The Mangosteen Juice Scam

By Dr. Nicole Sundene

If you think a $40 dollar bottle of juice is going to cure all that ails you, then I have a mountain to sell you right here in Washington State!

The mountain typically retails for forty billion dollars.

However, if you simply join my pyramid scam, become a distributor, and enroll all your friends and family in my program, then I will generously allow everyone the use of Mt. Rainier for the LOW LOW price of just forty bucks a week. Research shows that mountain climbing is a cure all, as exercise is associated with weight loss, reduced anxiety, improved mood, lowered blood sugar levels, reduced cholesterol, and increased bone mineral density.

Climbing mountains will also likely stimulate your immune system, prevent heart disease, cure constipation, and generally give you a more positive outlook on life! Please contact me if you are interested in making this life saving purchase and enrolling in my program or becoming a distributor!

I’m sorry, but if one more person emails me about mangosteen, I think I will scream.

Mangosteen is a Southeast Asian fruit that is proclaimed to have high antioxidant levels and thus “amazing healing properties”.

First of all from a botanical standpoint, ALL fruits contain HIGH antioxidant levels because unlike the leaves of the plant that utilize the sun’s harsh UV rays to make sugar, the fruits lack the cellular biology needed to engage in photosynthesis. Without antioxidants, the fruit of the plant would shrivel in the sun and die.

The ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) measures the antioxidant capabilities of foods to quench unstable disease causing molecules in the body called “free radicals”. Consistently topping the ORAC charts as the healthiest antioxidant sources are pomegranates, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, and prunes. After hours of research, I have yet to see actual independent laboratory confirmation on the supposed “high ORAC score of mangosteen”.

Furthermore, our commonly consumed high antioxidant fruits can be picked up locally for the most part, and are dirt cheap in comparison to a bottle of mangosteen juice, or other tropical fruit hype like acai and noni juice.

Common fruits are healing enough.

You do not need a fruit from South East Asia preserved in syrup to do this for you, when the same “magical healing properties” are probably growing in your own back yard.

Mangosteen retailers claim on their websites that mangosteen reduces inflammation, heals the digestive tract, cures arthritis, prevents and treats cancer, cures a variety of skin ailments, and much more.

Well you know what?

So do a lot of fruits and vegetables! Why do you think I started Kitchen Table Medicine? Because I wanted to promote the healing foods that grace our kitchen tables.

Let’s take garlic for instance, garlic has been proven to be anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-parasitic, and lowers blood pressure- amongst many other fabulous therapeutic properties noted in the article “The Many Uses of Garlic”.

Now what if garlic was persnickety and only grew well in one small region of the world?

What if some multi-level marketing company manufactured garlic in a pyramid scheme?

What then?

What if we all paid $40 a week for the healing power of garlic?

I think it is possible to classify mangosteen as BOTH hype and help. After reviewing the 73 research articles on www.PubMed.gov about the healing properties of mangosteen, formally known as Garcinia mangostana, I am not completely convinced that it is worth the $40 bucks a bottle. Yes,the xanthones in mangosteen clearly have medicinal properties. But, as a therapeutic agent, mangosteen is more expensive than most outrageously priced prescription drugs! To attain the necessary purported effects one would need to consume upward of $160-$200 a month of this juice.

As a naturopathic physician, I am hesitant to be overly excited about mangosteen for the following six reasons:

1. Many fruits and vegetables exhibit similar healing properties.
2. Mangosteen is extremely expensive as a result of multi-level marketing cost inflations. Quit trying to tell everyone that MLM saves them money! That is brainwashing. Even if you are a distributor, you are likely spending double the market value. In the case of mangosteen juice, it has to be quadruple or more, as mangosteen fruit purchased in Malaysia is pretty dirt cheap compared to the juice sold by MLMers.
3. Inflammation is just a numbers game. Just because you are consuming antioxidants every day, does not necessarily mean that you are canceling out all the free radicals you are eating in your diet that come from fried and processed foods, fatty foods, and meats.
4. I have yet to find any independent laboratory evaluations of Mangosteen such as what may be found at Consumer Labs. Without independent laboratory evaluation there is absolutely no guarantee that what is on the label is what is on the bottle. You could be drinking REALLY expensive prune juice.
5. Juice or syrup is not an adequate delivery mechanism for a therapeutic agent. Diabetes is a national epidemic. People need less sugar, not more.
6. Most juice manufacturers are making juice from the “whole fruit” when the healing components in the research are derived from the rind of the fruit. The white fleshy inner portion of the fruit has no known medicinal properties.
7. You are not buying just mangosteen juice: it is typically a blend of other high antioxidant fruits such as apple, grape, blueberry, and raspberry juice. Manufacturers do not state on the labels how much mangosteen juice (if any) is included.

As a rule I never recommend any products that participate in multi-level marketing.

I am not saying that some may or may not be good, I just won’t promote them because I disagree with their marketing tactics. Usually the first sign that a product is poor quality, aside from being full of food coloring, is that it is sold through these pyramid systems. At the very best they are just decent products that are unreasonably expensive as a result of their over-inflated claims. At the very worst you are paying for high priced CRAP.

If products containing mangosteen have not been evaluated by an independent laboratory such as Consumer Labs, there is no guarantee that what is on the label is actually on the bottle. I follow the latest reports religiously and it seems that manufacturing standards in Asia are consistently of poor quality. Lead contamination being a predominant issue. In addition, Americans should support the American economy by purchasing products that are American home-grown, home-made, and manufactured.

I cannot discount that the xanthones in mangosteen likely have therapeutic properties, but I have to take a minute to be the nature cure voice of reason about this ridiculously overpriced juice. Until the price comes down and it does not cost someone nearly $200 a month to use as a therapeutic, this natural medicine in my mind is no better than an overly priced drug advertised during the Super Bowl.

Mangosteen needs to be bumped out of the limelight by blueberries.

Why?

Because BLUEBERRIES ARE A MUCH CHEAPER SUPER FRUIT! Blueberries have the biggest bang for your buck. Blueberries are delicious, they are a potent anti-inflammatory medication, they are fabulous for diabetics, the pigments protect your microvasculature with their high proanthocyanin content, they score high on the ORAC for their antioxidant properties, AND most importantly, they grow around us locally. Let’s not waste the environment that much more by promoting the gas guzzling shipping of foreign foods when we have local farmers that need our support right here in America.

If you really want to do what is best for your health, as well as the health of our country and our earth, then support your local blueberry, raspberry, cherry, grape, and plum growers.

With that being said, if you can afford a $40 dollar bottle of juice, and you think it makes you feel better, then by all means…drink up! Otherwise, if you are simply looking to reduce inflammation by increasing the consumption of antioxidants in your diet, then eat your fruits and vegetables, drink green tea, follow a Whole Foods Diet, remove arachidonic acid from your diet, and support the agriculture that grows around you locally by purchasing organic foods from farmer’s markets.

Better yet…grow your own!

There is no “magical bullet” people. If there was, I would be on it. Trust me.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, and mangosteen is all that and a bag of organic chips, if so I’ll gladly let one of you MLMers sign me up for a weekly bottle of mangosteen juice for the rest of my life!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen table!

~ Dr. Nicole Sundene

Naturopathic Physician
www.KitchenTableMedicine.com

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