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Himalayan Goji Juice:
Secrets They Don't Want Us to Tell You

The Sales Training Talk

We head straight to the top of the corporate ladder...

At first we felt incensed that Himalayan Goji Juice distributors gave out such wrong information about their product by telling us it was raw and never heated.

But then we thought: Who is giving out the bogus information to the sales force?

You see, our local FreeLife distributors are good and genuine people. They wouldn't make up stories like that. They honestly seem to believe what they have obviously learned somewhere from on high.

So we probed a little deeper. We wanted to find out where our distributors got their information. They directed us to a training talk at leadersinaction.com entitled "Manufacturing: An Interview including Dr. Mindell and Peter Reilly, Chief Operations Officer." (Dr. Mindell is regarded as the father of Himalayan Goji Juice.)

This talk was not available to the public. You had to have a password, and we were given the password freedom (This password no longer works; it was disabled after we published it here at breathe.org).

This talk is apparently part of a FreeLife distributor's training library to help get new sales recruits up and selling.

We downloaded the talk, and our jaws dropped open when we heard the following:

LISTEN: Audio Clip 1

Peter Reilly

"The juice is raw."

Peter Reilly is FreeLife's Chief Operating Officer - the head honcho who oversees the factory production of FreeLife goji juice.

Click below to listen:
Source: leadersinaction.com - a FreeLife distributor's sales training site. From audio entitled "Manufacturing: An Interview including Dr. Mindell and Peter Reilly, Chief Operations Officer," March 6, 2007, beginning at 32:44 in 63-minute audio. (Note: Since the release of the breathe website, we can no longer access this talk; the site told us we need "Level 2 Clearance" to hear that audio. However, we have complete copies for our records.)

Transcription:

Questioner:

"I was the guy that had the customer that uh, got this annoying email from California Academy of Health, Dr. Ettinger, and you know, he started attacking us, uh, pretty hard. And so, you know, I didn't hear on the call, uh, if my question was answered or not. Is, you know, is the juice flash pasteurized and is it raw?"

Peter Reilly, FreeLife Chief Operating Officer:

"The juice is raw, and the juice is not pasteurized."

Questioner:

"Is there some reason that we can't say that on the label or on the website?"

Reilly now fumbles his words:

"Well you know what? We ... we ... we ... we do say ... um ... we do not say on the website that we do a hot fill or a pasteurization. We say we use a ... a proprietary chilling process ... um ... you know ... it's ... it's made in aseptic ... um ... technology ... uh ... aseptic plant. And ... um ... the ... the um ... the goji is raw goji. We use raw goji."

 

Update: Since our original release of this page at breathe.org we have uncovered other key FreeLife spokespeople who promote similar claims. See Dr. Sandy Says.

Our thoughts:

Well, there you have it folks. Straight from the top brass at FreeLife.

Contrary to our factory source information (on previous page), FreeLife's Chief Operating Officer, Peter Reilly, proclaims that Himalayan Goji Juice is raw and unpasteurized:

"The juice is raw, and the juice is not pasteurized."

Of course, the juice is certainly not raw. And Reilly does not mention that the juice is actually heat sterilized - at even higher temperatures than that of mere pasteurization.

Pasteurization is performed at much lower temperatures (about 165 degrees Fahrenheit), leaving at least some life in a product (example: pasteurized milk).

On the other hand, flash sterilization is a quick but intense superheating treatment which destroys ALL life - in other words, the product becomes sterile (reference: Aseptic Solutions). A dead product can have a long shelf life.

What is "Raw"?

After hearing Reilly's audio, we decided to talk with the FDA to see if there is any legal definition of the term raw with reference to food labeling.

An FDA representative told us there was no hard and fast definition. But he said that in the absence of a strict definition, the FDA looks to the dictionary definition.

Here are relevant common definitions of the word raw:

• not treated with heat to prepare for eating
• uncooked, as articles of food
• not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

Source: Dictionary.com

If FreeLife execs choose a more creative and vastly broader definition of the word raw, we bet they'll discover their ideas may not go over well with normal, everyday people in the consumer marketplace.

We have talked with several raw food societies, and they feel upset. We have found absolutely no raw food society that would ever agree that a heat-sterilized juice could in any way be considered as raw.

Our FreeLife distributor on Kauai told us that FreeLife is actively working with the FDA to approve the word raw on its Himalayan Goji Juice label. We also heard this idea repeated on training talks that we later perused.

We don't believe this for a minute. This will never happen. The FDA will never approve a heat sterilized juice as "raw," any more than it would approve labeling pasteurized or heat sterilized milk as "raw milk."

You can bet your bottom goji berry that if the juice qualified as raw, FreeLife would have already stated this on their label.

If FreeLife cannot get FDA approval to label their juice as raw, then we feel they should not permit Himalayan Goji Juice distributors to market the product as raw.

Regardless of any hot debates about raw, one thing is ultra clear: the juice has certainly been heated to very high temperatures. So much for the claims made to us in our natural foods store!

Getting back to our audio clip from above:

When Reilly states that his "juice is raw" and "not pasteurized," the next question comes:

Is there some reason that we can't say that on the label...?

Go back and listen again to hear how Reilly dances around THATquestion.

What's this?  

The "Aseptic Plant"

Reilly continues on to say that Himalayan Goji Juice is

"made in aseptic ... um ... technology ... uh ... aseptic plant."

So what is this "aseptic technology"?

Reilly's next answer surprised us even more...

Next page:  

The Myth of the "Clean Room" ...

February 2010YOU CAN HELP US:

Do you feel you deserve a refund? Please tell us: Have you ever purchased FreeLife goji juice - either now or anytime in the PAST - and were you told misinformation? If yes, please contact us. See Goji Juice Lawsuit.

FreeLife used their own employees as test subjects for their GoChi research (we're not kidding). View all four UPDATE pages

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