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In 2022, the consumer watchdog nonprofit group Truth in Advertising filed a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau against Juice Plus+ Company, LLC, a multi-level marketing company that sells supplements. The nonprofit claimed that Juice Plus+ has been making deceptive and unsubstantiated claims for years––for instance, saying its products can protect against everything from COVID to cancer. This wasn’t the first time Truth in Advertising complained; year after year, going back to 2016 and continuing into 2023. How have regulators responded?
In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning letter to Juice Plus+ for unlawfully advertising that its products can treat or prevent COVID, and also for misrepresenting that those who join their multi-level marketing scheme would likely earn substantial income. You can totally advertise that your product can prevent or treat any disease, including COVID, if you can provide evidence to substantiate your claim. But there was no such study for Juice Plus+. And the company also had to immediately cease making false and misleading earnings claims.
In 2023, the Better Business Bureau published its report, saying it is incumbent on the company to provide reliable and competent scientific evidence to support its claims, to which Juice Plus+ replied that its claims are based on not one, not two, but 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and invited the Better Business Bureau to check out their website. And presumably, to its dismay, the Better Business Bureau actually did.
Of course, even if a company has valid studies, that doesn’t mean those studies actually support the claims being made. For example, it says its product helps with depression and mood, but there weren’t any studies on depression or mood. It’s the same with claims about brain fog or long-term memory improvement—they weren’t studied. On one of its TV infomercials, a doctor referenced one of its studies suggesting Juice Plus+ might help with weight loss or colon cancer––two things the study didn’t even measure. And the Better Business Bureau raised concerns about the reliability of the studies in the first place. For example, take the “Family Health Study,” which claimed that more than half of kids were missing less school, taking fewer drugs, and having fewer doctor visits. But that wasn’t a study as much as it was just a survey of people who could profit from selling it. I mean, no control group, no randomization, no nothing.
In terms of actual studies they’ve funded, their modus operandi appears to be to measure so many different outcomes that a few will pop up statistically significant, just by chance. Like in that supposed weight-loss colon cancer study. The researchers didn’t track weight loss or cancer, but they did measure 70 other things, and didn’t get a single significant result on any clinical outcome after controlling for multiple testing. The same thing here with gum disease; when you test 54 outcomes, two products, at three different times in nine different ways, one would expect a few random positive outcomes just by chance alone. Or, the Juice Plus+-funded researchers just lie about it. Here they claim, in the abstract, that Juice Plus+ improved metabolic profiles by reducing systemic inflammation and cholesterol. Did they think no one would actually look at the data? No significant change in any of the cholesterol levels compared to placebo, or any of the measures of inflammation, nor blood sugar control. And the only reason their triglycerides looked better wasn’t that they got better in the Juice Plus+ group, but they just got worse in the placebo pill group. And there wasn’t any significant benefit over placebo in weight, body composition, blood pressure, pulse, or physical or mental quality of life. You’d think at least something would pop up as a fluke.
At least it appears to only be a waste of money. Concerns have been raised about dietary supplements like Herbalife and Juice Plus+ that could lead to serious health consequences. Although that is definitely true of Herbalife, I could only find a single case report of liver toxicity attributed to Juice Plus+, and the liver injury was reversible after stopping it. Here are some measures of liver damage spiking after starting Juice Plus+, and thankfully coming down after stopping it.
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