Juice Plus Scam: Is It Really A Scam?

Juice Plus is one of the older MLM businesses in the arena: it has been around since 1993, and has been going strong in the twenty years since it was founded.  With claims of being “the next best thing to eating fruits and vegetables”, Juice Plus is a series of fruit-derived supplemental powders and pills, which claim amazing health benefits from increasing your energy levels to warding off cancer.  As well as offering the product direct to customers and retailers, Juice Plus also employs one of the oldest multilevel marketing systems in the business, giving Juice Plus enthusiasts a chance to make money by creating their own “Virtual Franchise”.

How making money with Juice Plus works

You can get in on the Juice Plus game in two ways: either by being a Distributor, or by starting your own Virtual Franchise.  A Distributor is the lowest rung available on the Juice Plus ladder: you order a certain amount of the product directly from Juice Plus, and you make a profit on any product that you sell.  There is no commission and no downline, so your income comes directly from the product that you sell.  As an individual, there isn’t much to recommend being a Distributor, but if you own a business that already deals with nutritional supplements, then you can make a profit with Juice Plus by treating it exactly the same way you would treat any other product you sell: by buying wholesale and marking up the individual units.

For individuals, the way to make money with Juice Plus is by creating a Virtual Franchise.  Unlike being a Distributor, the Virtual Franchise does not require an up-front investment in large amounts of the product: you pay your membership fee, and then make money by making a commission on direct sales, and by recruiting your downline.  Members of your downline fall into three categories: Distributors, who buy their wholesale product from you; Preferred Customers, who buy a subscription service from you and are worth more in commission than distributors, and other Virtual Franchisees, who kick back some of their commission to whoever recruited them.

The big secret of Juice Plus

Though its claims that fruit and vegetable supplements lead to greater health seem like a no-brainer, Juice Plus has more than a few skeletons in its closet.  If you look a little more closely at the majority of the studies Juice Plus uses to back up its claims, you’ll find that they come from research groups sponsored by or directly affiliated with Juice Plus itself.  If you look more closely still, you’ll find that most of these studies take proper scientific method about as seriously as Houdini takes a set of handcuffs, with inadequate control groups, dodgy results measuring, and a lot of creatively describing the results so that they seem like they’re telling the Juice Plus story.

Unfortunately, once you look at the few unbiased studies that examine Juice Plus, the result is pretty much the same across the board: Juice Plus has no health benefits whatsoever.  Yes, the Juice Plus powders and pills contain trace amounts of certain useful vitamins and minerals, but compared to actually eating fruits and vegetables, it’s virtually nothing.  Studies testing Juice Plus’ claims of helping with gastrointestinal and inflammatory disorders yielded absolutely nothing, while some study participants actually ended up with adverse effects like skin rashes – and, in a few cases, liver damage.

The final verdict: is there a Juice Plus scam?

The answer is a very definite yes and no.  The “no” is because, just like most MLM-based businesses, you can make money via Juice Plus.  In fact, while buying into the MLM system is still your best bet for making any kind of substantial income, you actually have a slightly better opportunity with direct sales with Juice Plus than with many other MLM businesses.  Particularly if you already own the kind of business that could move large quantities of the product, like a health food or alternative medicine store, you could steer clear of the MLM side of Juice Plus altogether and still actually make a profit.  If you do decide to become a Virtual Franchise and make money by recruiting a downline, the opportunities for income are decent – though, as usual, not nearly as good as the promotional materials make out.

Unfortunately, the “yes” is because, no matter how much product you move or how many other distributors or Virtual Franchisees you recruit, you’re still selling a product that is at best an expensive placebo, and at worst harmful.  At the end of the day there is just no real evidence that Juice Plus has any positive effects on the body whatsoever, meaning that even if the MLM system isn’t scamming you, every time you make a sale you’re scamming someone else.  In the world of alternative medicine that’s really nothing new, but whether you’re okay with it is up to you.

In the end you will need to decide for yourself if there is a Juice Plus Scam.  If you want to make money online without risking any money you need to check out my Top Recommend Program.  Check out the photo below to see how I’m doing with this program.