Most nutritional products like to focus their attention on label claims, but the problem with that is that it leaves two big questions unanswered; can the human body absorb it? If it can, does it translate into beneficial changes?
If you allow me to be facetious for a moment, if I sell iron bolts, I could claim that my product has one hundred times more iron than any supplement in the market, and I have the lab analysis to prove it! But if you actually were able to eat a bolt, you would find that the iron in your body did not change much, and the reason is, the body cannot digest and absorb an iron bolt.
When people buy a food supplement, their primary intent is not to brag about levels of X, Y or Z; they buy it because they expect that it will make a positive impact in their body.
ORAC is in a similar situation; it is a lab test, done on the individual food, but it should not be interpreted as an indication of the benefit it can bring to the user. Interestingly enough, the graph below (from USDA) shows blueberry as having the highest ORAC value, yet it is known that the antioxidants in blueberry are poorly absorbed. One other interesting piece of information; in 2012, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) actually removed the ORAC tables from their website, in their words “due to mounting evidence that the values indicating antioxidant capacity have no relevance to the effects of specific bioactive compounds, including polyphenols on human health.”
Our research so far proves that Juice Plus+® increases antioxidants in the blood serum, and that is the best tool we have to sell it.
Carlos F. Madero, Ph.D. | Director, Quality Assurance