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Himalayan Goji Juice: The Secret Recipe RevealedWhat's in a bottle of Himalayan Goji Juice? FreeLife websites say that Himalayan Goji Juice is 100% juice. But don't think for a moment that this means 100% goji juice. It's not. If you question FreeLife distributors, please do not blindly accept what they tell you verbally. As we've seen elsewhere on this site, FreeLife distributors can and do make big mistakes in the accuracy of information they give you. For example, here's what a top FreeLife distributor told us:
Joe Gentle is a top FreeLife distributor, so why doesn't he know what's in the juice? Joe is a "Royal Ambassador #1" - a top, top FreeLife distributor. According to Joe's web site at leadersinaction.com, he made a whopping $702,926.64 selling FreeLife products - and that was back in 2006. Now that's a lot of juice. We thought that if anyone knows about the ingredients in Himalayan Goji Juice, it would be Joe Gentle. Here's what Joe told us:
The information Joe gave us is far from correct. With his top FreeLife status and income level, is it too much to expect accurate information about the ingredients in his Himalayan Goji Juice?
So, what's in the bottle? FreeLife is not revealing exact juice percentages, but we will. Our research has uncovered the "secret recipe":
(Note: Despite the high cost of Himalayan Goji Juice, none of these ingredients is organic. We at breathe recommend only organically certified fruits and fruit juices - a topic for a later time.) OK, we'll confess. It was not hard to find out this info. We just looked on a bottle of Himalayan Goji Juice marketed in Australia (view label), where FreeLife must disclose its juice percentages. As you can see, there's a lot of other juices in this bottle. And none are fresh squeezed organic juices either. They are all reconstituted juices. The Himalayan Goji Juice ingredients label in the USA states "reconstituted goji juice from fresh Lycium barbarum fruit." But please don't confuse this statement with freshly squeezed juice. What the label is telling you is that although the goji berries were fresh to begin with, they were later dried and then reconstituted. We are puzzled how a FreeLife officer could ever claim this juice as "raw" based on this one fact alone. We don't know anyone in the natural food arena who would consider reconstituted juice as raw.
In Australia you get just 90% goji juice in a bottle of Himalayan Goji Juice. But this does not prove you get 90% in the USA. In accordance with FDA labeling requirements, the ingredients must be listed in descending order, starting with the ingredient which is most predominant in the product. Using this rule, an FDA official confirmed to us that Himalayan Goji Juice with its current label could legally be sold with:
We're certainly not saying this is their US recipe; we ourselves do not think this. Our point is that you have no guarantee there is more goji juice than this if the manufacturer chooses to keep its recipe as their "proprietary secret." If FreeLife wishes to assure consumers of any particular percentage of goji juice in their bottle, then they would need to specifically list this percentage on their US labels. (And why not, if we've already let the secret recipe out of the bottle?) Shopping Tip: This point on labeling applies to all other juices and indeed all packaged food products in the USA. Example: Unless stated otherwise, "Whole Wheat" bread may have as little as 51% whole wheat flour. Look instead for brands which specifically state 100% organic whole wheat flour.
To us, Himalayan Goji Juice does not taste that much like goji. We feel it tastes more like goji-apple-pear punch. "Pure goji juice has taste of a sweet, fruity tomato juice with nut and pleasant acidic tones." Paul M. Gross, PhD Ten percent of what's in the bottle is high sugar fruit concentrates. These sugars are from non-organically grown fruits. You might be surprised: There's actually more sugar in Himalayan Goji Juice than a Classic Coke.
Next: We become the Preservatives Police ...
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