Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Goji Berry

And yet another fruit juice scam. And again, found it through FB and a friend falling for it.
The link through facebook brought me to this page  http://nr.taislim.com/product.cfm .

I notice this disclaimer after the claims "†These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not... intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

I also notice a logo in the lower right corner saying "Freelife International"

A search for Freelife International brought up some troubling results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfberry Shows some info about it and also some of the problems including a lawsuit agaisnt Freelife. CBC also did a documentary on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU_gjNuaWFw (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjsKbCTEvgo (Part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCZsMf2KB9Y (Part 3)

Of course people who do sell the juice are also reporting on scamming problems.
http://www.talkinmince.com/Art/38385/87/The-Goji-Juice-Scam-Fact-or-Fiction.html
yet you go here and see almost the same article written by someone else...hmmm.
http://www.gojistop.com/Buyer-Beware-Look-Out-For-a-Possible-Goji-Juice-Scam.html

Not sure about the bias of this site, but it does show an abundance of issues which should a least raise a red flag.
http://goji.worldwidewarning.net/

As stated before with the acai berry diet, always beware of products that just use testimonials, as those are anecdotes and most cannot be backed up with data.

And also beware of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM). As shown here with Freelife, distributors don't always follow company guidelines.
http://www.mlmwatch.org/04C/Freelife/suit.html

3 comments:

  1. Please check out Xango juice from the mangosteen fruit. I believe this is a BIG scam and would like to know what you think.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Kandece,

    Xango is a company that distributes it's product through a Multi-Level Marketing format (MLM). This is the same as the above GOJI Berry Juice and also Monavie.

    Although the products are not necessarily bad products, the way they are marketed often comes into question. Often there are unverifiable claims of health benefits (people claiming cures and such) and of course there is the problems associated with MLM.

    I suggest reading this blog about Monavie to get a good indication on how Juice MLMs can be problematic
    www.juicescam.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.watchforscams.com/xango_scam.html

    ReplyDelete