month purchase contract to extract the maximum amount of money before they get wise to the scam.
Fill the pockets of a bunch of doctors (mostly aging dinosaurs and greedy, remorseless hacks) with money so that they will endorse the product and conduct tainted research, and then hide the financial connection from the public.
Tell people that independent scientists have proven that Juice Plus is the greatest thing since penicillin, even though the research shows the product doesn’t do anything that multivitamins couldn’t do for about a nickel a day.
Develop a sales force of pyramid-scheme distributors (including tarot card readers, astrologers, nail technicians, masseuses, chiropractors, and any other poseur with a mail order “holistic wellness” degree hanging on their wall) and then dispatch them to pressure their friends, coworkers, clients, church groups, and PTAs into buying into the scam – and say whatever it takes to make the sale, even if that means lying or breaking the law.
Have distributors lure even more people into selling Juice Plus for them (so that they can profit from those sales too) by telling the mark that selling Juice Plus will make them rich and save mankind.
Target advertising at the most vulnerable and naïve people in society, like children, cancer patients, and innocent little old ladies.
Setup bogus health-related charitable organizations to make the whole fraudulent operation seem like philanthropy.
Squeeze even more money from all the bottom-feeding new distributors by selling them Juice Plus merchandise, sales aids, and training on how to become a better distributor.
Conduct regular seminars for distributors and drown them in company propaganda to generate a cult-like team of deluded automatons to spread the Juice Plus gospel.

Juice Plus Research and Marketing Slammed Again

2007-10-21T20:52:00.000-04:00

A recent critical commentary[1] written by an Oregon-based diet and nutrition specialist adds to the large and growing body of negative appraisals of Juice Plus nutritional supplements by independent experts. The critique, which outlined several serious problems with the research and marketing of Juice Plus, was published in a January 2007 newsletter by Linda Willis, Ed. D., an advocate of practical and commonsense approaches to diet and nutrition.

Willis noted that Juice Plus marketing materials claim that “independent research” findings prove the value of the product, but that they fail to mention that the studies are funded by the manufacturers of Juice Plus. She commented “other truly independent researchers have dismissed the findings due to poor research design and conclusions that mislead the customer”.

Willis also criticized Juice Plus marketers for claiming that the product can help or cure cancer patients, while failing to refer customers to the website of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which notes that there is no evidence that Juice Plus has benefits in cancer treatment or prevention and that the product “is distributed through a multi-tiered marketing scheme with exaggerated value and cost.”

Juice Plus marketing materials refer to scientific studies proving that diets high in fruits and vegetables reduce risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer; however, Willis dismisses the use of these claims to promote the product. “This age old technique is the classic red flag that you are about to be duped. In Juice Plus terms we can refer to it as ‘blending’ the truth with misinformation and deception.” Certain Juice Plus sales promotions targeting children and parents were criticized by Willis as “a new and troubling sales approach”.

A critique of Juice Plus by the University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter was quoted by Willis, who voiced the same concerns, noting “you cannot concentrate significant amounts of fruits and vegetables in a capsule, chewable or gummy. You cannot turn a blueberry or an orange into a magic bullet in a pill. Stick to the real thing.”

References

Willis L. January 2007 Health Letter.
http://www.balancedweigh.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=40

Readers Respond (Aug. 21, 2007): Studies Inconsistent With Juice Plus Marketing

2007-08-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

From Anonymous (August 20, 2007)
"Antioxidants May Up Women's Skin Cancer Risk: Vitamins C and E and Other Nutrients May Quadruple Risk of Melanoma"

This is the headline on a news article on ABCnews.com. Wonder if Juice Plus reps will inform you of this? Ha. NOT! Beta carotene is mentioned specifically!

Reply From the JPRB
Yes, it is highly unlikely that National Safety Associates (NSA) or Juice Plus distributors will ever be mentioning this study, which showed the possibility that their products might greatly increase skin cancer risk,[1] or any other information that could possibly undermine their goal of selling more Juice Plus. They are good at offering up ridiculously flawed and deceptive marketing propaganda but not so good at grappling with scientific truth, whether it has been revealed by other researchers or by the Juice Plus studies that NSA initiated and paid for; e.g., a case in point is the damming Juice Plus Gummies study by Stewart et al. (2002),[2] which NSA initiated and paid for but later disavowed when the results showed the product to be nutrient deficient and essentially useless (see our August 12 article Suppression of Negative Findings in Company-Funded Juice Plus Research Studies[3]).

In addition to not mentioning the newly published melanoma risk study, the Juice Plus people will probably keep tightlipped about 3 other landmark studies published in the past few months, the results of which are at odds with Juice Plus marketing propaganda. One of the studies showed that dietary consumption of folate-enriched foods can increase the risk of colon cancer,[4][5][6] (note that Juice Plus supplements also contain folate as an additive). Another study by the National Cancer Institute showed that increasing fruit and vegetable intake beyond 5 servings per day does not reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence[7][8] (Juice Plus distributors consistently overstate the recommended number of daily servings to make the goal seem less acheivable). And lastly, a recent FDA review showed that tomato consumption, and especially lycopene supplementation (Juice Plus contains added lycopene), offer no apparent benefit in the prevention of various types of cancer.[9][10]

Here are a few other recent articles that are clearly at odds with the overly-simplistic, deceptive promotional dogma that is routinely used to sell Juice Plus.[11][12][13][14]

References

Bord S. Antioxidants may up women's skin cancer risk: vitamins C and E and other nutrients may quadruple risk of melanoma. ABC News; August 20, 2007.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/story?id=3500666&page=1
Stewart RJ, et al. Antioxidant status of young children: response to an antioxidant supplement. J Am Diet Assoc. 2002; 102 (11):1652-7.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12449290
Suppression of negative findings in company-funded Juice Plus research studies. Juice Plus Research Blog; August 12, 2007.
http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2007_08_12_archive.html
Gellene D. Folic acid doubts: fortifying foods with the vitamin has reduced certain birth defects but may have raised rates of colon cancer. Los Angeles Times; August 6, 2007.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-he-folic6aug06,1,6298390.story?track=rss&ctrack=5&cset=true
Ulrich CM. Folate and cancer prevention: a closer look at a complex picture. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86(2):271-273.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/86/2/271
Mason JB, et al. A temporal association between folic acid fortification and an increase in colorectal cancer rates may be illuminating important biological principles: a hypothesis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2007;16(7):1325-9.
http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/7/1325
Allday E. Extra fruit, veggies don't seem to stop breast cancer's return. San Francisco Chronicle; July 18, 2007.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/18/CANCER.TMP
van Gils, et al. Influence of a diet very high in vegetables, fruit, and fiber and low in fat on prognosis following treatment for breast cancer: The Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) randomized trial. JAMA. 293(2):183-193.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/298/3/289
Martinez C. Lycopene fails FDA's scrutiny: the agency continues to challenge studies linking tomatoes' antioxidant ingredient with reducing cancer risk. Los Angeles Times; July 23, 2007.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-tomatoes23jul23,1,7185086.story
Cavanaugh CJ, et al. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's evidence-based review for qualified health claims: tomatoes, lycopene, and cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2007;99(14):1074-1085.
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/14/1074?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=lycopene&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
Wicklund BM. Are too many vitamins bad for your health? Supplements may lead to increased risk of death, new research suggests. ABC News; Feb. 27, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/story?id=2908054&page=1
Gammon KS. FDA issues dietary supplement rules: the new regulations may be too little, too late, some health experts say. ABC News; June 22, 2007.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3307441&page=1
Bord S. Vitamins no magic bullet for heart health: antioxidant supplements do little to help prevent heart disease. ABC News; Aug. 13, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WomensHealth/story?id=3474385&page=1
Lallanilla M. How safe are herbal supplements? Some critics believe the industry's products are unregulated and unsafe. ABC News.com; Jan. 12, 2005.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthyWoman/story?id=403037&page=1

Suppression of Negative Findings in Company-Funded Juice Plus Research Studies

2007-08-12T15:31:00.001-04:00

Information uncovered by the JPRB indicates that National Safety Associates (NSA), the company that markets Juice Plus products, may have attempted to suppress the release of negative findings from a research study conducted by investigators in Utah.

NSA and Natural Alternatives International (NAI; the manufacturer of Juice Plus), have funded several research studies on Juice Plus, which NSA uses to promote the products in the consumer marketplace. In many cases, NSA and Juice Plus distributors have misrepresented the published studies, used them as the basis for exaggerated claims, and have selectively touted positive findings while ignoring negative and contradictory results. A news report indicates that NSA may also have inappropriately suppressed negative research results from a study which they had paid for.

According to a news article published in 2000, NSA approached researchers at the University of Utah's Division of Foods and Nutrition with the idea for a study on the effects of Juice Plus gummies in children, along with $30,000 to pay for the research.[1] NSA hoped the supplement would reduce the level of oxidative stress in children, but the results showed otherwise.

The study, which was published in the November 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association,[2] showed that Juice Plus gummies failed to improve the antioxidant status of children, which led the authors to conclude that the gummies may have been lacking in antioxidants or that the antioxidants added to the products were not absorbed. The authors also reported the results of a chemical analysis which showed that the gummies contained very high doses of beta-carotene and were deficient in many other nutrients.

Reporters covering the story, two years prior to the publication of the gummies study, noted that “the results disappointed the company that sponsored the study” and that “Juice Plus (NSA) decided to remove its name from the research”. Much to NSAs chagrin, the University of Utah researchers went ahead and published their findings anyway, and, curiously, the published study never specifically identified the product as “Juice Plus” or NSA/NAI as the product’s source.

Remarkably, in the 5 years since the gummies study was published, NSA has never publicly commented on the results or even acknowledged the existence of the study, and makes no mention of the research on the Juice Plus website or in any of the company’s other promotional materials.

The research conducted at the University of Utah serves as a cautionary tale as to why company-funded nutritional supplement research is to be approached with a great deal of skepticism, particularly in the case of NSAs multilevel-marketed Juice Plus products, which are essentially unregulated and receive very little scrutiny from Federal regulatory agencies.

References

Canham M. University of Utah student uses gummy bears in research. University Wire; March 24, 2000.
Stewart RJ, Askew EW, McDonald CM, Metos J, Jackson WD, Balon TW, Prior RL. Antioxidant status of young children: response to an antioxidant supplement. J Am Diet Assoc. 2002; 102 (11):1652-7.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12449290

Readers Respond (August 9, 2007)

2007-08-09T10:07:00.000-04:00

From Lisa (August 8, 2007)
Wow...I'm soooo glad I found this blog. You just saved me from making what appears to be a very big mistake. I work in a child care center and we recently had an in-service workshop regarding family nutrition. This was presented by 2 moms that wanted to share the research on America's poor health, due to diet, and the effects our children will face if we do not monitor their diet. I must say, the information was astounding. There were so many things I didn't know about trans fats and sugar equivalents. Then came the gimmick of Juice Plus and its wonderous effects (which I bought into at first). They did not go into extreme detail, nor would they take orders for Juice Plus because they were there "primarily to educate and promote healthier eating, not to sell". That modest approach made me fall onto the bandwagon, almost. Luckily, I always have to do the research myself before using such a product. Everything I found was positive, until tonight as I Googled "Juice Plus Problems". Thank you for posting this blog.

Readers Respond (August 8, 2007): Juice Plus Contraindicated During Cancer Therapy

2007-08-07T11:54:00.000-04:00

From Silverty (August 8, 2007)
My husband was diagnosed at Johns Hopkins Hopspital with a grade 4 glioblastoma brain tumor. He had surgery to remove the tumor which was successful. His sister is a Juice Plus rep and encouraged us to have him take Juice Plus during his chemo/radiation treatments. I checked a site from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which states that if you are undergoing chemo/radiation "high doses of antioxidants are not recommened during this therapy", the reason being, radiation and certain chemotherapy drugs rely on the generation of free radicals to kill cancer cells; high doses of antioxidants might neutralize these free radicals and dampen the therapy's effect. I confirmed this with my husband's radiation doctor and he agreed. Upon mentioning this to our family Juice Plus rep, they became very concerned and could not believe what the doctors were saying was true. The doctors did say he could take Juice Plus after the therapy. I feel that NSA has a responsiblity to us, the consumers, to inform any customer taking Juice Plus, who has the unfortunate opportunity to undergo chemo/radiation, of these signifacant findings from Sloan-Kettering. Taking Juice Plus could have seriously hindered my husband's therapy, causing the tumor to grow back.

Readers Respond (August 1, 2007): How Much Produce in Juice Plus?

2007-08-02T00:40:00.001-04:00

From Barb (August 1, 2007)
Has anyone been told of the number of servings in each capsule? Couldn't be much.

Reply From The JPRB Team
Is accurate information made available to the public? No. Distributors have made false claims that Juice Plus contains the equivalent of 9 to 17 servings and 8 to 13 pounds of real fruits and vegetables. Juice Plus “Health Nites” and “Prevention Plus” seminars claim that the amount of fresh produce one would need to consume to equal the fruits and vegetables in Juice Plus would require buying several pounds of the real thing at a cost of over 8 dollars.

Can we estimate the true amount? Yes. Calculations based on various sources of information indicate that 4 Juice Plus capsules (2 each of Orchard and Garden Blend) contain the rough equivalent of 1/3 to 1/4 of a serving or less of real produce.

Equivalency Based on Antioxidant Potency
A study by Chambers et al. (1996)[1] showed that 1 g of Juice Plus powder has the equivalent antioxidant activity of 10 g of fresh produce. That means that the 3 g of Juice Plus powder provided by the 4-capsule daily regimen is roughly equivalent (in terms of antioxidant potency) to only 30 g of fresh produce, or roughly 1/3 of a serving. However, some (or all) of the antioxidants in Juice Plus are added as artifical fortifiers (e.g. vitamins A/C/E, lutein, lycopene, etc.), so the actual equivalency to real produce is presumably considerably less than 1/3 of a serving.

Equivalency Based on Potassium Content
Potassium is one of the benefical nutrients present in large amounts in fruits and vegetables, and since NSA claims that Juice Plus contains the “essence” of fruits and vegetables, the product should contain substantial amounts of potassium. But how much potassium does Juice Plus actually contain? An analysis published by Consumer Lab in 2006[2] showed that the 4-capsule regimen provides a mere 90 mg of potassium. Compare that with a 6 ounce glass of orange juice (1 serving), which has more than 350 mg potassium. Therefore, the potassium content of Juice Plus indicates an equivalency to about ¼ of a serving of the real thing.

Equivalency Based on Fiber Content
According to National Safety Associates literature, Juice Plus capsules contain only 1 g of fiber per 4-capsules. By comparison, a whole apple (1 serving, 138 g) contains 3.3 g of dietary fiber and an orange has 3.1 g. Based on fiber content, the 4-capsule Juice Plus regimen is equivalent to about 1/3 of a serving of real produce. Furthermore, the fiber in the source produce is stripped out during processing and artifically replaced with low-grade insoluble date and cabbage fiber, plant cellulose, and generic dried plant fibers.

Equivalency Based on Subtracting the Weight of Water, Sugar, Salt, and Fiber
According to promotional brochures, the produce in Juice Plus is processed by removing water, sugar, salt and fiber, which, based on chemical data from the USDA[3] for an apple, would result in a net yield of 1.66% (i.e. 100 g of raw apple would yield 1.66 g of processed powder). It is also known, based on Juice Plus bottle labels in Switzerland (where labeling laws are stricter), that the capsules contain approximately 25% fruit/vegetable powder by weight. Therefore, 4 Juice Plus capsules, which together weigh 3 g, would contain only about 750 mg of fruit/vegetable powder. Based on the 1.66% extraction efficiency, this is equivalent to about 45 g (roughly a 1/2 serving or less) of fresh produce, corresponding to an equivalent retail value of about 10 cents.

Equivalency Based on Other Published Sources
An article in the University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter estimated that the daily 4-capsule Juice Plus regimen would be equivalent to about 1/6 of a serving of carrot juice:

“No matter how compressed these capsules are, or what they contain, it’s impossible to deliver the nutrients of five to ten servings of fruits and vegetables in several capsules weighing 800 to 850 milligrams (about one-thirtieth of an ounce) each. It would take two dozen 800-milligram capsules just to provide all the nutrients in six ounces of carrot juice.”[4]

Follow-up Note
The question posed above should be simple enough to answer for someone who is knowledgeable about the product. However, have a look at the response provided by Juice Plus distributor/spokesperson Mitra Ray when asked a similar question.[5] Using classic nonsensical NSA-doublespeak, Ray manages to completely evade answering the question. You can bet that if Juice Plus was made from a significant amount of fruit and vegetables, high-level distributors, like Ray, would be eager to say so to potential customers.

References

Chambers SJ, Lambed N, Plumb GW, Williamson G. Evaluation of the antioxidant properties of a methanolic extract from ‘Juice Plus fruit’ and ‘Juice Plus vegetable’ (dietary supplements). Food Chem. 1996;57:271-274. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/03088146/1996/00000057/00000002/art00223
2006 Multivitamin/multimineral product review: ingredient comparison tables. Consumer Lab. http://www.consumerlab.com/
USDA Agricultural Research Service: Nutrient Data Laboratory. http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search
* NB: calculations based on 138 g raw apple with skin
Juice Plus — and minus. University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter. http://www.berkeleywellness.com/subCorner/pdf/2000/0011.pdf
Mitra Ray. How many “servings” in JP? -- From Here to Longevity (06/19/2007). http://fromheretolongevity.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/how-many-servings-in-jp

Readers Respond (August 1, 2007): How To File A Complaint?

2007-08-01T11:24:00.000-04:00

From Anonymous (July 30, 2007)
If I were to file a complaint against Juice Plus in Oregon, which would be the best agency? Oregon Department of Justice? Department of Agriculture?

Reply from The JPRB Team
The answer depends on the specific details of your complaint. Were you the victim of false or misleading advertising? Did you have an issue with sales practices (e.g., high pressure tactics, misrepresentation of the product or the terms of purchase)? Was there a billing or collection issue? Does your complaint involve a physician who is selling the product? Do you have concerns about tax-exempt charities associated with Juice Plus?

For many issues, a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission[1] and the Oregon Attorney General’s Office[2][3] would be appropriate. These would be the best places to complain regarding prohibited disease treatment claims, misleading product labeling, and many other improper business practices. Complaints with the Better Business Bureau[4] for general issues regarding business conduct, and/or the BBB’s National Advertising Division[5] regarding misleading advertising might also be warranted.

If your Juice Plus issue involves a licensed physician or if you merely wish to raise awareness by sounding an alarm among the medical community, consider writing to the American Medical Association[6] and to the Oregon Medical Association[7]

If your complaint involves charitable activities associated with Juice Plus, such as the Juice Plus Children’s Research Foundation (see [8] under JPCRF) or the Center for the Advancement of Cancer Education (see [9] under Susan Silberstein/CACE), consider filing a charity-specific complaint with the Oregon Attorney General’s Office[10].

References

U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Consumer Complaint Form. https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01
Department of Justice, Oregon State: Contact Information. http://www.doj.state.or.us/contact.shtml
Department of Justice, Oregon State: Consumer Hotline E-mail. consumer.hotline@doj.state.or.us
Better Business Bureau (BBB): Complaint Instructions. http://www.thebbb.org/commoncomplaint.html
National Advertising Division (NAD). http://www.nadreview.org/AboutNAD.asp
American Medicial Association (AMA): How do I file a complaint against a physician? http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/5105.html#file_complaint
Oregon Medicial Association (OMA). http://www.theoma.org
Juice Plus Research Blog: Rotten Tomato Awards - Juice Plus Children's Research Foundation. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2006_07_29_archive.html
Juice Plus Research Blog: Juice Plus and Cancer: A Warning for Patients and Consumers - Susan Silberstein and the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education (CACE). http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2007_03_11_archive.html
Department of Justice, Oregon State: File a Complaint About a Charity or Solicitation. http://www.doj.state.or.us/charigroup/complaint.shtml

Bear Grylls/Juice Plus Connection

2007-07-29T14:33:00.000-04:00

Controversial outdoor survivalist and TV host Bear Grylls is a Juice Plus spokesperson and sells the product, according to information recently received by the JPRB.

Grylls, who is best known as the star of the Discovery Channel TV show Man vs. Wild, was at the center of a hailstorm of media criticism this week when it was revealed that survival scenes in his shows had been faked and misrepresented to viewers.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Grylls had previously admitted that Juice Plus (i.e. National Safety Associates) was a financier of his 1998 climbing expedition to Mt. Everest[9][10]. Grylls also runs his own Juice Plus franchise,[11] profits from sales of the product, and has been a speaker at Juice Plus distributor training events[12]. He is featured on a Juice Plus promotional CD entitled Achieving Optimal Health,[13][14] along with fellow Juice Plus distributor/spokesperson Mitra Ray[15][16][17] and Nyjon Eccles[16] (Eccles has also been the subject of controversy as a result of his advocacy of highly questionable medical procedures such as magnetic bandage therapy for leg ulcers and light beam therapy lymph detoxification for cancer patients).[18][19][20][21]

Despite the existence of reliable, widely-available information in the public domain confirming the financial ties between Grylls and Juice Plus, at least one distributor of the product has falsely claimed that no such connection exists. In a March 24 post on the website Sparkpeople.com, Juice Plus distributor/spokesperson Julia Havey claimed to potential customers:

“I am at a convention for Juice Plus and the final speaker of the conference was a man named Bear Grylls…and, for those who care to know, Bear took a picture of himself on Mt. Everest holding up a Juice Plus T-shirt. He was not a paid spokesperson, or a distributor, nor did NSA/Juice Plus sponsor his expedition."[22]

The cover-up of Grylls' financial connection to Juice Plus is further evidence of the false and misleading claims being made by Juice Plus distributors and attests to the inability or lack of will of the marketing company, National Safety Associates, to prevent such claims from being made.

Follow-up Note
Havey’s comments at Sparkpeople .com were deleted on July 31 -- two days after this story was posted.

References

'Wild' Grylls not so manly after all? Andrew Wallenstein; AOL TV News (7/24/2007). http://news.aol.com/entertainment/television/story/_a/wild-grylls-not-so-manly-after-all/20070724065109990001
Pilots doubt Bear Grylls’ Everest para-motor flight claims. Mount Everest.net (7/11/2007). http://www.mounteverest.net/news.php?news=16114
Grylls' thrills bogus: expert survivalist charged with cushy shortcuts. Don Kaplan; New York Post online (7/24/2007).
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07242007/news/nationalnews/grylls_thrills_bogus__expert_nationalnews_don_kaplan.htm
Bear Grylls a fraud? The Jellyfisher (7/23/2007). http://www.thejellyfisher.com/bear-grylls-a-fraud/
Bear Grylls 'faked Channel 4's Born Survivor'. Richard Edwards; The Sunday Telegraph online (7/24/2007). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/23/ngrylls123.xml
Survival show faces 'fake' claim. BBC News online (7/23/2007). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6911748.stm
TV 'survival king' stayed in hotels. Robert Booth; The Sunday Times Online (7/22/2007). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article2116195.ece
Bear Grylls Not as 'Wild' as Advertised. Marcus Vanderberg; AOL Black Voices Blog (07/25/2007). http://blackvoices.aol.com/blogs/2007/07/25/bear-grylls-not-as-wild-as-expected
Sponsors. Bear Grylls.com. http://www.beargrylls.com/sponsors.html
Not just anybody: Bear Grylls. Amber Cowan; The Sunday Times Online (8/6/2006)
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article551621.ece
Bear Grylls Juice Plus Distributor Page http://www.juiceplus.co.uk/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=bg026447
Juice Plus Post Conference Training. Prevention Denver Juice Plus website. http://www.preventiondenver.com/flyers/lbpostcon2007.doc
Juice Plus CDs. Juice Plus Tools.com. http://www.jplustools.com/acatalog/CD_s__Audios___DVD_s.html
Juice Plus CDs. Aireau and Network Marketing Support. http://www.aireau.co.uk/acatalog/CD_s__Audios___DVD_s.html
Shining Star International Juice Plus Distributor Page. http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home.soa?site=sr46450
What healthcare professionals say about Juice Plus. National Safety Associates. http://www.juiceplus.co.uk/nsa/pages/HealthProfessionals.soa
Readers Respond (June 2, 2007): Mitra Ray. Juice Plus Research Blog. http://juiceplusresearch.blogspot.com/2007_06_02_archive.html
This may be fair trading - then again, it may not. The Quackometer (1/15/2007). http://www.quackometer.net/blogarchive/2007_01_01_quackometer_archive.html
Magnetic needling. Ben Goldacre; The Guardian (7/25/2005). http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/aug/25/badscience
The cost of the Chiron Clinic/NHS takes up Cherie's magic magnets cure. DC's Improbable Science Page. http://www.dcscience.net/improbable.html#ne1
http://www.dcscience.net/improbable.html#mag1
The Bad Science Forum.
http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25928&sid=a2bcb4377e8674df18413c18b91546fb
Juice Plus: My experience. Julia Havey; SparkPeople.com. http://sparkpeople.com/myspark/team_messageboard_thread.asp?imboard=7045&imparent=5511629

Readers Respond (July 25, 2007): Letter of the Week

2007-07-25T20:50:00.000-04:00

From Osinowolaw (July 25, 2007)
I stumbled upon your blog after having signed up to buy Juice Plus, from a friend who sells it, a couple of weeks ago. I am really regretting my decision and I want to get out of this and cancel my contract. They've got my credit card number. What do I do now? Should I send a letter to NSA? Please advise.

Reply From The JPRB Team
Ouch! Too bad you didn’t read the blog a few weeks sooner. NSA will, in all likelihood, refuse to refund any of the outstanding balance for the remainder of your first 4-month commitment. You could try to contact NSA or your distributor and request that they accept a return of your unused product and not charge you for the remaining 3 monthly payments, but based on the experiences we have heard from other disgruntled customers, they will likely refuse to do so.[1,2,3] Once stopping your order, however, they should at least not charge you for additional product, but once again, not all customers have had success in this regard. If they did continue to charge you after the 4-month initial period, you could dispute the charges with your credit card company and that should lead to a fairly swift resolution. You could get out of the commitment for the remaining 3 months of your initial order if you were to accidentally lose your credit card and report the loss to your card company. They will issue you a new card, and old recurring payments will be rejected.

Another angle to consider is whether the distributor who sold it to you misrepresented the product in any way or made false claims about it. If they did, then you would be well within your rights to demand an immediate refund. Failure of NSA to provide a refund under such circumstances would give you sufficient cause to file complaints with the Better Business Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, and your State Attorney General. Even the threat of such action might make NSA more amenable to refunding your money.

Reply From Anonymous (July 27, 2007)
Consumer law is almost always favorable to the consumer. If the consumer is at all not pleased, they are usually in their right to saw a "nevermind" and obtain both a refund and a cancellation of remaining fees. As you mentioned, filing a dispute with the credit card company is a good approach. You can usually do this on-line with the credit card company.

Readers Respond (July 21, 2007): Letters of the Week

2007-07-21T14:24:00.000-04:00

From Leo Gerlock (July 20, 2007)
Wow! I am strangely creeped out by reading some of the other posts on this site. Many of them mirror similar experiences I have had with Juice Plus products/distributors.

I am glad to see that this site allows viewers the ability to read through the Juice Plus research for themselves with out all the NSA marketing. I could share frustrating experiences I have had with Juice Plus distributors. But my beef is with NSA/Juice Plus for hustling a low grade product under the guise of advancing scientific research.

Here is my story: One day back in the summer of 2005 I got bored and decided to read up on all the Juice Plus research after hearing my sister in-law going on and on about it. I started with the actual NSA/Juice Plus site and read the abstracts on the research that was available in 2005. What I read was basic in scope and was limited to, at most, abstracts. I thought, "Well, abstracts are a start, surely I'll be able to find the full publications." So I Googled "Juice Plus" and I was somewhat taken aback by all the .com domain websites I found touting the "growing body of independent scientific research" behind Juice Plus. Yet with so many rave reviews, I was hard pressed to find any sites (apart from Pub Med) that allowed me access to full publications (not abstracts) without having to pay a fee. I was only able to get 1 full publication (Plotnick et al. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2003;41(10):1744-9).

I read the publication and found it to be interesting, but not much else since no single publication can really define a "growing body of research". And since I didn't have the time or resources to hunt down and read all the cross references listed in the above publication, I really had no way to gauge the actual quality of the publication in terms of similar research.

So, I emailed a couple of Juice Plus distributors and they basically told me almost verbatim what is on all the other Juice Plus promotional sites. So, I told my mother-in law, who is a distributor, about how I couldn't get any full publications from anyone. She informed me that only distributors could access them. She did let me read the publications she had. I read through them and didn't find anything all that definitive; just more authors concluding more research needed to be done. Not nearly as exciting as all the smoke up the bum one gets when reading the NSA promos.

I figured most of scientific hustle of Juice Plus boils down to a few things:

It ain't new news that a healthy diet is beneficial. Juice Plus promo material ingeniously capitalizes on this near common knowledge. Who's mom/grandma hasn't told them fruits/vegetables are good for them?
Marketing goes a long way. Bandwagoning, emotional appeals, slippery slopes…you name it. Juice Plus promo stuff is like an English Comp II case study in faulty logic.
Money, who doesn't want it? The whole Juice Plus distributorship scheme is so easy, it is like failing off a log. Start by buying the product and then "gift and share" the product to anything with a social security number and BAHM! you got downlines making the money for you! And hey it's not Amway, it's got science and math stuff and Ph.D.-ed people to back it up, so it must be good. Right?!

And as far as making Juice Plus distributorship a viable career path, personally, I wouldn't recomend it. The bad vibes Juice Plus has generated since I last reviewed the topic will more likely scare people away from it. Think Jehovah's Witnesses at the front door. And I think the money machine that is Juice Plus/NSA will fizzle out, since the carrying capacity for this sucker just isn't there. The product has been out there for too long. It's an MLM fossil! Anyone with basic knowledge of other MLM schemes knows that it's the people who get in on the distributorships at the start who make all the money.

Keep On Posting!

From Anonymous I (July 20, 2007)
Call me skeptical. Here is my story:

Up until 40 years of age, I was generally healthy, fit, athletic, and good natured. Upon reaching 40, I experienced a myriad of seemingly disparate medical symptoms. I was frequently sick, fatigued, foggy, hazy, and depressed. Over time, it got worse and I even began to get shaky. I went through more than 12 different tests for diabetes, hepatitis, blood sugar, colon cancer, gall bladder, liver, MS, and Parkinson’s. This was over a 2-year period, and there were no findings from my doctors.

Through this, I started taking Juice Plus at the request of a friend. Obviously it didn’t help, as my health continued to decline.

The good news is that I found the problem!I was not being honest, with my doctors or even with myself, about how much alcohol I was consuming. I quit drinking, joined a support group, and returned to wonderfully good health (both mental and physical). I have learned, through my new-found friends in “recovery”, that my story is very common.

So, I decided to turn a good works. I contacted my “Juice Plus friend” to share the good news with the masses.
I explained my story, and made myself available to ANYONE (within her client base) who might be suspected of struggling with drinking. She has a very large Juice Plus clientele, and surely runs into many people whose underlying problem is alcohol.

I haven’t heard a thing. It has been over a year now. I have a hard time believing that anyone, even a Juice Plus distributor, would steer someone toward Juice Plus in lieu of healthy recovery from excessive drinking. After all, a drinking problem is literally life-threatening and it can destroy families and careers (and innocent people). I honestly don’t know what to think. Do you think I am becoming too skeptical of the Juice Plus business? Has anyone else heard a story similar to mine?

Reply From The JPRB Team
There is no such thing as being "too skeptical" when it comes to Juice Plus. Congratulations on taking the road to recovery and better health.

From Anonymous II (July 20, 2007)
I looked into legal action against the company. Dr. Barrett (from "Quack Watch") was kind enough to reply to my questions.

I think NSA knows what it is doing, in terms of making claims that are legal (or illegal). They are very careful in their wording, and know how to skirt the law.

Reply From The JPRB Team
Agreed, but there have been so many blatant violations that if the FTC, FDA, IRS, or state authorities were to become involved, they would certainly take strict action to enforce regulations. Your efforts would probably be successful eventually.

Readers Respond (July 2, 2007): Letter of the Week

2007-07-02T16:14:00.000-04:00

From Anonymous (July 2, 2007)
I too am involved with a family member selling Juice Plus. She is completely brainwashed in my opinion. She refused to cancel my subscription and after long arguments, she refused to accept the idea that Juice Plus is anything but a great solution to prevent health problems. It is tearing our family apart and it just makes me angry that such a company is allowed to operate and make the claims that she and others have purported.

I truly believe that NSA/Juice Plus is going to get sued and when they do, it’s going to trickle down to the reps that sell this product. And when NSA gets hit, they are going to be in for a big surprise.

I hope that the government will step in and put a bill in Congress that stops and regulates this type of product. We need to help and protect innocent people and families from getting hurt. This company, the product, and what they claim it does, in my opinion is a complete scam.

The techniques that NSA uses with their members are well thought out, planned, and coordinated, and it’s a powerful scheme they are using to brainwash their members. Sooner or later they will get into litigation. And I hope they pay back what they have taken from others.

Readers Respond (June 22, 2007): Letter of the Week

2007-06-22T16:52:00.000-04:00

From Anonymous (June 20, 2007)
Thank you for this website! I was duped into trying Juice Plus by an annoying cousin about 8 years ago. She has infected our church, family, and even more recently a great organization called Relay for Life. She is constantly holding "health fairs" in my home town.

My aunt recently died of colon cancer. My cousin had her on Juice Plus as "the cure". It sickens me to fill people with false hope and to seperate them from hard-earned money. Worse, I am horrified that this company is encouraging people (and their children) NOT to eat a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables.

Over the years, I sank over $500 into this for myself and my children. The irony of this is that I used to be a farmer of fruits and vegetables. I started doing research, and found Dr. Barrett and "Quack Watch". Then I noticed that the Juice Plus-Nazi's are doing their best to smear him--or anyone that will get in the way of scamming unholy profits from honest people.

I would love to hear any stories about how to best counter this tide of misinformation. I am now doing my best of "word of mouth", but I would like to hear other's ideas for how to rid our families and churches of this desease.

Again, thank you for the site. It is good to know that I am not the only one who is fed up with this bunk.

Readers Respond (June 14, 2007)

2007-06-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

From Bstnrose4444 (June 14 2007)
I would like to see if what I am about to say actually gets published here. I am a healthy 46 yr old female; height/weight/fine. Only issue was hyperthyroid - now on levoxyl. I eat well, sleep well.. should tone up about 5 lbs. I look great for my age. I take some vitamins.. over the counter.. sometimes a multi, sometimes A/D-cod liver oil, sometimes omega's, most times iron and B-all. I treat vitamins as a SUPPLEMENT to my life. To be taken as an addition to my healthy diet. I recently got a mammogram/CT scan.. all said I am fine-healthy. Which brings me to writing this.

WHY would my neighbor/friend who is heavy and doesn't sleep well - gets a stiff neck- then headaches.. bring this Juice Plus to me? I ignored it in the past.. but now she gave me the 3 bottles and talked of 2 per this and 2 per that and 1.. that is 5 pills a day. I looked them over- added up the vitamins and LACK of ( no B, iron, D) but I see a big overdose of A and E! per day! GEE... could this me the reason she is not sleeping/getting a stiff neck and headaches??

I think this stuff is poisoning her. Of course her neuropathic Dr. or Chiropractor prescribed this! I am furious at this poisoning and she doesn't even realize it! Where is the Dr. to follow-up in this? Oh - no fiber either or omega's, etc.

Now that I did read the site discounting this Juice Plus - I see why. It is very easy to read what is in these vitamin bottles and make your own decision of this overdosing and lack of other vitamins. Now, how do I gracefully tell her my findings? I wouldn't mind if this was a normal MLM product and all.. but to see the outright trash they are selling is very scary.

Readers Respond (June 6, 2007)

2007-06-06T14:59:00.000-04:00

From Anonymous I (June 6 2007)
This product makes me sick. Close family members have been brain washed and sell this crap with a vengence. It has actually caused problems with family get togethers, etc.

Their latest claim is that JP will stop you from getting bitten by mosquitos. I am extremely disappointed with these family members and recently found out something more disturbing. They order the product under other names and addresses and pay for it themselves, I am assuming, to pad their numbers.

Disgusting. I don't understand how the maker/manufacturer gets away with this. It infuriates me.

Thank you for this blog! My husband and I are acutally thinking about some sort of intervention with these family members.

This Juice Plus thing is like a cult! I think they need help. We just don't know where to start.

From Anonymous II (June 6 2007)
Oh yes, we are dealing with the very same situation with a family member...this is an educated person...what in the world do they tell these people to make them so sure that this is a miracle cure????

Readers Respond (June 2, 2007): Mitra Ray

2007-06-02T15:30:00.000-04:00

From Sara Bibbins, McClellan, CA (May 31, 2007)
Last night I heard Dr. Mitra Ray speak in Sacramento at the request of a coworker who sells Juice Plus. Dr. Ray spoke primarily about a vegan diet (fruits, vegetables, whole grain, no meat or meat products), but she also spoke about Juice Plus. I've searched the internet for information on Juice Plus and have read many negative reports about the product (costly, questionable research, etc.). I was very taken with Dr. Ray and was wondering about her background and association with Juice Plus. Do you have any information on her? Thank you.

Reply From The JPRB Team
Mitra Ray is a major Juice Plus distributor and, along with her husband Doug Barlow (also a JP distributor[1]), operates a Juice Plus product distribution and marketing support company that goes by the name of Shining Star International.[2]

Ray is a major Juice Plus promoter and spokesperson. Her Juice Plus testimonials are prominently featured on the Juice Plus consumer website[3] and other Juice Plus promotional materials.

Ray also appears on the website “Science & Health News”[4] which is actually just another Juice Plus promotional site run by National Safety Associates (NSA), the company that co-manufactures and distributes Juice Plus products and provides distributor franchising and training.

She tours around the U.S. delivering health lectures, which are little more than Juice Plus promotional pitches blended with regurgitated bits of obvious commonsense information combined with other transparently self-serving advice. She is also a regular speaker at Juice Plus distributor training events[5] and is the narrator on several product promotional and distributor training audio seminars.[6][7]

Ray has made a variety of questionable comments about Juice Plus, the most absurd of which was:

“When Juice Plus first came out I thought it was more important than the discovery of antibiotics, and I still stand by that statement today.”[8]

She has also recommended Juice Plus as a replacement for prenatal vitamins, even though it fails to meet the recommended daily intake for most nutrients (e.g. calcium, potassium, several B-vitamins, most minerals). Although one extremely poorly designed retrospective study conducted by Juice Plus distributor Doug Odom looked at Juice Plus in combination with prenatal vitamins, no research has ever studied Juice Plus as a replacement for prenatal vitamins. Ray has also recommended that users should take double, triple, or more of the daily 4-capsule Juice Plus regimen. While this would benefit product sales, it contradicts widely accepted nutritional guidelines which discourage such supplemental beta-carotene/folate/vitamin E/vitamin C mega-dosing.

Ray earned a PhD in cell biology from Stanford University. She seems to have had a very brief research career at the University of Washington (Department of Biochemistry) after obtaining her PhD and has not been actively involved in research for well over a decade. Given her training, she is clearly not an expert in nutrition or medicine.

Her most touted accomplishment as a graduate student was serving as a tertiary investigator in research that reportedly identified the gene sequence and physiological role of a protein known as recoverin, which was published in 1991 [Dizhoor et al. Science. 1991;251:915]. Remarkably, the conclusions of that study were withdrawn by its authors in a letter to the editor published in 1993 [Hurley et al. Science. 1993;260:740]. A retraction like this is highly unusual and it in effect largely discounts the significance of Ray’s previous research. Her research career seems to have fizzled out shortly after the retraction was issued.

Ray is an author of a "new-age" health book. We have not read it, but judging from what we have seen so far, we suspect that it would be garbage. This book, as well as Ray's Juice Plus CDs, are promoted and sold by NSA.

Readers Respond 2 (May 2007): Pam Popper

2007-05-07T01:52:00.000-04:00

From Anonymous (May 5 2007)
My first and possibly only purchase of the gummie vitamins was the result of a subtle pushiness. Here's what happened: my neighbor approached me with a CD called "Understanding Diabetes" (I didn't ask why or how she came upon it). She gave it to me thinking it might help me because of my child’s recent diagnosis. She mentioned that it in part recommends Juice Plus. I said I had heard about Juice Plus years ago and never tried it. Then she told me she happens to sell it. Well I immediately bought it to try for my kids, just like I do the Flintstone vitamins; I thought this might be better but, of course since it is not an FDA-approved product, I had to research. What do you know about the Dr. Pam Popper who puts out this CD?

Reply From The JPRB Team
Pam Popper, an alleged naturopath, is a senior level Juice Plus distributor, a shill for NSA, and a narrator on various Juice Plus training and promotional recordings. Popper also offers, for a fee, questionable “wellness” training programs that provide dubious certification as a “Health Coach” or “Health Educator”.[1] At least some of those who are certified by Popper have gone on to become Juice Plus distributors.

We seriously question the integrity of anyone who recommends Juice Plus gummies for children, let alone kids with diabetes. The product contains 85% corn syrup, which is highly unadvisable for a diabetic child. Juice Plus gummies are also grossly overloaded with beta-carotene (5 times the recommended daily intake for an adult) and deficient in most nutrients that would be readily available in just about any food-based or synthetic multivitamin supplement. The daily regimen of 6 gummies provides the following nutrients (approximate percentage of the adult Reference Daily Intake in parentheses): vitamin C 107.1 mg (179%); vitamin E 82.6 IU (275%); vitamin A 14.8 mg (494%); thiamin 1.39 mg (93%); riboflavin 0.05 mg (3%); niacin 2.51 mg (13%); pyridoxine 0.64 mg (32%); zinc 0.62 mg (4%); magnesium 13.65 mg (3%), calcium 94.5 mg (9%); potassium 58.4 mg (2%); and copper 0.32 mg (16%). [Stewart et al. J Am Diet Assoc. 2002;102:1652-7.]

Health authorities warn against taking large doses of beta-carotene, which have been shown to have an adverse effect on the incidence of some types of cancer in adults. The long-term effects of megadose beta-carotene supplementation in children is unknown. Reputable nutritional guidelines recommend that if supplements are to be taken, they should meet but not exceed recommended daily amounts.

Readers Respond (May 2007): Letter of the Week

2007-05-05T01:10:00.000-04:00

From Tim (May 4, 2007):
An elder at my church was pushing Juice Plus and it made individuals very uncomfortable. His wife was the primary distributor and during prayers meetings, when people brought up health concerns she would recommend Juice Plus. When young couples joined our church, if they purchased Juice Plus products they were given kind treatment and friendship by this family. Eventually, they planned a Juice Plus social night and invited all young couples in the Church. I tried to inform the young couple who was hosting the event at their house that they might make some folks uncomfortable.

The following is a letter sent by Tim to the church elder/Juice Plus distributor:

I got your letter today about a Juice Plus event at your place and I have several concerns and unfortunately not much time to address them. Simply put, I am worried that integrating multi-level marketing (MLM) with church-community social functions can be problematic.I know very little of chemistry and nutrition, but the claims against the scientific foundation of Juice Plus seem very valid. I think there is substantial economic evidence that Juice Plus is not what it claims to be. This is simply that such a 'wonder-cure' would not be confined to MLM and would be bought or at least vaguely copied by Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Altria, etc. Furthermore, with the looming health-care costs in our economy (now 15% of GDP!) there would be strong incentive for all insurance companies to endorse this product. Demand and word of mouth would ensure that, in short order, everyone would be juicing. There would at a minimum be competition, not a single monolithic MLM entity that takes game nights to get customers. Let's assume however that the claims of Juice Plus are true and that their corporation nothing but a blessing. The above is, after all, just my thoughts. Simply considering a simple social event in which some church members profit off others will suffice to hear my concern. Let me first state two things. The first is that while I find MLM distasteful for a number of reasons, I consider most people involved to have acceptable motives. Most MLM participants seem to enjoy the businesses they are in and consider MLM an easy way to make a little extra money with low startup costs and little training required. Even if 99% of MLM participants lose money, they at least have a hobby. While many sales from MLM events exploit friendships and are the results of people who purchase out of a desire to please their friends, some people do enjoy their products and all people willingly pay. Thus, MLM itself is not necessarily immoral. The second thing is that financially benefiting from church relationships is not bad in any way. If we are to fellowship and have an understood level of trust, it makes sense for Christians to prefer doing business with other Christians. I feel much more comfortable when my stock-broker, lawyer and even repair man share my faith. My concern arises precisely because this level of trust is present in the Christian community. We all had fun playing games at your house. It was good and right. We would like to again; but don't like that the lines are blurred between two social spheres which should be distinct. It is a very different thing to decide to choose my lawyer to be the man I pray with than to have a church lawyer distributing business cards in the pews, or to invite people over to their house for social dinner in which they hear a presentation for the lawyer's firm. If one wants to host a Pampered chef party and invite members of the Church, the lines are blurred, but at least the party has a stated business purpose. It is a business event that has a social benefit and context. However, when you host a game night with a Juice Plus pitch, it is a social event with an underlying business context.In any case, I am sure that no one is deliberately acting dishonestly here, but I am continually concerned that the body of Christ is used as a channel for MLM. While our economy requires business relationships and church friendships to sometimes be intertwined, I just urge you to be cautious with MLM.

Reply from the JPRB Team:
Dear Tim: Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. Your raise a number of important issues with more tact and diplomacy than we could ever muster. Since we have a slightly warped sense of humor, we couldn’t help but wonder what your church elder would think of Juice Plus distributor and Satanic Priest Greg Warne (aka Colonel Akula).[1][2] Will we see Good versus Evil in a titanic battle for Juice Plus supremacy?

Readers Respond (April 2007)

2007-04-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

From Leslie M Hansen-Lindner, MD, FACOG (April 16, 2007)
Thank, thank you, thank you...
I cannot thank you enough for all of your writing on this subject. As a physician, it is utterly amazing that this product continues to be sold and that its representatives have such undying devotion to its baseless claims. It is also amazing how many people fall prey to its claims.
Please keep up the work and the fight.

National Safety Associates Falsely Claims That Juice Plus Study Shows No Side Effects

2007-04-15T13:20:00.000-04:00

Information posted on a website operated by National Safety Associates, the multilevel marketing company that distributes the Juice Plus line of dietary supplements, is falsely claiming that a recent study on three of their products showed them to be free of side effects.[1][2] The study, published in the February 7 issue of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, was extremely poorly-designed and did not report using a systematic method of monitoring adverse events.[3] Nonetheless, the study reported that 2 of the participants dropped out early due to gastrointestinal side effects that were assumed by the investigators to possibly be related to use of Juice Plus. Six additional subjects voluntarily withdrew from the study for reasons that were not disclosed. The authors never claimed that the products were free of side effects, and the results reported in the published article clearly contradict NSAs claim to the contrary.

The Juice Plus study was led by Mark C. Houston and funded by NSA. Houston has appeared in Juice Plus promotional materials and has been a speaker at Juice Plus promotional and distributor training events in Europe and the United States. He currently serves as the Medical Advisory Board Chair of the American Nutraceutical Association,[4] an organization, funded in part by NSA, promoting the interests of nutraceutical manufacturers. The ANAs sister organization, the European Nutraceutical Association,[5] is also funded by NSA and is chaired by NSA employees Gerald Tulzer and Peter Prock, both of whom are also involved with research projects on Juice Plus.

A Plea for Mercy: Correspondence Regarding Juice Plus TGF-β Study

2007-04-11T21:46:00.001-04:00

The Juice Plus Research Blog recently received correspondence from someone claiming to be Mercy Dickson, the author of a research abstract that was reviewed by the JPRB on January 21, 2007 in an article entitled TGF-β in Ovarian Cancer: Juice Plus Falls Short of The Real Thing. No information was provided that would allow us to verify their identity so we cannot be certain that the correspondent is actually who they claim to be.

However, if the correspondent is in fact Mercy Dickson, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the research in detail. It brings us no joy to see a potentially promising young investigator inadvertently becoming embroiled in controversy over Juice Plus. Dickson was an undergraduate junior in the Project EXPORT program at Prairie View A&M at the time the abstract was published.[1] The Project EXPORT program is run by the Center for Research on Minority Health at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The program’s director, Lovell A. Jones, appeared in a Juice Plus promotional/training video entitled The Science of Juice Plus in 2002[2] and accepted $224,950 in funding from NSA that same year.[3]

The following are excerpts of the correspondent’s letter and our replies to those comments:

Correspondent: “I take research very seriously and I am also disappointed that someone who seems so dedicated to finding truth did not critically assess the published abstract.”
JPRB: It is admirable that the correspondent is passionate about research. However, we did critically analyze the abstract and that analysis is what led us to our conclusions, which we stand behind. If anyone failed to apply sufficient critical reasoning, it was the study’s senior investigators, as detailed below.

Correspondent: “First, there was no mention in the abstract that juice plus was a better diet than the whels diet.”
JPRB: We never said or implied that it did. Please re-read the article.

Correspondent: “the goal of the research was… to investigate the hypothesis of a correlation between high fiber diets and tgf-beta levels.”
JPRB: That may be what young Dickson was told, but it does not appear to be correct. If the true aim of this study was to assess the relationship between dietary fiber and TGF-β levels, then it was profoundly and fundamentally flawed in its design, since there at least 3 confounding factors that were not considered; i.e. fruit/vegetable intake (5 vs. 10 servings), percentage fat intake (10% vs 20%), and use of Juice Plus. A proper design to determine the effects of dietary fiber would have involved comparing two study groups that differed only with respect to fiber intake; however, the 2 groups in this study differed with respect to not only fiber intake but also the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed (which would also translate into differences in nutrient and mineral intake), the percentage of fat in the diet, and the consumption of Juice Plus (which contains very little fiber and unknown or inconsistent amounts of a dozen or so ingredients).

With these confounding variables present, the differences in TGF-β levels between subjects on the Whel and NCI/Juice Plus diets cannot possibly be attributed to differences in fiber intake. Despite what the correspondent claims was the goal of the study, it is apparent to us that the underlying aim of the study was, in all likelihood, to determine whether Juice Plus could provide the benefits of the extra servings of fruits and vegetables in the Whel diet -- and it did not. The study's design is far more consistent with such a purpose than with the one suggested by the correspondent (i.e. detemining the relationship between dietary fiber and TGF-β). We trust that this explanation helps to clarify the justification for our previous comments.

Correspondent: “You seem to make inferences about it being unclear as to whether I sell juice plus and so forth, which is incorrect and contradicts the results and my actual presentation of this data in public”
JPRB: We did not make inferences; we merely stated the truth; it was "unclear” what connections the authors may have had with Juice Plus, and it remains unclear. We further stated that the study was likely funded by NSA and/or connected to Juice Plus hired researcher/spokesperson Lovell A. Jones, which appears to be true and which the correspondent neither confirmed nor denied. When publishing research, the responsibility lies with the investigators to reveal the source of funding and whether or not they have a financial interest in the product under investigation. The correspondent is welcome to forward to us any relevant information that could clarify the financial relationship between the investigators and Juice Plus, but absent such evidence, we are not moved to change our earlier position. However, if this correspondent verifies that they are actually Mercy Dickson and states that they have no financial conflict of interest in Juice Plus, we are willing to add that information in an addendum to the article.

Correspondent: “I also think it is only fair that you either make corrections to your posting or remove it entirely. As I was never contacted, making comments that seem to question my integrity seem unethical. I have worked hard in my academic life and do not appreciate any inferences to me”
JPRB: We are sympathetic and we have no desire to see the reputation of a young researcher jeopardized by association with Juice Plus. However, no compelling reason has yet been presented as to why we should modify the article, let alone remove it entirely. The correspondent did not clarify whether any of the investigators had financial interests or potential conflicts, nor did they reveal the source of funding for the study. Rest assured that if and when additional information is made available, we will share it with the readers of the JPRB, and we do welcome the opportunity for further discussion. Bear in mind also that conducting poorly designed research on a deceptively marketed and controversial product is a career choice for which the investigators ultimately bear responsibility. Our advice to Dickson and other Juice Plus researchers is to exercise great caution when considering researching, accepting funds from, or promoting disreputable products.

We look forward to further communication regarding this research abstract.

Juice Plus Research Blog Honored By Three Fat Chicks

2007-03-29T01:03:00.000-04:00

Popular diet website Three Fat Chicks On A Diet has listed the Juice Plus Research Blog among its 12 “most reputable health and nutrition websites on the net".[1] Described as an “excellent website” that “busts the myths behind Juice Plus”, the Juice Plus Research Blog was included alongside such esteemed company as Cornell University, the National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Berkeley Wellness Letter, IntelliHealth, and WebMD.

Sisters Suzanne Barnett, Jennifer Barnett, and Amy Barnett launched 3 Fat Chicks On A Diet in 1999 as a convenient way for them to share dieting stories and information. Since its inception, the site has grown into a major online presence with more than 60,000 members and now competes with major commercial diet websites like eDiets and Weight Watchers.

The widely praised website was awarded Best of the Web status by Forbes magazine[2] and received a 5-star rating from The Good Web Guide.[3] In 2006, the Barrett sisters followed up on the success of their website with 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet: Because We're All in It Together, a widely popular diet book that has consistently received rave reviews.[4][5]

Readers Respond (March 2007)

2007-03-27T13:11:00.000-04:00

From California MD (March 26, 2007)
All I can say is GREAT JOB!! Thanks for being a clearinghouse for all the Juice Plus stuff that is going on.

I am an MD and despite what most of these nutrition "gurus" -- those self-taught, know-it-all, uneducated people who tend to be involved in MLM schemes -- claim, I took lots of nutrition classes in medical school. A common comment from these types is that "most MD's have never taken a nutrition class". Nonsense. I have also been interested in nutrition on a personal front. I am interested in complementary and alternative medicine and have educated myself on different supplements -- what works and what doesn't.

I know what their products are -- and I always tell patients that if they want those "substitute fruit and vegetable" supplements, they can just buy them for $10 at the health food store, as opposed to $40 from an MLM person at Juice Plus. There isn't anything novel or new about Juice Plus -- they don't have any exclusive patent on anything -- everything they tout is available in stores at a fraction of the cost!

Unlike Twinlabs, Vitacost, or any other vitamin/supplement website, there is NO information about the ingredients! I can't believe they can get away with not listing amounts of Vitamin C, etc. that are contained in their product. "A proprietary mix" of who knows what is not an acceptable ingredient.

It's nice that Wikipedia tells the truth about Juice Plus too. I thought it was pretty pitiful that OJ (Simpson) endorsed the product in the past and had to stop because he was lying!

I'll be continuing to watch your blog and many thanks for writing it!!

From Cheryl Maher, Commerce, MI (March 24, 2007)
I am a personal trainer at a very large fitness company. One of my coworkers gave me the Juice plus CD. I do not have degree in nutrition, business or marketing. Although I could sort out that it was a scam to sell capsules. It is a conflict of interest for doctors to promote products for all of the obvious reasons. Most everyone knows what to do about their health. It is simple just not easy. It is unethical for those in the health care industry to bully and prey upon the weakest. The overweight and ill.

Physician Convicted of Sexually Assaulting Patients is Ordered by Medical Board to Stop Selling Juice Plus

2007-03-18T18:49:00.000-04:00

News reports recently uncovered by the Juice Plus Research Blog team have revealed that Dr. Meindert Albert Niemeyer, a Juice Plus distributor in Elon, NC who, subsequent to being convicted of assault and false imprisonment for sexually fondling female patients during unsupervised medical examinations, was ordered by the State Medical Board to stop selling Juice Plus.[1,2 ,3,4]

According to the reports, Niemeyer, who worked at the Alamance Family Practice clinic in Elon at the time the crimes took place, was forced to surrender his medical license after the North Carolina Medical Board investigated his aggressive selling of Juice Plus nutritional supplements to patients, as well as his attempts to recruit patients to sell it.

Subsequent to an investigation by the Greensboro Police Department, criminal charges were filed against Niemeyer in March of 2003 for the assault of a 21-year-old female patient. He was later tried in August 2003 in Alamance County District Court for eight counts of assault on a female and one count of false imprisonment in association with incidents involving a total of 6 patients. During the trial, the victims testified that, in addition to fondling them, Niemeyer repeatedly tried to recruit them to sell Juice Plus.

On August 25, Niemeyer was found guilty of six of the eight counts of assault and of the one count of false imprisonment, and was placed on probation. The North Carolina Medical Board suspended Niemeyer’s medical license indefinitely on May 20, 2004[5] on the basis that his criminal acts and selling of Juice Plus consituted unprofessional conduct according to North Carolina general statute 90-14.[6]

In 2006 the North Carolina Medical Board agreed to grant Niemeyer conditional reinstatement of his license with the stipulation that he must continue counseling, provide quarterly reports of his progress, obey laws and regulations, have a chaperone present when he sees female patients, and stop selling Juice Plus to patients.[7]

References

[1] Women testify that Elon doctor fondled them. The News & Record (Piedmont Triad, NC); August 7, 2003. Mike Tosczak. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-106405002.html
[2] Co-workers supportive of Elon doctor: six women accuse Dr. Meindert Niemeyer of fondling them during medical exams. The News & Record (Piedmont Triad, NC); Aug 8, 2003. Mike Tosczak. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-106433845.html

[3] Elon, N.C., doctor regains medical license. Times-News (Burlington, NC); December 23, 2004. Brandee Hayhurst. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-126407180.html

[4] Local doctor regains license under specific conditions. Krista Naposki
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/pendulum/Issues/2005/01_20/news/license.xhtml

[5] North Carolina Medical Board Physician Details: Meindert Albert Niemeyer, M.D. http://www.ncmedboard.org/Clients/NCBOM/Public/Licensee_Details.aspx?&EntityID=26746&PublicFile=1
[6] North Carolina General Statute § 90‑14. Revocation, suspension, annulment or denial of license. http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/bysection/chapter_90/gs_90-14.html
[7] North Carolina Medical Board. Meindert Albert Niemeyer, M.D; Amended consent order. http://glsuite.ncmedboard.org/DataTier/Documents/Repository/0/0/5/6/9b0732dc-0a15-4c63-994f-4f49e68a3eca.pdf

Consumer Alert: Bogus Juice Plus Research Published by South Carolina Distributor

2007-03-17T00:15:00.000-04:00

A deceptive study purporting to show positive effects of Juice Plus nutritional supplements on peripheral artery disease was recently posted on the website of Greenville, South Carolina Juice Plus distributor, Dr. Robert G. Schwartz. The widely criticized supplements are sold by National Safety Associates (NSA) through a multilevel-marketing network of mostly untrained and unqualified but very aggressive distributors.

The study, which has the appearance of being an official reprint of a peer-reviewed research article,[1] was actually never published in a real journal and did not undergo peer review. The article appears to have been published in the November 2006 issue of a journal called “Resolving Complex Pain” but, in reality, no such journal exists; rather it is the title of a book authored solely by Schwartz, which sells on his website for $120.

Schwartz, a Juice Plus distributor[2] who runs his own practice, Piedmont Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation,[3] also sells various other high-priced supplements of dubious value. Not surprisingly, Schwartz’s self-published study reported positive effects of Juice Plus.

Schwartz’ article, which bears the title “The Impact of Juice Plus on Early PAD: A Clinical Study”, describes a non-controlled, non-randomized retrospective trial so poorly designed that it would be incapable of generating meaningful, interpretible results.

The article alleges that Juice Plus had a small positive effect on blood circulation in the legs (pulse volume and post-exercise systolic pressure) in 13 case reports of patients with mild peripheral artery disease who had taken Juice Plus in addition to anti-platelet medications for an average of 22 months.

Unlike a reliable, randomized, blinded, controlled, prospective study, in which patients are blindly assigned to a test agent or placebo group and monitored blindly going forward in time, Schwartz’s article describes using a highly unreliable retrospective design, meaning that the study was initiated after the subjects had already completed treatment, and Schwartz later decided arbitrarily which patients’ medical files to include or omit. The retrospective design is unreliable because it does not eliminate the possibility of an investigator cherry-picking the best case histories and omitting case histories with negative outcomes to artificially generate a desired outcome.

The methodology reported in Schwartz’s study was scant and incomplete, no statistical analysis of the data was performed, the extent of data variability (e.g. standard error or standard deviation) was not listed, and most importantly, no numerical data for the results of the Doppler ultrasound were shown, just tracings from a few arbitrarily selected cases. In addition, the study's design and data analysis make it impossible to distinguish between the effects of Juice Plus and the effects of the antiplatelet medications that all subjects were taking concurrently. Furthermore, no attempt was made to monitor the subjects' intake of fruit and vegetables or concurrent supplement use during the study. Any of these factors could account for the effects reported.

Schwartz’s article also falsely claims that Juice Plus was previously shown to reduce plaque formation (a critical component of atherosclerosis). In support of the claim, Schwartz incorrectly cited 2 studies, one by Samman et al. (J Nutr. 2003;133:2188-93)[4] and the other by Plotnick et al. (J Am Coll Cardiol. 2003:41:1744-9).[5] In actuality, neither study included any data whatsoever on plaque formation; in fact, neither “plaque” nor any other words with remotely similar meaning were even mentioned in the articles.

The very premise of the study makes little sense. If the idea is that fruit and vegetables are beneficial for patients with mild peripheral arterial disease who are also taking antiplatelet drugs, then research should be examining the effect of real fruit and vegetables, and the real thing is what physicians should be recommending to their patients, not Juice Plus. The patients in Schwartz's study would have undoubtedly been better served by increasing their fruit and vegetable consumption rather than buying Juice Plus from Schwartz. The benefits of real fruit and vegetables outweigh any of the benefits of the scant amount of nutrient-depleted plant powder in Juice Plus, and an inexpensive multivitamin would provide more appropriate amounts of all the nutrients that Juice Plus contains (and several that are not in Juice Plus or are present at very low levels) for a fraction of the cost.

There are several other facts that make Schwartz’s study particularly disturbing. Chief among them is that the study did not undergo a university or hospital Institutional Research Board review, nor was it scrutinized by an ethics committee, as is required for all medical research involving human subjects, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.[5] It is unethical for an individual to conduct unsupervised medical research on human subjects without oversight of any kind.

In addition, Schwartz describes in his article that he solicited patients in his practice to take Juice Plus.

"Depending on the clinical situation, everyone was started on either Cilostazol or Clopidogrel. They were also offered the opportunity to begin Juice Plus, a phytonutrient product".

Not only does Schwartz’s mere selling of Juice Plus conflict with Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association (AMA),[6] it would also be illegal for Schwartz, an agent of National Safety Associates, to promote the product to his patients as a treatment for peripheral artery disease because (a) doing so would contravene the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act (DSHEA),[7] and (b) Juice Plus has not undergone reliable testing for effectiveness, safety, and content quality, as would be required by the FDA (21 CFR Part 101)[8] in order to meet minimum standards for use in human patients.

In regard to the sale of health-related products by physicians, the AMAs Code of Ethics states that:

"In-office sale of health-related products by physicians presents a financial conflict of interest, risks placing undue pressure on the patient, and threatens to erode patient trust and undermine the primary obligation of physicians to serve the interests of their patients before their own...When judging the efficacy of a product, physicians should rely on peer-reviewed literature and other unbiased scientific sources that review evidence in a sound, systematic, and reliable fashion...Because of the risk of patient exploitation and the potential to demean the profession of medicine, physicians who choose to sell health-related products from their offices must take steps to minimize their financial conflicts of interest. "

A relevant section of the DSHEA indicates that Schwartz’s article alone constitutes a violation of DSHEA:

The DSHEA provides that retail outlets may make available "third-party" materials to help inform consumers about any health-related benefits of dietary supplements. These materials include articles, book chapters, scientific abstracts, or other third-party publications. These provisions stipulate that the information must not be false or misleading; cannot promote a specific supplement brand; must be displayed with other similar materials to present a balanced view; must be displayed separate from supplements; and may not have other information attached (product promotional literature, for example).

Schwartz’s misleading study and unprofessional conduct add to a growing list of flagrant violations and deceptive promtional claims made by those who sell Juice Plus supplements.

Juice Plus and Cancer: A Warning for Patients and Consumers

2007-03-11T16:39:00.000-04:00

Introduction
Cancer is a buzzword that has long been used in the promotion of Juice Plus vitamin supplements. Although the company that markets Juice Plus (National Safety Associates [NSA]) generally avoids making any direct statements regarding their product’s value for cancer patients or cancer prevention, many Juice Plus distributors have made such claims explicitly, and implied claims abound in NSAs promotional and distributor training materials.

Officially NSA claims, in accordance with the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act and the US Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR Part 101), that Juice Plus is not intended nor should it be used for the prevention, treatment, or cure of any disease. However, despite this official disclaimer, Juice Plus marketing is rife with examples showing that NSA is tacitly promoting Juice Plus for cancer patients and for cancer prevention, and some Juice Plus distributors are simply ignoring NSAs disclaimer and recommending the product to cancer patients, even though experts have indicated that this advice could lead to lethal consequences. This multipart editorial examines some of the illegitimate claims being made by NSA and Juice Plus distributors with regard to cancer prevention and treatment.

Juice Plus Illegally Promoted as Cancer Treatment
A Juice Plus distributor’s website in New Jersey fraudulently claims that Juice Plus can be used to prevent and treat cancer. The website claims that “according to the National Cancer Society's studies, the contents of these capsules reduce the risk of cancer”. But In reality, the National Cancer Society has never studied or even commented on Juice Plus, and no studies have ever been conducted to evaluate the effect of Juice Plus on cancer risk.

The website also defends the price of the product and compares it favorably to the cost of chemotherapy, stating:

“The price of $175 (for an entire box) might have you wondering if it fits into your budget. The possible years of poor health, agonizing years of cancer, cancer that could keep you from many opportunities. The price of Juice Plus is much less then the price of chemotherapy.”

Since Juice Plus is classified as a dietary supplement, marketing claims about it must comply with the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. The act clearly states that supplement marketing must not use claims that a product can prevent, treat, cure, or mitigate the symptoms of any disease.

The website in question, at Greater Agility.com,[1] is registered to David L. Cohen at 1 Madeley Ct. in Sicklerville NJ and links to Cohen’s Juice Plus distributor’s website.[2] The Greater Agility website also links to the website of the Humidaire Company, Inc. in Philadelphia PA,[3] which lists Cohen as the administrative contact. A reverse lookup of the registrant’s Sicklerville phone number traces the number to “R. Sirott” at the same Sicklerville address (1 Madeley Ct.) as David L. Cohen.

This latest violation adds to a growing list of instances where Juice Plus has been marketed and promoted for cancer patients, in violation of DSHEA. NSA seems to have made a concerted effort to create the illusion that Juice Plus has some value for cancer treatment/prevention when in fact none has ever been shown. To create this illusion, NSA regularly uses several spokespersons who are touted as cancer experts.

Delia Garcia
Delia Garcia, a radiation oncologist from St. Louis, is a Juice Plus distributor and one of NSAs most prominently featured Juice Plus spokespersons.[4][5] Garcia previously appeared in several of NSAs Juice Plus promotional pieces, including a CD about cancer and Juice Plus entitled “An Easy Solution”. The CD features Garcia quoting dubious paranoia-inducing cancer statistics, particularly in reference to cancer in children, and closes with Garcia recommending Juice Plus for cancer patients. One of the claims made by Garcia, that Juice Plus is ideal for any cancer patient who is undergoing chemotherapy and has low cell counts, runs counter to the general advice of most cancer experts and major cancer organizations and the specific advice of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Clinic in regard to Juice Plus; namely, that cancer patients should not take high doses of Juice Plus or other antioxidants during chemotherapy/radiotherapy because the agents can interfere with the tumor-killing effects of treatment and thereby may increase the risk of treatment failure or cancer recurrence.[6]

“So the distributor who asked me the question should have confidence now to go back to that individual and to educate and explain that our product is good for anybody who’s undergoing chemotherapy and whose counts are low. That’s the beauty of our product.
[quote from Delia Garcia]

"Bottom Line: Juice Plus does not prevent cancer."
"Purported Uses: To prevent cancer -- no scientific evidence supports this use."
"Do not take if you are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy. High doses of antioxidants are not recommended during chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Because radiation therapy and certain chemotherapy drugs rely on the generation of free radicals to kill cancer cells, high doses of antioxidants might neutralize these free radicals and dampen the therapy's effect."
[quotes from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Clinic]

Garcia’s discussion of the Juice Plus research includes a variety of false, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims, for example, that Juice Plus repairs DNA and that the product’s research is gold-standard and indisputable. On another Juice Plus promotional audio clip, Garcia recommends the product as a fruit/vegetable substitute for patients that have become immuno-compromised as a result of cancer treatment, and backed up her recommendation with the false claim that such patients are told to completely avoid fruits and vegetables because fresh produce may carry bacteria that can lead to infection. In actuality, such immuno-compromised patients are simply told to eat peeled or cooked fruits and vegetables to avoid bacterial exposure.[7][8]

Susan Silberstein and the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education (CACE)
NSAs marketing of Juice Plus for cancer patients also prominently features endorsements from Susan Silberstein,[9] who founded and serves as Executive director for the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education (CACE), a dubious non-profit cancer patient advocacy group based in Wynnewood, PA.[10]

Silberstein travels around the country delivering NSA/Juice Plus-sponsored “Prevention Plus” lectures with titles such as “Are You Digging Your Grave With Your Fork”, and has illegally/fraudulently promoted Juice Plus for the prevention of cancer. In a promotional video featured on NSAs Juice Plus website, Silberstein claimed that:

"NSA markets Juice Plus through educating people about good nutrition…and it backs up the product with excellent, independent, third-party clinical research that shows that the product really works, especially in the areas of cancer prevention."[11]

Not only does Silberstein’s claim directly violate DSHEA, it is also totally untrue. No published research has ever shown Juice Plus to have any value whatsoever in inhibiting carcinogenesis or preventing any type of cancer.

Promotional flyers for Silberstein’s NSA/Juice Plus-sponsored Prevention Plus seminars feature promotional quotes from Silberstein such as “I have worked in the neutraceutical (sic) field for 25 years and THERE IS NO OTHER PRODUCT LIKE JUICE PLUS!” The flyers also mention that Silberstein’s CACE awarded Juice Plus with their seal of approval and quote Silberstein as saying “Wow. Juice Plus didn’t pay for this seal of approval, they earned it! - I loved that!" Other Juice Plus promotional magazines also proudly mention CACEs seal of approval.[12][13]

However, it appears that NSA did in fact pay for the CACEs seal of approval and that the CACE is being used as a promotional vehicle for Juice Plus. NSA is a donor to the CACEs tax-exempt Partners in Prevention program.[14] The program is allegedly supposed to provide cancer education and patient support, but in reality, most of the CACEs educational activities involve promoting Juice Plus.[15] Of the events sponsored by the CACE in 2006-7, the vast majority were NSA/Juice Plus-sponsored Prevention Plus seminars. The events were held as far away as Japan and even included 2 Juice Plus National Sales Training meetings, one in Phoenix AZ in 2006, and the other in Long Beach CA in 2007. It appears that NSA is channeling funds through tax-exempt donations to the CACE in order to fund Juice Plus marketing and promotion, and deplorably, received the seal of approval from Silberstein’s CACE in exchange.

Quackwatch, a nonprofit group that investigates and provides information on quackery and healthcare related fraud, includes the CACE on its list of questionable organizations[16] and refers to the CACE as a unreliable source of information on alternative cancer treatments.[17]

CACE Seal of Approval

Steven G. Ayre and Jim Golick (Contemporary Medicine.net)
Dr. Ayre and nutritionist Jim Golick, who pratice in Burr Ridge IL, claim to offer several strategies “to help fortify the natural systems of the body and correct imbalances.” They also misleadingly claim that “cancer is associated with certain deficiencies and imbalances within the body” and that “while chemotherapy can be effective in shrinking tumors, it is only by building up the body’s own defenses that malignancy can be adequately managed.”[18]

Ayre had “strongly recommended” Juice Plus to cancer patients as a means “for the restoration of health and vitality” and, until recently, Juice Plus was advertised on Ayre’s Contemporary Medicine website as one of the treatments he claimed could restore the “imbalances” that lead to cancer. Ayre has since removed the link from the wesbite but continues to sell the product through his Juice Plus distributor’s website.[19]

Cancer Survivors Marilyn Joyce & Bummy Jumonville (NSA spokespersons/distributors)
Marilyn Joyce and Bunny Jumonville are cancer survivors who serve as spokespersons and distributors for Juice Plus.[20][21] It does not appear that either has claimed in print that Juice Plus was in any way responsible for their recovery. Joyce reportedly received an “Elton Award” in 2003 from NSA in recognition of her activities as an NSA sponsored-lecturer/promoter for Juice Plus.[22]

Profits From Juice Plus Merchandising and Distributor Training Materials
Garcia, Silberstein, Joyce, and Jumonvlle all profit from sales of their CDs, DVDs, and audio cassettes, which are sold by NSAs merchandising division, Promo Plus, and marketed as support tools for Juice Plus distributors.[23][24]

Is NSA Buying Cancer Researchers?
NSA and NAI have recently been spending a considerable amount of money to fund questionable research in cancer patients. One poorly-designed study is currently being conducted by Lovell A. Jones at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Jones received $224,950 from NAI in compensation.[25] The study, in ovarian cancer patients in remission, compares dietary counseling by telephone versus a diet that includes Juice Plus Complete meal replacement drinks and Juice Plus capsules.[26] The study, which is non-blinded and not placebo controlled, will have limited if any value, and even though Jones’s research has not produced any published data, distributors are already using the study’s mere existence to promote Juice Plus for cancer patients. Jones’s funding was due to expire on August 1, 2005. Another study is currently being conducted at Wake Forest University by Jennifer Hu, who appeared along with Lovell Jones in a 2002 Juice Plus promotional video entitled the Science of Juice Plus.[27]

Bottom Line

No data supports the use of Juice Plus for the prevention or treatment of cancer.
The DSHEA prohibits supplement companies from making disease prevention, treatment, or cure claims. Report to the FTC or FDA if a Juice Plus distributor makes such claims or directly or implies them.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center specifically advises that patients under treatment for cancer should NOT take Juice Plus

Readers Respond

2007-03-09T14:16:00.000-05:00

From Anonymous (March 9, 2007):
THANK YOU!! My boyfriend has recently been fed all the crap the recruiters dish out - probably with no real knowledge themselves that they are not only passing on false information but in turn making some other unwitting individual liable for the misleading and misguided sales methods that are endorsed. Hopefully with all this information I can save him from wasting his time and money and above all his well-respected position as a health service provider (personal trainer). It saddens me that the distributors are being conned in the first place. As many of you say they appear 'brainwashed', unable to accept that these beautiful lies are just that - LIES!

Reply from the JPRB Team:
You are most certainly welcome and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Fitness trainers are highly sought after as distributors in part because they have an air of credibility on the subject of nutrition and they tend to have wide circles of contacts to whom they can sell the product. It is easy for trainers to leverage their relationship with clients and guilt them into buying Juice Plus, but to do so is an abuse of the client/trainer relationship and would raise serious questions about the trainer's integrity. We hope for both your sakes that he chooses to do the right thing and stays away from Juice Plus. Keep in touch and let us know how it goes.

Readers Respond

2007-02-24T13:46:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Ray and Scott who wrote to us this week with their thoughts on Juice Plus.

From Ray (Feb 22, 2007):
I just found your website and am SO glad---PLEASE tell me what, if any, action has been taken re: Juice Plus as far as notifying the authorities who can DO SOMETHING about all of Juice Plus' untruths. I don't understand why the FDA or whoever continues to allow this kind of thing. I always thought the FDA came down like a hammer on the supplement industry for all the "claims" out there by supplement manufacturers. I have friends selling Juice Plus, and when I try to tell them this stuff their eyes glaze over. It's like they've been brainwashed.

Reply from the JPRB Team:
Ray, we share your disgust wholeheartedly. The FDA, sadly, is overtaxed when it comes to policing false/misleading claims made by supplement manufacturers and they will only come down hard after they have received enough consumer complaints and well documented examples of violations. If you feel motivated, send letters to the FTC, FDA, AMA, Better Business Bureau, and state representatives. Have a look at our Regulations and Guidelines section. If you decide to take action and need any advice, just holler and we’ll do whatever we can to help you. Best wishes and good luck.

From Scott Brewer BSN (Feb 21, 2007):
Greetings. A friend got me started on Juice plus quoting all the benefits from it. Well I started taking it only a few days, then missed a day so I took all 4 of the capsules at night time. That was a about one week ago and I have not been able to sleep for a week. I am a registered nurse so I have some insight to the world of nutrition. I started to do some research on this product, which led me to your web site. Thanks for all the insight into juice plus. If you know of anyone that has had a similar problem (insommnia) please let me know. I have stopped taking the product and will not do so again. Thank you.

Reply from the JPRB Team:
We don't recall hearing of insomnia as a side effect and it's difficult to say for sure which constituent might have caused it. In Europe, the product labels list CoQ10 as an ingredient but it's unclear whether it is also included in the US version. If you try a Google search for “CoQ10 + insomnia” you will see that it is not unheard of as a side effect. You should report your adverse reaction to NSA or NAI, although they are not obliged to share the information or to take any action whatsoever. You might also consider reporting to the FDA. In any event, your choice to stop taking Juice Plus seems to us to be a wise one. We hope you get some sleep soon.

National Safety Associates Ignores University Research Chemist

2007-01-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

National Safety Associates (NSA), the company behind the Juice Plus line of nutritional supplements, has been unwilling to respond to critical questions raised by Dr. Mike Jezercak, a University of Central Oklahoma research chemist. According to Jezercak, a nutritional supplement expert who operates the website “Ask Dr. Jez”, NSA failed to answer questions about Juice Plus he had prepared after attending a Juice Plus seminar, which he described as a “sales pitch” and “pyramid scheme”.[1]

“I asked several questions in the talk, none of which were answered, as the person selling was only part of the pyramid scheme to sell it”, Jezercak recalls. He then went directly to NSA with his concerns about the marketing of Juice Plus and the company’s scientific claims, which were outlined in a letter he sent in mid-2004. NSA did not respond to the letter, which detailed issues regarding the product’s undisclosed quantities of ingredients, misleading nutrient analyses, inflated cost, poorly designed and unreliable research, and the hidden financial interests of product spokespersons.[2]

Jezercak persisted in trying to contact NSA with his concerns but as of January 2007, almost 3 years after his initial letter was sent, he had still not received a reply from NSA or answers to any of his questions. “After letters, emails and a phone call, I ultimately received no response" says Jezercak.

To aid consumers in choosing a reliable and effective supplement, Jezercak offered this general guidance:

1. Good supplements give specific quantities instead of a "proprietary" mix, a pseudonym for "trust us, the people who want to sell it to you."
2. Many have their products tested independently and provide assay results.
3. Products containing extracts are standardized for a given amount of a desired product.

He also provided the following advice on how to avoid dishonest supplement companies:

1. Look for testimonial evidence by users. Ignore these.
2. Look for ravings about the health/vitality/longevity or whatever benefits of a substance that is NOT their product, only purported to be IN their product.
3. Watch for "Doctors" that back a product. These are often people in a group that are interested in profits, not your health.

So how does Juice Plus stack up? Poorly, according to Jezercak’s criteria, since NSA uses the “trust us” proprietary mix and has not released reliable independent nutrient assay data, nor do they provide information about standardization of ingredient amounts in the plant extracts. NSA’s Juice Plus marketing also relies heavily on testimonial evidence by users, raves about the health benefits of substances that are NOT their product but rather are only purported to be IN their product, and features endorsements from various health professionals who are Juice Plus distributors.

Dietician at St. Louis Hospital Slams Juice Plus

2007-01-24T23:48:00.001-05:00

A St. Louis clinical dietician interviewed for an article published last week on the websites of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch[1] and Quad-City Times[2] newspapers joined the growing chorus of experts and critics who are advising consumers against taking Juice Plus fruit- and vegetable-based nutritional supplements. Renee Schwendinger, a dietitian at St. Anthony's Medical Center, warned “the average person should eat actual fruits and vegetables, not take a supplement such as Juice Plus”.

Schwendinger elaborated that Juice Plus fails to provide many of the health benefits associated with fresh fruits and vegetables and disputed the manufacturer’s claims that Juice Plus is “the next best thing to fruits and vegetables” and “provides the nutritional essence of 17 different fruits, vegetables and grains in convenient and inexpensive capsule form.”

According to Schwendinger, Juice Plus can be financially detrimental to consumers: “Taking a supplement to replace fruits and vegetables in diets could result in more money spent in finding food to make up for the lost calories, taste and feeling of fullness of a real food. Not to mention the money spent on a monthly supply of Juice Plus.”

Schwendinger also indicated that supplements like Juice Plus contain excessive amounts of some nutrients — more than the recommended daily allowance — which the body can’t completely use. “Your body ends up wasting that,” she said. “Our bodies only need a certain amount of vitamins and minerals.”

Eating the real thing is preferable to taking supplements, Schwendinger advised, although for those that can’t or won’t do that, she says a better way to get the nutrients is to supplement with a multivitamin. “A single multivitamin will give you all the nutrition you need if your diet is lacking, and it’s less expensive.”

Schewdinger’ statements echo those of many independent medical and scientific experts who have criticized the research and marketing used to promote Juice Plus to consumers.

Sources:
[1] Lori Shontz. Nutritional shortcut bypasses benefits of eating the real thing. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. January 15, 2007.
[2] Lori Shontz. Nutritional supplements can’t replace the real thing. Quad-City Times. January 19, 2007.

TGF-β in Ovarian Cancer: Juice Plus Falls Short of The Real Thing

2007-01-21T00:52:00.000-05:00

According to a research abstract posted on the website of the Texas A&M University System, a 2004 study conducted by Mercy Dickson and colleagues at Prairie View A&M University and MD Anderson Cancer Center has shown that Juice Plus fruit- and vegetable-based supplements do not replicate the beneficial effects of real fruits and vegetables on blood levels of TGF-β in ovarian cancer survivors.[1] TGF-β is an anti-proliferative protein that plays an important role in the cell cycle and may reduce the risk of ovarian cancer recurrence. Subjects in the study consumed two different diets; one group of 10 subjects consumed the Whel Study diet and another group of 10 subjects consumed the NCI diet in combination with Juice Plus. The NCI diet is based on guidelines recommending 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, 20 grams of fiber, and 30% of calories from fats, while the requisite amounts of fruit/vegetable and fiber intake are roughly double with the Whel diet (5 servings of nutrient-dense vegetables, 16 oz vegetable juice, 3 servings of fruit, 30 g fiber and 20% calories from fat).

The apparent aim of this study was to see whether Juice Plus would offer benefits equivalent to those provided by the extra servings of fruits, vegetables, and fiber in the Whel Study diet. After 3 months, TGF-β levels were higher in the subjects who consumed the Whel Study diet than in subjects on the Juice Plus/NCI diet. These results indicate that Juice plus does not provide the equivalent beneficial effects of fruit and vegetables on TGF-β, a possible protective factor against ovarian cancer.

It should be pointed out that this study has only appeared in abstract form and it is unclear whether the authors plan to eventually publish the complete study as a medical journal article. It is also unknown as to who provided funding for the study and whether any of the authors have financial ties to NSA. However, it is likely that the study was funded by NSA, since one of the authors, Gloria Regisford, was a graduate student under Lovell A. Jones at Texas A&M University.[2] Lovell Jones appeared on a Juice Plus promotional/training video entitled The Science of Juice Plus in 2002 and accepted $224,950 in funding from NSA that same year.[2]

Jones’s most recent Juice Plus research, a study in ovarian cancer patients in remission, compares dietary counseling by telephone versus a diet that includes Juice Plus Complete and Juice Plus capsules.[3] The study’s main endpoints include blood measurements of several vitamins (beta-carotene, vit B12, vitamin E) and minerals (magnesium, zinc, and iron), all of which are added artificially as fortifiers to Juice Plus capsules. The study, which is non-blinded and not placebo controlled, appears to have limited value and seems like a flimsy pretext to provide NSA with any research data that that can be leveraged to promote Juice Plus for cancer patients. Jones’s NSA research grant was due to expire more than a year and half ago (on August 1, 2005), but to date no publications have been generated, with the possible exception of the abstract by Dickson et al. It is unclear whether Jones, Regisford, or Dickson sell Juice Plus or have other financial ties to Juice Plus or NSA.

2007 Rotten Tomato and Golden Apple Award Nominees

2007-01-20T14:51:00.000-05:00

The awards judging committee is now accepting nominations for the 2007 Rotten Tomato and Golden Apple Awards. Golden Apples are awarded in recognition of individuals who contribute to consumer awareness about Juice Plus by providing honest, insightful, and reliable information. Rotten Tomatoes are given in recognition of individuals who show flagrant disregard for scientific truth and fair advertising practices, disseminate false and misleading information about Juice Plus, illicitly promote Juice Plus for the prevention or cure of diseases, or accept large sums of money from National Safety Associates to conduct research. Nominees to date include the following individuals:

2007 Golden Apple Award Nominees
Cheryl L. Rock, PhD, RD. (Moores Cancer Center, UC San Diego, CA)
Mike Jezercak, PhD (University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK)
Renee Schwendinger (St. Anthony's Medical Center, St. Louis, MO)
Lori Shontz (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, MO)
Jane Korsberg, MS, RD, LD (School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve U.)

2007 Rotten Tomato Award Nominees
Kim Dalzell (JP distributor)
Eric N. Rydland (JP distributor)
Griselda Mussett (JP distributor)
Karen A. Jones (JP distributor)
Robert G. Schwartz (JP distributor)
Raji Rykert (JP distributor)
Cheryl Lawrence (JP distributor)
Pam Popper (JP distributor)
Linda K. Hughes (JP distributor)
Joan Shumaker (JP distributor)
Lee N. Sheldon (JP distributor)
Lorne Hofseth (NSA-funded JP researcher)

Don't forget to submit your nominations!

Readers Respond

2007-01-17T01:55:00.000-05:00

Below are a few of the comments received recently from disgruntled and sympathetic victims of Juice Plus. Thanks to all of you for sharing your stories and support. Stay tuned for more new content and do keep in touch.

From Anonymous:
Kudos and props to Sir Truth Seeker. Here in South Orange County (CA) we are bombarded with zealots selling their wares as though it were more precious than life itself. Two years ago there was little (although very valid) critical information about JP. Now, in fact recently, the information tide has turned and the truth is more readily available. Thanks for your efforts!

From Anonymous:
My wife tried juice plus. However we cancelled our order, then the rep proceeded to send the juice plus to us and to charge us for it even though we had cancelled. They then proceeded to leave disturbing messages about how serious it was they spoke to us, implying health issues.

From HolisticDoc:
Hysterically funny! So glad to find your blog. It's hard to believe that Dr. Mitra Ray could have said something so ridiculous. She recently defended her outrageous statement, saying that she still stood by it. I imagine there must be a few Juice Plus distributors who even winced at that one!

Dr. Delia Garcia deserves a Rotten Tomato Award #2 for calling the JP studies "indisputable." I see that the panel of this site has made available some very credible disputes from peer reviewers and universities.

However, my personal nominee for a Rotten Tomato Award would be the paternal head of the Juice Plus family of promoters, Dr. Bill Sears. This pediatrician has said on the Juice Plus website (his comments are now removed) that getting nutritious phytos into children by giving them Gummies (clearly a candy) is teaching them to eat fruits and vegetables. That is tantamount to saying that feeding children Nestle's Crunch Bars is teaching them to eat whole grain rice.

I have looked closely at many of the studies and find them to be more than misleading. They are fraudulent. I've learned, however, that the distributors consider any scientific dispute of the so-called studies to be "an inconvenient truth." They are spending good money on a cheap vitamin supplement which lacks many vital nutrients. They think they are getting fruit and vegetable powders but the product contains very little and mostly cheap added ingredients marked-up to support the network marketing structure. Truly, one of the most successful scams in the history of network marketing.

Congratulations on a much needed blog and for making all the studies available to the public, even the ones NSA does not want to publish.

From Steve P:
Truth Seeker,
I have had my own interesting experience with JP. I'm a father of 3 boys. A few months ago, my father started mentioning JP and feeding me the typical marketing BS he got from higher-ups. He would mention it every time we talked. This included giving me a marketing CD, brochures, and absolutely unbelievable claims about JP. He takes it and swears that it cured his "bad case of osteo-arthritis", which I was completely unaware that he had.

These claims include but aren't limited to:
1. "JP is the most researched nutritional product in history"
2. Dr. Sears is “possibly the finest pediatric doctor in this country. A true authority on nutrition.”
3. “He is not paid by Juice Plus. When seeking the truth about the subject of better health you could not find a more credible source.”
4. “The list of doctors who support it is a Who’s Who in the medical community and they are NOT paid by Juice Plus” (I’m paraphrasing here)
5. He claimed that my asthma "can be cured with this product"

I decided to look into it myself and what I found was amazing. Most of it was opinion from respectable people and not nameless, faceless people with a grudge. It was amazing what I found that contradicted what I've been told.

I compiled a 50 page document with the good stuff highlighted where necessary, my commentary out to the side. I'd like you to see it if there is some way I could send it to you.

My research was basically ignored and I was sent a JP postcard claiming my asthma can be cured. Nothing was refuted, even though my rebuttal research was very clear, and could be easily refuted by someone with factual material and not marketing BS.

Then I found that that he sent my research up the chain and eventually to the head of support at JP, Dr. Madero. He had my entire report and in his reply didn't even pick one item out to refute with their own evidence. He just blabbered on about how the Internet is full of opinion from nameless, faceless people blah blah blah. Then he talked about how Wikipedia can be abused so easily. Does he know that Miss JP Julia Havey is guilty of doing that? I'd like you to see that email conversation too if I can send it to you. It's so full of juicy stuff.

From Anonymous:
Over the past couple of years I've been in the company of several people who are proponents of both Juice Plus products and its accompanying business practices. I've heard them in conversation with others about the products. On every occasion when the product or stated research was questioned, the Juice Plus salesperson became very defensive and aggressive. Claims began surfacing stating "I know a person who got better from (name the health problem) by taking (name the Juice Plus product)." Then the Juice Plus person began putting their 'mark' on-the-spot, asking them to prove to them that their claims are not true. When their 'mark' continues to be disinterested or suspicious of the claims, products or practices, the Juice Plus salesperson dismisses them with ominous statements like "Well, I know people that will be around a lot longer because they're using Juice Plus". It reminds me of cult practices and thinking like "If you don't believe what I/we say is true, you're wrong/misinformed/against us." I feel sorry for both parties because one loses by alienation and the other by being accosted.

From Anonymous:
Juice Plus is a scam. Sellers of Juice Plus try to shame you into buying it..."well, if YOU don't want to be healthy, I guess you shouldn't buy it". And, how much do you want to spend to be healthy? It just doesn't work!! Eat the real thing--fruits and vegetables -- like all of the experts advise. Leave the multi-level marketing scams alone. It ISN"T the cure-all they claim and there is NO credible evidence to back Juice Plus.

Juice Plus Marketing 101: Negative Messages About Fruit & Vegetables

2006-10-08T20:37:00.000-04:00

NSA (National Safety Associates) and distributors of Juice Plus (JP) appear to have a love/hate relationship with fruits and vegetables. They hype the benefits of fruits and vegetables but yet it seems that they don't really care whether we eat more of them, just as long as we buy JP. Although the JP sales pitch always begins by extolling the benefits of fruits and vegetables, it inevitably ends with a strongly negative slant against the “real thing”. The negative claims they make about fruits and vegetables include that they are:

Picked too early
Ripened on trucks and in warehouses
Nutrient deficient
Pesticide laden
Overprocessed
Overcooked
Bad tasting
Too expensive
Too inconvenient
Impossible to eat in sufficient amounts

In contrast, they claim that the fruits and vegetables in JP are:

Vine-ripened
Pesticide-free
Ultra-fresh
Organic
More convenient
Less expensive when taken in capsule form

NSA portrays that the fruits and vegetables (F/V) used in JP are somehow better than real F/V, and in fact, the JP distributor’s manual explicitly states that “the product can be nutritionally superior to what the average person eats”.

NSA wants us to believe that they use magic super-F/V that are somehow in a different league from their store bought counterparts, but how gullible do they think we are? First of all, in studies that showed disease prevention benefits of F/V-rich diets, the subjects consumed ordinary run of the mill store-bought F/V just like the kind NSA tells us are pesticide-laden, nutrient deficient, and inferior. These F/Vs were not expressly organic or vine-ripened, and they were presumably picked and shipped to the store in the same way as most other conventional produce. It is safe to assume that some was ultimately eaten cooked, some was fresh, and some was canned or frozen. And yet these were the very same F/V that led people who consumed a lot of them to show lower disease rates in epidemiologic studies.

NSA also suggests that F/V are not beneficial unless they are fresh, but that is deceptive as well (by the way, most people eat fruit raw not cooked). Many studies have shown that frozen F/V retain nutrients very well, and that cooking actually increases the bioavailability of some nutrients, particularly carotenoids like lycopene. Furthermore, the US guidelines on F/V intake specify that fresh, cooked, canned, and frozen vegetables all count towards the daily recommended number of servings (although powdered forms like JP do not and over-reliance on juices is discouraged).

NSA marketing places great emphasis on the impossibility of achieving daily targets for F/V consumption. Promotional claims typically exaggerate the number of suggested servings (i.e. 9 to 13 servings) to make the goal seem even more elusive, and distributors have falsely suggested that the average person may need up to 13 or more servings per day. The current range suggested for daily F/V consumption is in fact 5 to 13 servings, with 7 to 9 servings being the target range for an average person who consumes 2000 calories day. The upper range (13 servings) would be applicable for a large male who is training heavily and whose basal metabolic rate (BMR) would necessitate a very high daily caloric intake (i.e. 3000 calories). What NSA doesn’t mention is that the target range is below 7-9 servings for seniors, children, and anyone who has an optimal daily energy intake of less than 2000 calories. A young child may only need 5 or fewer servings per day, which is certainly more feasible than NSAs implied 13 servings per day.

What about cost comparisons? JP “Health Nites” and “Prevention Plus” seminars make absurd claims about the cost benefits of taking JP versus eating real F/V. They present charts that claim that the amount of F/V one would need to consume to equal the F/V in JP would require buying several pounds of fresh produce at a cost of over 8 dollars. Claims that JP contains the equivalent of 8-13 pounds and up to 17 servings of fresh F/V have been made by some JP distributors. However, simple arithmetic (based on the knowledge that JP capsules contain only about 25% F/V powder and assuming that fresh F/V yield about 1.66% powder after removal of water, fiber, sugar, and sodium) show that the distributors’ claims are fraudulent. The truth is that 4 JP capsules contain only about 750 mg of F/V powder -- the equivalent of about 45 g (one-tenth of a pound or about one-and-half ounces….roughly a half serving) of fresh F/V. Using the retail costs of F/V presented in the distributors’ comparisons, this would correspond to an equivalent value of about 9 cents worth of fresh F/V.

To recap…the amount of F/V powder in JP equates to:

One-tenth of a pound (45 g) of fresh F/V at most, not 8 to 13 pounds
One-half serving or less of fresh F/V, not 17 servings
A retail value of no more than 9 cents worth of fresh F/V, not 8 dollars or more

There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that the F/V used to make JP are organic (by USDA standards), produced with fewer pesticides, fresher or riper, or are any more nutritious than conventional F/V.

The moral of this story, beyond serving as an exposition of NSAs deceptive marketing practices, is that medical science does not yet know exactly why eating lots of F/V is good for us -- it could be the fiber, or the antioxidants, or the displacement of other potentially harmful foods from the diet. Nor have researchers developed a pill-form substitute for F/V that will provide the same benefits. JP certainly is not it, and to suggest otherwise will likely discourage people from eating real produce and reaping the associated health benefits.

The children’s fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk teaches us that we should not spend our money on magic beans -- such wise advice applies equally well to magic fruit and vegetable capsules.

The Juice Plus Professional Support Program: Is Your Physician Deceiving You?

2006-09-16T15:14:00.000-04:00

Some people have noted that their physicians have recommended Juice Plus but apparently were not involved in directly selling it, and that this lack of an obvious financial motive made the recommendation seem unbiased. What they did not know is that NSA has a program in place (the Juice Plus Professional Support Program) that allows physicians to secretly profit from Juice Plus without their patients' knowledge. MDs and other health professionals who participate in the program are encouraged to recommend Juice Plus to their patients and then refer them to a third-party distributor (a so-called “Wellness Coordinator”) to buy the product. The physician’s recommendation appears unbiased and not financially motivated, but what the patient doesn’t realize is that the referring physician receives revenue on the sale from NSA.

In describing why a healthcare professional would participate in the PSP, NSA states: “Perhaps they work in a multi-physician practice where other Physician-partners are not involved in the Juice Plus business. Or perhaps they are simply not comfortable with being so directly involved with the ‘selling’ of Juice Plus to their patients, clients, customers or circle of influence.”

The MDs role is described as follows: “The participant (the MD) personally introduces Juice Plus (using the attached suggested script as a guide) along with a Juice Plus audiotape and a personal endorsement letter. The audiotape is a health education lecture by a very credible and widely recognized medical doctor. It explains why we need to eat more F & V’s and shares the research documentation and benefits of taking Juice Plus. The Participant keeps audiotapes close at hand, in preparation of sharing them with receptive people.”

The participant script advises them to say the following: “I believe that Prevention is the best Medicine. The importance of eating a minimum of 5 to 9 servings of F & V’s is widely recognized. Sadly, most folks have a hard time actually doing it, including myself. Recently I ran across some research on a whole food supplement called Juice Plus. It is made from 17 different fruits and vegetables and my family and I are taking it. I’ve been recommending it to my patients. Would you be willing to listen to this tape? My Wellness Coordinator will call you in a few days to see if Juice Plus makes sense to you, too. Juice Plus is not available for sale at my office. You’ll be able to order it from my Wellness Coordinator.”

And lastly, the participants’ agreement stipulates: “I agree to submit leads to my Professional Wellness Coordinator on a regular and timely basis. After receipt, leads should be forwarded within a 24 hour period. These leads will be generated through both my personal recommendation, as well as, the sharing of either an audio or video tape.”

So, MDs who participate in this program can pressure patients to take it, disguise their financial interest, have a wellness coordinator do all the hassling and high-pressure sales pitches to the leads provided, and then the MD makes at least 20 dollars on every unit sold.

The Professional Support Program is a deceptive practice which runs counter to American Medical Association guidelines on product endorsements. What should you do if your physician tries to sell it to you? Decline, express your disgust, report them to the AMA, and find a new physician.

What Is (and Is Not) In Juice Plus? A Reply to Mrs. X

2006-09-10T15:24:00.000-04:00

A reader recently wrote in to one of our colleagues asking for information about the nutrients and other ingredients in Juice Plus. The reader, who we will call Mrs. X, is a former Juice Plus user who became disenchanted with the product and suspicious about its claims. She referred to the distributors as “defensive and brainwashed”. So Mrs. X, this blog is for you…

In a nutshell:

Juice Plus contains added isolated vitamins.
The amounts of ingredients in Juice Plus appear to have changed repeatedly.
Juice Plus is deficient in many essential nutrients.
There are major discrepancies among the amounts of nutrients reported in different Juice Plus studies.
Analyses of the product’s contents have shown that the nutrient amounts do not match those claimed on the bottle label or in NSA-sponsored studies.
The ingredients in Juice Plus are not organic and are not even “locally grown” or “vine-ripened”, as is often falsely claimed by those who sell the product.
Studies indicate that Juice Plus contains very small amounts of fruit and vegetable powder (a fraction of a serving of the real thing per 4 capsules)) and show that many of the nutrients that are claimed to be in the product are not absorbed.
No studies have shown that Juice Plus contains any nutrients other than those added added artificially during processing.
Juice Plus contains very low amounts of several beneficial substances that are abundant in fruits and vegetables, such as fiber and potassium.

Overview
In the U.S., Juice Plus bottle labels list ingredient amounts for 6 different nutrients (folate, beta-carotene, iron, calcium and vitamins C and E). The amounts of these additives are deceptively listed as the percentage of the recommended daily allowance (aka reference daily intake or RDI) instead of milligram amounts, which would be more informative for consumers (the milligram amounts can however be easily calculated by multiplying the RDI by the percentage RDI). In Europe, Juice Plus bottle labels list 4 additional nutrient additives (as percentage of RDI); i.e., thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), and pyridoxine (B6).

Juice Plus has been reported to contain a total of 20 nutrients. Most of these reports were based on nutrient amounts stated by the manufacturer; however, the nutrient amounts based on actual chemical analyses have been reported in 3 studies (Plotnick 2003; Consumer Lab; GNLD International). As we will subsequently discuss in detail, there was considerable variation in the amounts of nutrients reported in the studies, and the chemical analyses consistently found nutrient amounts that were lower than those reported by the manufacturer. The 20 nutrients and the range of amounts reported in 4 capsules (2 Orchard Blend/2 Garden Blend) are as follows:

Folate: 400 ug [RDI = 400 ug]
Vitamin C: 20.4 – 1240 mg [RDI = 60 mg]
Vitamin E: 38 – 60 IU [RDI = 30 IU]
Beta-carotene: 6 – 15 IU [RDI = 3 IU]
Calcium: 56 – 95 mg [RDI = 1000 mg]
Iron: 1 mg [RDI = 18 mg]
Thiamin (B1): 0.75 – 1 mg [RDI = 1.5 mg]
Riboflavin (B2): trace – 1.3 mg [RDI = 1.7 mg]
Niacin (B3): 0.37 – 20 mg [RDI = 20 mg]
Pyridoxine (B6): 0.07 – 3.5 mg [RDI = 2 mg]
Chromium: 5.6 – 48 ug [RDI = 120 ug]
Copper: 0.08 mg [RDI = 2 mg]
Magnesium: 12 – 70 mg [RDI = 400 mg]
Manganese: 0.34 – 1.8 mg [RDI = 2 mg]
Phosphorous: 6 mg [RDI = 1000 mg]
Potassium: 90 mg [RDI = 3500 mg]
Selenium: > 35 mg [RDI = 70 mg]
Zinc: 0.4 – 4.5 mg [RDI = 15 mg]
Lycopene: ≤ 0.5 ug – 900 ug [RDI = NA]
Lutein: ≤ 0.4 ug – 1200 ug [RDI = NA]

The data above is based on chemcial analyses by Plotnick (2003), Consumer Lab, and GNLD International; and on manufacturer-stated amounts reported by Kiefer (2004), Leeds (2000), and Wise (1996).

Juice Plus Contains Added Vitamins
Before diving into more details, let’s recall the fact that Juice Plus contains isolated added nutrients. This information was first disclosed in a medical journal article by Watzl and Bub in 2003. Incidentally, every nutrient that is listed on the bottle label is an ADDED ingredient and not a component of the fruit and vegetable powders used.

Undisclosed Content Changes
NSA/NAI have changed the product’s composition repeatedly without informing consumers. The weight of the fruit capsules has changed from 1 g (as reported by Chambers 1996), to 850 mg (as reported by Inserra 1999; Kiefer 2004; Leeds 2000; and Wise 1996 for the fruit capsules) to the current 750 mg.

The amounts of nutrients in/added to the product have also not been consistent. Upon review of the published studies, major discrepancies in the amounts of ingredients are apparent. In most cases, the amounts of nutrients reported were based on data provided by the manufacturer, and yet these amounts differed substantially among the studies. There are also major discrepancies in the amounts reported from various analyses of the product’s contents (see articles by Environmental Nutrition, Consumer Lab, Plotnick 2003, and GNLD). One of the implications of these undisclosed changes in the weight and contents of the capsules is that no logical connections can be made between the various Juice Plus studies because, in essence, they all studied different products with different amounts/doses of nutrients.

Nutrient Deficiencies and Discrepancies
Juice Plus is deficient or completely lacking in many essential nutrients. According to the bottle label, the 4-capsule daily regimen fails to meet the RDI for iron (4%) and calcium (6%), while published studies have shown that it has less than 20% of the RDI for magnesium (Leeds 2000), and that it is deficient in thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, and zinc (Plotnick 2003). The Plotnick study, in which an actual nutrient analysis was performed, also showed that the capsules contained much lower amounts of nutrients than had been reported in other published studies that used nutrient data provided by the manufacturer.

According to an analysis done by Consumer Labs, 4 daily capsules of Juice Plus contain less than 5% RDI for chromium, zinc, potassium, phosphorous, and copper. In many cases, the nutrient amounts detected in the Consumer Labs analysis were far lower than those reported by Kiefer (2004), Leeds (2000), and Panunzio (2003) based on values provided by NSA.

And what about potassium? Potassium is one of the important nutrients present in large amounts in fruits and vegetables, and since NSA claims that Juice Plus contains the “essence” of fruits and vegetables, the product should contain substantial amounts of potassium. But how much potassium does Juice Plus actually contain? The analysis conducted by Consumer Lab showed that the 4-capsule regimen provides a mere 90 mg of potassium, less than 5% of the recommended daily intake of 3.5 g! But wait a second…a 6 oz glass of orange juice has more than 350 mg potassium, so if the powdered juice concentrates in Juice Plus contain the essence of an orange, as claimed by NSA, then what happened to the potassium? There are two possible explanations: (1) Juice Plus contains a very small amount of fruit and vegetable powder (a fraction of a serving of the real thing per 4 capsules); and/or (2) most of the potassium that was initially in the fruits and vegetables got washed out during processing, as was suggested by Samir Samman’s editorial comment in the Journal of Nutrition in which he stated “the manufacturer acknowledges that some micronutrients are added to restore the levels of micronutrients lost during processing”.

An analysis conducted by GNLD International, one of NSAs competitors, showed that Juice Plus did not contain any lycopene or lutein. This may seem surprising given that these nutrients (carotenoids) are listed as added ingredients on the Juice Plus bottle label, and since the 1996 study by Wise (a senior executive of NAI) reported large increases in lycopene and lutein in the blood of subjects after 28 days on Juice Plus. However, it would explain the contradiction posed by subsequent NSA studies, which showed no increases in blood levels of lycopene and lutein after 60-80 days (Smith 1999; Samman 2003).

Lastly, there is no indication that Juice Plus contains any amount of certain trace minerals (such as molybdenum, tin, and nickel), biotin or pantothenate. All of these nutrients and many others (in amounts that meet RDIs) can be obtained from a generic multivitamin for a nickel per day.

Juice Plus vs. Multivitamins
What do the distributors say it is that sets Juice Plus apart from a multivitamin? They falsely claim that the multivitamin has dead vitamins that are not absorbed. However, nutrients in most multivitamins are absorbed (i.e. reach the blood stream in significant amounts); there is a wealth of published evidence that shows this to be true and it is the very principle on which Juice Plus is based… i.e., isolated nutrients in pill from. NSA also claims that their studies show that Juice Plus is well absorbed; however this is also untrue. The studies often showed no absorption of phytonutrients like lycopene, lutein, and cryptoxanthin (Smith 1999; Samman 2003) and retinol (Samman 2003; Wise 1996), and even some of the nutrients that are added in bulk to Juice Plus showed poor or no absorption, such as folate (Bamonti 2006), vitamin C (Bloomer 2006) and vitamin E (Bloomer 2006; Smith 1999, Leeds 2000; Samman 2003). And bear in mind that almost every one of these studies, if not all, were funded and/or co-written by NAI/NSA!

In adition to the 20 reported nutrients in Juice Plus, a typical generic multivitamin supplement contains at least 12 other nutrients that Juice Plus has not been reported to contain: vitamin K, B12, biotin, pantothenic acid, iodine, molybdenum, chloride, boron, nickel, silicon, tin, and vanadium.

NSA has never attempted to prove that Juice Plus is superior to a multivitamin in any published study, nor do they appear to have plans to do so in future studies. It is obviously inappropriate for NSA to suggest that Juice Plus is superior to multivitamins when they have provided no data to corroborate their claim.

12,455+ Phytonutrients?
So what other claims do NSA and Juice Plus distributors make to convince people that their product is superior to a multivitamin? For one thing, they say that fruits and vegetables contain thousands of phytonutrients, and since JP is “made from fruits and vegetables” it must have them too. But this assumption is false. First, no studies have ever shown that the product contains any nutrient that was not artificially added during processing. Secondly, NSAs basic premise that an apple contains more than 12,000 phytonutrients is wrong. What is a phytonutrient? “Phyto” means plant, and a nutrient is a compound necessary for or contributing to an organism’s metabolism, growth, or functioning. It is a blatant lie to say that 12,000 different compounds in an apple are known to be necessary for or contribute to metabolism, growth, or function. They should instead have referred to phyto-CHEMICALS, not phytonutrients. But what are some of those 12,000 chemicals in an apple and are they all good for you? Here’s a little trick the distributors like to use during their ridiculous health lectures. They display a poster board and read from a script that tells them to say “this is a list of 400 of the 12,455 known phytonutrients in an apple”. They throw in a lame scripted joke where they ask someone in the audience to read the long list of chemical names, to which the audience responds with befuddled looks and mild laughter. Then they say “does your multivitamin have the phytonutrient listed tenth down in the fourth column?” Of course everyone in the audience concernedly shakes their head because they don’t know squat about chemistry. But guess what the chemical listed tenth down in the fourth column is…PROPANOL! That’s rubbing alcohol!!! Guess what other alleged phytonutrients are listed among the 400 on the distributors placard? Would you believe methanol (aka wood alcohol, which causes blindness), arsenic, mercury, and many other well known toxins such as butanol, acetaldehyde, acetone, formic acid, hepatanol, pentanol, and heptane. If your multivitamin contained the so-called “phytonutrient” listed tenth down in the fourth column or any of these other “phytonutrients”, you would probably be dead! [See Distributor’s Apple Ingredients Placard]

Where’s the Fiber?
“Juice Plus contains not only a far wider variety of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals than traditional vitamin supplements, but also the antioxidants and other phytonutrients -- even the fiber -- found in fresh, raw fruits and vegetables. These varied nutrients in Juice Plus work together in combination to provide you more of the nutritional benefits of eating healthful whole foods.” [NSA promotional claim]

Contrary to the claim above, the preceding discussion showed that Juice Plus has less variety of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals than traditional vitamin supplements and lower amounts of most nutrients. But what about NSAs claim that Juice Plus contains the fiber found in fresh, raw fruits and vegetables? In actuality, it appears that fiber originally in the fruits and vegetables is stripped out during the processing of Juice Plus, and according to the bottle labels, it is replaced with exogenous low-grade bulk fiber added back to the product in the form of date and cabbage fiber, plant cellulose, and generic dried plant fibers. But despite the addition of this low-grade exogenous fiber, 4 Juice Plus capsules contain only a mere 1 g of fiber, according to NSA literature. By comparison, one whole apple contains 3.3 g of dietary fiber and an orange has 3.1 g. The fact that the daily Juice Plus regimen contains less than one-third of the fiber in a single piece of fruit is clearly at odds with NSAs claim that Juice Plus has “even the fiber found in fresh, raw fruits and vegetables”. Furthermore, the 1 g of low-grade fiber that the daily Juice Plus regimen provides represents a trivial 3% to 5% of the recommended daily intake for adults (20-35 g).

Glucomannan: Not Enough to Be Useful
One of the seldom mentioned ingredients in Juice Plus is glucomannan. NSA states that “glucomannan fiber from the tuber amorpho-phallis plant removes fat from the colon wall, and helps normalize blood sugar.” Glucomannan is a reputed but not well proven weight loss agent. However, the daily doses that were shown to be effective in previous studies ranged from 1 g to 3.9 g. Obviously, Juice Plus does not contain anywhere near these effective dose levels. The actual amount of glucomannan in Juice Plus has not been publicly disclosed but rough estimates suggest that 4 capsules probably provide less than 100 mg (less than one-tenth of the effective dose).

What Else is In Juice Plus?
Juice Plus bottle labels produced in Switzerland and the UK list anti-caking and thickening agents as ingredients, although these do not appear on bottle labels in the U.S. Presumably, the contents of the products are the same in both regions and the labeling discrepancy reflects different regulatory requirements.

Juice Plus: Not Locally Grown, Vine-Ripened, or Organic
“If someone already eats fruits and vegetables, do they need Juice Plus? Most of the produce available to us in stores today is picked green so that it can be transported, stored and sold before spoiling. Unfortunately, fruits and vegetables reach their peak of nutrition through vine-ripening. Since the fruits and vegetables in Juice Plus are vine-ripened, the product can be nutritionally superior to what the average person eats.”
[NSA Juice Plus Virtual Franchise Owners Manual]

NSA implies that their product is superior to real fruits and vegetables based on the claim that Juice Plus is made with “vine-ripened” produce. But how appropriate is this claim considering that many of the ingredients in Juice Plus such as algae, kale, carrots, beets, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, barley, oats, and soy don’t even grow on vines and are not picked and shipped unripe, as perhaps a tomato or a banana might be.

NSA and many Juice Plus distributors have claimed that the ingredients in Juice Plus are grown in local farms, processed at the peak of freshness, and contain organic ingredients. However, these are clearly fairy tales. According to a 1996 article authored by a senior executive (John Wise) of the company that manufactures Juice Plus (NAI), the acerola cherry powder, soy-derived vitamin E powder, and algae (Dunaliella salina) powder used in the product are obtained from bulk suppliers in New Jersey and Illinois. Does that sound local-farm fresh to you? And what kind of local farm raised the algae added to Juice Plus? To the best of our knowledge, papayas, pineapples and cranberries are not grown in California, where the product is manufactured.

Many Juice Plus distributors are guilty of falsely claiming that the product contains organic ingredients. Despite these claims, NSA officially makes no guarantees that the product contains ANY organic ingredients. If Juice plus did contain organic ingredients, the information would be included on the label. The marketing value of being able to make such a claim on the label would be enormous, and the absence of a label claim makes it obvious that the product does not contain organic ingredients. And according to the USDA, products do not have to be 100% organic in order to qualify for organic labeling. If a product has 70% organic ingredients it can bear the label claim “"made with organic ingredients", and even if it has less than 70%, the label can still identify the specific ingredients that are organically produced.

How Much Fruit and Vegetable Powder?
Many people have raised questions about the amount of fruits and vegetable powder used in Juice Plus and its approximate equivalence to the real thing. First of all, only about ¼ of the capsule’s weight consists of fruit and vegetable powder. This information is actually listed on European Juice Plus bottle labels but due to less restrictive labeling regulations, it is not included on the U.S. labels.

Secondly, how many servings of the real thing does that measly quantity of fruit and vegetable powder amount to? Chambers (1996) showed that 4 capsules of Juice Plus have the equivalent antioxidant activity of roughly a half serving of fruit and vegetables. But Juice Plus has that degree of antioxidant activity AFTER the isolated antioxidant vitamins are added, so obviously the equivalence is far less than even a half serving! In other words, the antioxidant effect achieved by merely eating an extra bite of an apple every day would be similar or greater than that provided by the fruit and vegetable powder of 4 Juice Plus capsules.It seems that the fruit and vegetable powders in Juice Plus are largely inactive and/or offer little benefit. And for that, NSA is charging $500 a year to cancer patients, pregnant women, kids, seniors on fixed incomes, and many others who can ill afford it. To make these sales, distributors instill fear about cancer, death, cardiovascular/ degenerative diseases, and childhood obesity, and at the same time they subtly (and often blatantly) denounce real fruits and vegetables.

Prologue

2006-09-03T23:58:00.000-04:00

There are many sites on the internet with information about the vitamin supplement Juice Plus, but here you will find something the other sites don't offer...the truth!

This blog is for all those who may have heard about Juice Plus and wondered whether they should try it (incidentally, the answer is no, but keep reading anyway). It is also for anyone who is interested in the pathology of consumer fraud; Juice Plus is a truly fascinating case study. We also hope that some of those who are currently pushing the product on others will take this information to heart and consider finding a more honest way to earn a living. And to anyone who may have never heard of Juice Plus, read on and inoculate yourself just in case a cult-like Juice Plus distributor ever tries to push the product on you.

Golden Apple Awards

2006-09-03T20:47:00.000-04:00

Golden Apples are awarded in recognition of individuals and organizations for outstanding contributions to raising public awareness about Juice Plus.

Stephen Barrett, MD (Founder of Quackwatch.com)
Does Using Juice Plus+ Products Make Sense?
Juice Plus: A Critical Look
Questionable Research by the Juice Plus Children's Research Foundation
Kudos and a Golden Apple to Dr. Barrett for being the first to raise critical awareness of Juice Plus and for putting up with all the mudslinging from angry Juice Plus distributors.

Dr. Bernhard Watzl and Dr. Achim Bub (Federal Research Centre for Nutrition, Karlsruhe, Germany)
Fruit and vegetable concentrate or vitamin supplement? J Nutr. 2003;133:3725
Watzl and Bub were the first reveal to the scientific community that Juice Plus contains added isolated vitamins. This fact was acknowledged in an editorial letter published by Juice Pus researcher Samir Samman, who stated “the manufacturer acknowledges that some micronutrients are added to restore the levels of micronutrients lost during processing” (see Research Library).

"Our major criticism relates to the fact that the fruit and vegetable capsules used in this study, according to the manufacturer, were enriched with pure beta-carotene, ascorbic acid, vitamin E and folic acid, which was not stated in the article...the native carotenoids from the vegetable capsules were either not contained in the capsules or were not bioavailable. The reported physiological effects can be explained solely by the added micronutrients. Overall, the conclusions of this article mislead the reader by suggesting that the mixed fruit and vegetable concentrates increase plasma antioxidants and reduce plasma homocysteine, and subsequently cardiovascular disease risk."

Dr. Rosemary Stanton (Nutritionist/Order of Australia Medalist)
Nutrition: Who Can You Believe?
"To catch parents, JuicePlus also offers gummy bears, also called phyto bears - sweets that contains fruit and vegetable extracts. Their main ingredient is glucose syrup. The second ingredient is sugar. They are, as you might guess, expensive. But the sellers line is “Isn’t your child’s health worth it?” It can sound convincing to a parent whose child will undoubtedly prefer a phyto bear to a Brussels sprout."

R.J. Stewart, MS, RD (Clinical Dietician)
Antioxidant status of young children: response to an antioxidant supplement. J Am Diet Assoc. 2002;102:1652-7.
A pat on the back and a Golden Apple to Stewart and colleagues at St Luke's Wood River Medical Center in Ketchum, ID, whose research showed that Juice Plus gummies consist of 85% corn syrup and 10% beef gelatin and do not offer any antioxidant benefits. Sadly, NSA has not acknowledged this research and distributors continue to promote gummies as being nutritionally benefical for children.

Stephen J. Chambers (Institute of Food Research, Norfolk, UK)
Evaluation of the antioxidant properties of a methanolic extract from ‘Juice Plus fruit’ and ‘Juice Plus vegetable’ (dietary supplements). Food Chem. 1996;57;271-274.
These long overdue Golden Apples go out to Chambers and colleagues, who showed that, despite the addition of high doses of isolated antioxidant vitamins, the daily 4-capsule Juice Plus regimen has the equivalent antioxidant capacity of less than a half serving of real produce. This study was published in 1996 and has conveniently never been mentioned by NSA.

Dr. Jane Freedman (Boston University School of Medicine)
High-fat diets and cardiovascular disease. Are nutritional supplements useful? J Am Coll Cardiol. 2003;41:1750-2.
In her critique of the Juice Plus study conducted by Plotnick and colleagues (2003), Freedman had this to say:

"The current findings should not lead to the general recommendation of phytonutrients for the modification of cardiovascular disease; nor should these findings suggest that the clearly established diseases associated with high-fat or high-calorie diets can be offset by the use of nutritional supplements…If validated in subjects with cardiovascular disease, would such studies lead to the use of nutritional supplementation with the occasional high-fat meal or should we just be recommending a salad with the steak dinner?...This study does not suggest that a phytonutrient or vitamin supplement is the solution for high-fat, low-fiber, low-nutrient diets but instead reinforces the positive effects of nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables."

Denise Austin (Diet and fitness guru)
Can You Get Your Veggies in a Pill?
"Juice Plus bills itself as the "next best thing to fresh, raw fruits and vegetables" and also offers a candy-like supplement for kids that supposedly provides "the nutritional essence of 17 different fruits and vegetables in a tasty 'gummi' form." And the company's Web site is laced with testimonials and research studies. Sound too good to be true? It is — and that's why this multilevel marketing company has drawn criticism from respected organizations such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and MLM Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group that evaluates multilevel marketing companies...The reality is that none of the Juice Plus studies have sought to prove that the product is more effective than other supplements, or better than whole fruits and vegetables...Bottom line: Minus the Juice Plus."

Andrew Weil, MD (Alternative medicine advocate)
"The products are sold exclusively through aggressive multi-level marketing - that is, you can buy them only through distributors who make money not only through their own sales but those of the people they recruit. I'm sorry, but I am prejudiced against multi-level marketing schemes... I've seen the research that Juice Plus has sponsored to validate the effectiveness of its products, and I am still not convinced that they are suitable substitutes for eating a healthy diet and taking a good multivitamin. I think there are better, healthier and more affordable ways to get those same effects. "

Kathleen Goodwin (Registered Dietician)
Dietary Supplements: Facts About Juice Plus
“Leave it to the unregulated supplement industry to cash in on our health worries. Anything that claims to be natural and prevent disease is a booming business today, particularly if it comes conveniently encapsulated with marketing claims galore. Well, that’s just what Natural Alternatives International (NAI), the manufacturers of Juice Plus supplements, had in mind… They have also added various phytochemicals to the mix such as bioflavonoids, anthocyanins, lycopene, and indoles. For the most part, all the fiber has been stripped from the fruit and vegetable powders. Only the 6 vitamins and minerals in Juice Plus have disclosed quantities. There is no information about how much pulp or powder one derives from the various fruit and vegetable blends or what amounts of phytochemicals or other ingredients the products contain… Clearly, isolating a few nutrients or phytochemicals and packing them in a powder does not necessarily provide the results that making the time for the real thing each day does…While there have been some clinical research studies about the effectiveness of Juice Plus, the evidence overall is inconclusive, the research flawed, and the funding provided by the manufacturer of the supplements themselves!”

Rena Bloom, ND (Denver Naturopathic Clinic)
www.denvernaturopathic.com/news/juicplus.html
“Typically I have a simple approach to multi-level evangelists, “Don't believe a word they say.”… Struggling to keep an open mind I started looking more closely. Many of the studies I had read at the office turned out had not been published in peer review journals. Instead they had been presented as abstracts (a process that doesn't entail peer review) at various professional conferences. The company selling the product printed the studies up in glossy booklets. I should have known better and missed the small print… The studies come up lacking.”

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/69270.cfm
“While it is true that nutritional supplementation is important in maintaining health in many segments of the population, particularly the elderly, none of the scientific studies undertaken have sought to prove that Juice Plus is more effective or more bioavailable than other supplements. In addition, no studies exist to compare the physiologic effects of supplementation with Juice Plus and eating whole fresh fruits and vegetables...The health effects of this pricey supplement have not been squarely worked out yet. To prevent cancer - no scientific evidence supports this use; to prevent and manage heart disease - no scientific evidence supports this use…Juice Plus is distributed through a multi-tiered marketing scheme with exaggerated value and cost…This product may not contain the labeled amount or may be contaminated…Some test subjects developed a hive-like rash during treatment…Do not take if you are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy…Bottom Line: Juice Plus does not prevent cancer. There is no evidence to support the idea that the full benefit of fruits and vegetables can be obtained from a pill.”

University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter
Juice Plus—and minus
Juiced Up and Dried Out
“No matter how compressed these capsules are, or what they contain, it’s impossible to deliver the nutrients of five to ten servings of fruits and vegetables in several capsules weighing 800 to 850 milligrams (about one-thirtieth of an ounce) each. It would take two dozen 800-milligram capsules just to provide all the nutrients in six ounces of carrot juice…You don’t need Juice Plus… If your children or grandchildren won’t eat what’s good for them, you might be tempted to give them pills or a serving of “nutritional” sweets. But is it wise to teach them that nutrition comes from capsules, let alone gummy candy? Most kids love fruit and soon learn to like vegetables, if good foods are consistently on the table and in the fridge.”

Al Borges, MD
EMR Update
Dr. Borges' offered sound advice about Juice Plus on his website EMR Update. He referred to the research as "faulty" and advised consumers "don't waste your money"