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As we have time I will take a look at the list Karen has diligently collected and keeps repeating of negative opinions of Juice Plus..
Item #1: Consumers Report (whose motto appears to be 'don't believe everything you read') noted that NSA advertised that Juice Plus gummies were 'low sugar'. Perhaps they meant low in comparison to the many 'fruit gummy candies' that one finds on store shelves. I have obtained an empty JP Gummy container and it says on the label there are 3 grams of natural sugars in 3 gummies (1 gram each). I don't have a store bought gummy bag handy but I will try to locate one and report back. Companies do need to be careful about advertising -- apparently 'a consumer' complained. Just for perspective, those big gulps so many students are drinking are quite high in sugar. Is it ok to advertise high sugar?
Tomorrow: item #2
Actually, what Consumer Reports mentioned about the Moderator cut: not allowed Juice Plus ads in which Dr. Sears appeared was: “the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division said in April 2005 that the ads misleadingly implied that the Gummies are low in sugar and are a nutritional alternative to fruits and vegetables. NSA promised to modify its ads and stop calling Gummies “the next best thing to fruits and vegetables.”
According to a study that analyzed the Juice Plus gummies (J Am Diet Association. 2002;102(11):1652-7), they are made almost entirely of corn syrup (85%) and gelatin (10%), so the BBB’s charge seems well founded.
Last edited by Mattie Jo; 11-17-2007 at 04:55 AM..
There's another MLM laying claim to (count 'em!) over 100 research studies done on their products! Imagine that. It is astonishing to me that so many "independent" studies about one company's products have gone unnoticed by the general public. Furthermore, why not just sell these things at stores? If the products where so groundbreaking, they'd fly off shelves.
(NOTE: I am predisposed to question the claims of MLM companies about their products. My extended family hocked Shaklee's Moderator cut: not allowedmiracle products when I was a child. My attitude was formed at an early age.)
Shaklee not only claims more than 100 research papers related to their nutritional supplements, they (like Juice Plus) also claim that theirs are all independent. http://content.nhiondemand.com/shk/b...rchStudies.pdf
I smell a fish.
Lance
Last edited by Mattie Jo; 11-17-2007 at 04:56 AM..
My last post was simply to point that Juice Plus is not even close to being the "most researched" nutritional supplement. (I have found the phrase "most researched" parroted all over the web by JP advocates.) I do not believe Shaklee's claims, but they certainly win the "most researched" race, don't you think?
At first, I was first very skeptical of Juice Plus. I spent a lot of time researching the whole food concentrate. I have read all of the research (the whole article) and there is a lot of great support for taking it.
I compared the actual research articles to what was on Wikipedia and guess what? Wikipedia was wrong in some of their answers about the non-positive effects that Juice Plus has. The people who have answered this question are correct in stating that Juice Plus+ research is funded by NSA (the company who produces it), however, what they don't state is that the NSA has no control over the results that are printed and then third party peer reviewed in multiple journals. In fact, there are at least 8-12 more current studies going on with Juice Plus+ and one of them is funded by the NIH itself. If Juice Plus+ was such a hoax, would the NIH waste their precious time and money on it?
Also, let me state that the company does not promise that you will feel or see any changes like other supplements do. I have been taking it for 5 months and I am comforted knowing that I am reaching that 9-13 serving recommended level of DIFFERENT fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. No matter how hard we all try, that is very difficult to do.
I don't know which company you are referring to that has published 100 articles. Not too difficult to count published articles..The comment about removing water and sugar...was a bit off the mark...you would need to also remove the cellulose and to crush the produce in a particular way to break the cell walls and several other things such as keep the temperature quite low and oxygen free...Dehydrating parsley and grinding it up, eg. would be a start but only a start. NSA (a 37 year old company) has had about 15 years of experience to improve their concentrated fruit & vegetable product -- during that time many other companies and products have come and gone. I realize it's not often that you find people who actually believe in their product and company and so you see ordinary people who are interested in health as fanatics. The anti-MLM rhetoric is a bit old fashioned. As are the negative (or not so negative when you read them closely) articles you cite --they seem to be stuck in the 1990s when JP was just a baby... NSA appears to have taken the best from direct marketing (face-to-face approach), network marketing (which as a business model has been able to effectively deal with issues of geography and hierarchy that have long frustrated growth in both traditional business and direct selling) and the insurance industry (residual income). NSA has developed a hybrid business model which they call a Vitual Franchise. You may not like the business model of course. It comes down to different views of health --eg. when an industry report recently noted that the "use of cholesterol and blood pressure medicines by young adults appears to be rising rapidly..." Daniel Jones, MD president of the American Heart Association exclaimed "This is good news, that more people in this age range are taking these medicines..." (Assoc Press about a week ago). Dr. Jones no doubt believes this is preventive medicine.
According to a study that analyzed the Juice Plus gummies (J Am Diet Association. 2002;102(11):1652-7), they are made almost entirely of corn syrup (85%) and gelatin (10%), so the BBB’s charge seems well founded.
There is a thread somewhere here that talks about the dangers of corn syrup. Thanks so much for this post. I gave you a good rep for your post here.
At first, I was first very skeptical of Juice Plus. I spent a lot of time researching the whole food concentrate. I have read all of the research (the whole article) and there is a lot of great support for taking it.
I compared the actual research articles to what was on Wikipedia and guess what? Wikipedia was wrong in some of their answers about the non-positive effects that Juice Plus has. The people who have answered this question are correct in stating that Juice Plus+ research is funded by NSA (the company who produces it), however, what they don't state is that the NSA has no control over the results that are printed and then third party peer reviewed in multiple journals. In fact, there are at least 8-12 more current studies going on with Juice Plus+ and one of them is funded by the NIH itself. If Juice Plus+ was such a hoax, would the NIH waste their precious time and money on it?
Also, let me state that the company does not promise that you will feel or see any changes like other supplements do. I have been taking it for 5 months and I am comforted knowing that I am reaching that 9-13 serving recommended level of DIFFERENT fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. No matter how hard we all try, that is very difficult to do.
Your post is more honest than most of the other posts. I'm not saying that I think that others have been intentionally dishonest. Rather, they have merely quoted talking points.
Jennifer, I have been to the Juice Plus+ site many times. There aren't that many pages, easy to navigate through all of them. The "Disclaimer" at the bottom explicitly states that the only valid information about the product comes from the site, or official JP+ literature. No bones about it.
Why is that important? This morning I did a search on every page of the Juice Plus+ site (starting at Juice Plus+, Juice Plus Official HomepageÂ*). The words "raw", "organic" and "vine-ripened" (or even "vine") appear nowhere on the site. If the only valid information comes from the site and official materials, why don't I find these important terms on the site? These are oft-used terms that pepper word-of-mouth selling and the blurbs of online distributors. And if these terms are even in other official materials, why not on the site?! This smacks of misdirection. Distributors got these terms from somewhere. They're not making it up. See the dilemma?
Facts: Juice Plus+ is a supplement that includes the concentrated juices of fruits and vegatables, additive nutrients, like folate and beta-carotene, and added fiber. Can we agree on that?
If we can at least agree on that... I take a supplement that has all of that and more! I bought it from the vitamin store, in the "whole foods" section. There were at least three other products so similar to the one that I bought, that it was a toss up which to buy. All of the products I looked at had full disclosure of all their ingredients, how many mg of the various juice concentrate blends, and the RDA/RDI of each nutrient. Full disclosure. And all of the products I was interested were made from whole food juice concentrates, and were fortified with nutrients.
I don't know which company you are referring to that has published 100 articles. Not too difficult to count published articles
Did you read the post? Shaklee. The company is Shaklee. They're the big kids on the MLM block.
And you're right, it's easy to count published articles. Juice Plus+ makes a BIG deal out of the paltry 15 that have been published. Compare that to Shaklee's 100+! I wouldn't trust a Shaklee rep any farther than I can throw him/her, but they claim over 100 research studies! I even provided a link above! Read it yourself. So how can Juice Plus+ claim that its products are the "most researched"? Is it just a gross mistake?
Not to mention, why is anyone claiming that Juice Plus+ is "organic", "raw", "vine-ripened", "most researched" when those terms appear exactly nowhere on the Juice Plus+ site? Nowhere!
Are Juice Plus+ representatives being lied to by the company?
As I have time I am checking the "negative" links provided by Karen:
I started with the "jn.nutrition.org..." The citation is a letter to the editor by Dr.Watzl of Germany who has done a lot of studies of the effects of various plant nutrients in the body. He may have been unhappy that none of his articles were listed in the bibliography of the study --he did cite three items in his letter --one of them being one of his own articles. I was in academia for many years so I know how all that works. It has been public knowledge since 1996 or so that Juice Plus contains some added micronutrients --such as b-carotene from Dunaliella salina, ascorbic acid from acerola cherries and soy-derived d-alpha-tocopherol (I'm quoting this from the 1996 pilot study published in Current Therapeutic Research p. 448). The fruit powder content was noted as 850 mg per capsule and the Vegetable powders as 750 mg per capsule. Dr. Watzl may not have read the earlier study and raised a good point. The authors response to Dr. Watzl's inquiry appeared in the same publication on the following page. I think this Dr. Watzl's feedbabck and the response is an important part of the scientific process. It would be interesting to explore further off the shelf items and compare research.
Shaklee has a plethora of products. Any one item in their catalogue may not have
10 or 15 individually published studies on what' in it, how bioavailable is it, what effect might it have on DNA damage, what effect it may have on endothelial tissue etc.
Also you would want to know if a study was performed on components of the product by others or on the whole product.
P.S. If the product is $39.00 a month, that does not seem like a lot of money to me. I pay so much over that at the health food store that it isn't funny. You can get a multipack vitamin for about that too. I question any product that is actually whole food, and it would be interesting to know if there is such a thing.
Last edited by Mattie Jo; 11-18-2007 at 03:31 AM..
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Juice Plus+
I bought it from the vitamin store, in the "whole foods" section. There were at least three other products so similar to the one that I bought, that it was a toss up which to buy. All of the products I looked at had full disclosure of all their ingredients, how many mg of the various juice concentrate blends, and the RDA/RDI of each nutrient. Full disclosure. And all of the products I was interested were made from whole food juice concentrates, and were fortified with nutrients.