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Juice Plus+
Claims, Benefits: Boosts
the immune system, provides antioxidants, contains all the nutrients
in seven to ten fruits and vegetables.
Bottom Line: No capsules
can substitute for fruits and vegetables, which contain the best
balance of nutrients and phytochemicals.
Full article, Wellness Letter, June 2005:
Juiced Up and Dried Out
If you are trying
to increase your intake of fruits and vegetables, but
you can’t quite make it
to the recommended five servings a day, let alone
the nine a day in the latest government guidelines,
you’ll find plenty of supplements on the market
that claim they can fill the gap. Juice Plus+ products
are perhaps the most prominent. Remember when futurologists
predicted that pills would replace foods on the modern
table? That’s where Juice Plus+ comes in.
Sold
as capsules, chewables, wafers, and even gummies
for kids, these supplements claim to offer the benefits
of whole fruits and vegetables. Orchard Blend, according
to the company website, is a mixture of seven freeze-dried
fruits; four capsules are supposed to contain the vitamin
C of four oranges. Garden Blend is a combination of
ten vegetables; a day’s dose supposedly provides
the beta carotene of three carrots and more vitamin
E than several cups of spinach or broccoli. The Vineyard
Blend offers seven types of berries and grapes, along
with green tea extract, coenzyme Q-10, and a list of
other compounds. The health claims and testimonials
in the ads used to be astonishing, but these have been
removed in recent years. For instance, a decade ago
O.J. Simpson promoted Juice Plus+, claiming it had
cured his arthritis (but then used his “crippling
arthritis” as a defense at his trial).
One statement
from Juice Plus+ cannot be disputed—that
scientists now know that diets high in fruits and vegetables
reduce the risk of chronic diseases, including heart
disease, diabetes, and some cancers. But then comes
the large leap of faith: that the concentrates are
the equivalent of foods—or even better. Of course,
many supplement companies make similar claims. What
sets Juice Plus+ apart from the others, according to
the website, is “a large and growing body of
independent research.”
How independent is the
research? How good?
The studies are funded by Natural
Alternatives International, which manufactures Juice
Plus+. (Whether researchers
are free to publish negative findings is not clear.)
One study in the Journal of Nutrition in 2003 by Australian
researchers found that Juice Plus+ capsules increased
blood levels of antioxidants in 32 people over 15 weeks,
and lowered levels of homocysteine (high blood levels
of this amino acid are associated with heart-attack
risk). But German researchers writing in the
same journal dismissed the findings. The study never
mentioned that
the capsules had been spiked with additional beta carotene,
vitamins C and E, and folic acid (known to lower blood
levels of homocysteine). Thus the benefits, if any,
may well have come from these added vitamins, not the
fruit and vegetable concentrates. How did they know
this? Because it’s claimed that the vegetable
mix in the capsules contains high concentrations of
lycopene (a carotenoid, like beta carotene)—but
lycopene levels in the blood of the subjects did not
increase. That suggests that the substances in the
concentrates didn’t get through, or were not
there in the first place. “Overall,” said
the German researchers, “the conclusions . .
. mislead the reader.”
To take one more example
of “independent research” that
the company says is conclusive, a study from the University
of Maryland School of Medicine in the Journal of
the American College of Cardiology claimed that
Juice Plus+ capsules can reduce the immediate adverse
effects of
a high-fat meal. Just one heavy high-fat meal can reduce
the ability of blood vessels to dilate, thus increasing
the risk of a heart attack. However, in an editorial
in the same issue, a truly independent researcher,
Dr. Jane Freedman, shot down
that idea and said that the study was not “clinically
relevant.” If you feel like eating a high-fat
meal, you’d be better off to include a colorful
salad than to take Juice Plus+ supplements. No supplement
or nutritional concentrate is “the solution for
high-fat, low-fiber, low-nutrient diets.” Juice
Plus+ cannot compensate for poor eating habits.
More
to come
The Juice Plus+ website, of course, does
not mention those criticisms. Other studies are said
to
be underway:
one on Juice Plus+ in ovarian cancer survivors; another
involving patients with head and neck cancer; and yet
another will evaluate whether Juice Plus+ can affect
the progression of heart disease. A “Juice Plus+
Children’s Research Foundation” claims
to be tracking the effects of the supplements in children,
but this simply involves give-aways of the products
to kids, and subjective tracking by parents. A cute
marketing gimmick, but it isn’t science.
As for
the possible uses of Juice Plus+ for cancer patients
or cancer survivors, the website of the Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York has this
to say: “No studies exist to compare the physiologic
effects of supplementation with Juice Plus+ and eating
whole fresh fruits and vegetables. Juice Plus+ is distributed
through a multi-tiered marketing scheme with exaggerated
value and cost.” Such marketing schemes feature
distributors who make money not only from their own
sales, but also from the sales of people they recruit.
There is no substitute for fruits,
vegetables, and whole grains. You cannot “concentrate” significant
amounts of them in a capsule, a chewable, or a gummy.
You cannot turn a blueberry or an orange into a magic
bullet in a pill. Stick with the real thing.
UC Berkeley
Wellness Letter, June 2005
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