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

We Do More Research

After seeing the CBC video, we sat dumbfounded.

What's going on here? we thought.

We slowly came back to earth and back to our original investigation. We asked ourselves: Don't any distributors understand that you can't bottle raw goji juice with a two-year shelf life?

Deja Vu

Then we recalled that this was not our first encounter with Himalayan Goji Juice.

A couple years ago a family member wanted us to give goji juice a try. This was Himalayan Goji Juice in its straight-laced days before the new "curvy bottle" look. We really weren't interested, but it's hard to say "no" to a cousin.

When we were assured the goji juice was bottled raw by upliner Steve Leaser, a big distributor in Pennsylvania, well, that was the selling point. We decided to give it a try.

We purchased a case. But when we got it, we didn't believe the "raw" story at all. This was obviously not raw goji juice - not one bit. We sampled the juice, but never finished it. We didn't return the bottles because we didn't want to hurt a family member's feelings.

We had all but forgotten about the whole goji juice thing. Until now, of course, when our present story began at our natural foods store on Kauai (see beginning of this site).

Now we wanted more answers.

We call the "higher ups" ...

An idea struck us. We would call Steve Leaser to see if, after all this time, he is still promoting Himalayan Goji Juice as raw. We left a message on Steve's voicemail.

Steve returned the call and said:

It's cold processed, it's not heat processed. The more you study this ... the more you're gonna love it." (Source: voicemail message, 2:15 pm, September 10, 2007)

Wow, he's still selling the goji juice as never heated! We marveled, since we already knew Himalayan Goji Juice is heat processed from talking to the factory (a previous page).

Steve called us again the next day and told us:

The more you study Dr. Mindell's Himalayan Goji Juice, the more impressed you're going to be. I mean, the raw foods community does endorse this product, like I know I had shared with you I guess a year, year and a half ago or so. (Source: voicemail message, 10:15 pm, September 11, 2007)

The raw food community endorses a heat processed juice??

Yes, we do remember him telling that to us some time back. Now we knew something was really wrong here. We know lots of people in the raw food community, and there's no one we have ever heard of that would say a heat sterilized juice is raw.

The entire focus of the raw community is living foods with live enzymes. Of course, heat sterilized juice has no live enzymes.

Now we were more bewildered...

We decided to research the source of Steve's information. We called Steve and told him we'd like to have someone else verify that the juice is really unheated. We asked if we could speak with his upline.

Steve said sure, he'd check with Joe Gentle, a "Royal Ambassador #1" - big time salesperson at the very peak of the Himalayan sales force.

Steve later called in with Joe on the line. Joe was patched in from his boat, somewhere in Arkansas. Steve asked Joe our question:

Steve Leaser: "Is juice ever heat processed?"

Joe Gentle: "It's never heat processed..."

Steve Leaser: "But there's been no heat involved at all?"

Joe Gentle: "No heat, yeah." (Source: voicemail message, 6:08 pm, September 24, 2007)

What?

Joe Gentle

Joe makes $702,926 per year, plus change...

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.

At that income level, is it too much to expect that we would receive accurate information about his product?

How can they say this? we thought.

Of course, the idea that this juice could be "cold processed, not heat processed" would be incredibly attractive to buyers of this pricey elixir, many of whom are sophisticated, health-conscious people who are very choosy about fresh foods for their body.

But we knew the truth: that Himalayan Goji Juice is heat processed!

We dug around for more information...

We went back to our local FreeLife distributor and explained that it just wasn't possible for the juice to be unheated. But again we were assured the same information: Himalayan Goji Juice is "cold processed," "never heated," "100% raw." "Chill blended."

Peter Ragnar, a self-proclaimed wealth building consultant, raw food advocate, and reportedly the upline to many of our Hawaii distributors, proclaims to thousands of his web visitors that Himalayan Goji Juice is raw (view on his site).

We canvassed other people who told us yes, distributors clearly use "raw" and "never heated" as major selling points. Distributors even lambasted other goji juice companies for heating their products.

We also researched distributors who said their upline assured them in no uncertain terms that the juice had never, ever been heated.

But how could a big company like this have distributors who sell juice as raw and unheated? It didn't make any sense to us.

We Google our way to the next level...

We googled Himalayan Goji Juice websites, and there it was all over again in black and white (use Adobe Reader to view PDF archives):

"100% raw, cold-pressed, and unpasteurized." gojirevealed.com

"...processed below 90 degrees Fahrenheit."
"FreeLife Raw Goji Juice..." gojijuicefromhimalaya.com

"...kept in its raw form: alive." gojiwholesale.com, bestgojisite.com

"...cold processed...not heat processed..." gojicopycats.com

Our research found sites that say:

Not Heated:

goji4yourhealth.com
gojiheadquarters.com
justgojijuice.com
goji-grade.com
gojicopycats.com
lennie.zaadz.com
hotfrog.com.au
freewebs.com

Raw:

aplacetobe.com
gojijuicefromhimalaya.com
theonlygoji.com
gojirevealed.com
saraparry.com
tribe.net
gojiteam.com
bloglines.com
goji-passion.com
gojiwholesale.com
teledisco.com
billiondollargojiberry.com
rawguru.com
thegojisite.com
what-goji.com
gojiteamsystem.com
tasteofthegoddess.com
eklbc.com

Never Pasteurized:
(Juice is actually heat sterilized, which according to Aseptic Solutions factory requires higher temperatures than pasteurization.)

gojiberryjuice.us
bestgojisite.com
theabundancegroup.com
sydneymusicweb.com
discountvitaminsexpress.com.au
gojiberryjuice.us
billiondollargojiberry.com
stayyounglonger.com
powerofgoji.com
makemoneylivehealthy.com
gojiwholesale.com
gojiplanet.com
gojiheadquarters.com
gojijuicesource.com
gojiberryjuice.org
energyallaround.com
dreamofgoji.com
goji-biz.net
tpg.com
youqa.cn

And the lists go on and on.

We just couldn't believe it.

Then things really started to hit the fan...

Next: 

FreeLife sends out a smear letter ...

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