Jenny's Juice Plus Journey Comes to an End

It's been a long, long time since my last post and for good reason: I had simply lost interest in Jenny's inane advertising with JP. The same false promises, uneducated claims, attempts to con more people into joining this blatant pyramid scheme, etc, etc.

In fact, I got so fed up with Jenny's crap that one day I just lost it and posted this in response to one of her ads where she claimed JP is not a pyramid scheme:

Within minutes Jenny blocked me.

Fast forward to today. While procrastinating at work, I thought I'd see if her JP group page was still active - no results. Tried Googling, in depth Facebook searches - no results - it has simply vanished.

Jenny has officially packed in with Juice Plus.

14 months of spamming adverts, 14 months of motivation to make it big in "network marketing" and to make a six figure income to buy a big house, flashy cars and luxury holidays, 14 months to go on her own weight loss journey and get that killer beach body.

14 months of life, gone to waste.

In those 14 months I have gone from strength to strength. I have now got a cut diet in full swing, taking into account my daily macros, and I am happy with the progress to date. I've learned valuable lessons such as not overhyping calories, although important, and not overhyping protein (and I am pleased to note that the "protein farts" have disappeared!). Gym work is continuing fine and I am committing to adding in one, two or three new exercises each week to make sure I'm not sticking to the same rigid work-outs.

All of that without wasting money on JP capsules and shakes.

I'd like to think that it finally dawned on Jenny that Juice Plus does not change lives, because it doesn't. Unless you're high up the pyramid in the early days of the company, it's not something that's going to make you rich. But most importantly, I hope it at least makes Jenny consider that maybe the products are nowhere near as magical as other distributors claim they are. Taking capsules and shakes don't make you lose weight. All you need to do is eat less. I sadly don't think Jenny will ever lose weight, I believe she is simply used to looking for quick-fix solutions without ever committing to long-term health goals.

14 months later, she's still obese, I doubt she made any proper money off the scheme.

Here's hoping her next 14 months will be more fruitful through proper hard work, dedication and motivation.

Jenny's £50 Bargain

Do you want my honest opinion, Jenny? Well obviously you don't but I'm going to give it here anyway:

I would say that you are full of absolute crap. For context, the £50 Jenny is alluding to is the £50 joining fee it costs to become a distributor of Juice Plus. Distributors market this as buying your own "business" that can grow into making, as Jenny has claimed in a previous advert, as much as a six figure sum within two years of joining. She then posts to success stories of a number of distributors for proof of the scheme's success.

Here's the problem: Juice Plus is already wholly saturated by distributors.

I don't have figures to hand but already the market is saturated with numerous distributors. In my city alone I have no doubt that Jenny is competing with her own friends in trying to sell products to the same catchment area of people. So before you even think about making big money you have to consider who on earth you have left to sell to.

To compensate, JP incentivises distributors by giving them bonuses for each new distributor they sign up. So, Jenny stands to make a bit of money for every new person she signs up to the company; I assume she would also get a slice of each profit each of her down lines make. So rather than try to limit the number of distributors in her area, Jenny is encouraged to sign up even more. So, instead of competing against ten distributors, for instance, she'll be competing with 11, 12, 13 and so on - and that's without taking into account all the other new distributors being signed up by competitors!

This means that for each distributor signed up to the company, that's one less customer to sell to and one more competitor to compete with.

Jenny wants you to think that signing up for JP for a meager sum of £50 will lead to riches, but doesn't actually explain this business model - and now you can see why. It is an awful model to work with. It will get to the stage where new distributors will have nobody left to sell to. And what does that remind you of? Of course - a pyramid scheme.

Tell us, Jenny: other than your complete failure to lose weight thanks to these miracle products, can you tell us how much money you have actually made since joining back in May? Spare people the smoke and mirrors of fast cars and big houses and show us the balance sheet - YOUR balance sheet.

Funnily enough, I don't think she ever will.

Separating Fact from Reality...

Another cut 'n' paste job from Jenny. Let's start with "myths" which seem to have been made out of thin air:

"We don't eat... WRONG"; "We just drink juice all day"

Who has ever claimed that people who take JP don't eat and just drink juice?

"JP is just another shakes diet"

I agree, that's a myth. It's also a capsules and gummies scheme.

"You pile all the weight back on as soon as you stop"

First of all that's pretty disingenuous; it makes people assume off the bat that taking JP products make you lose weight. That is not the case. You will only lose weight if you eat less food that you currently take in, whether or not you use JP.

"The capsules are slimming tablets"

See my previous post. Jenny outright implied in the advert that JP capsules are slimming tablets.

"It's really bad for you"

Not the issue. The point of contention is that JP products are not the wonderful miracle products you claim they are.

"It hasn't got as much protein as whey protein"

How can you even make this claim when you don't tell us the specific whey protein product you are comparing JP to? Is it the brand of protein powder I use? You have no idea.

"They are vitamins"

The JP capsules are indeed multi-vitamins. Very piss poor multi-vitamins.

And now, the "facts". Oh goodie:

"✅ We eat lots of gorgeous food, it is not a starvation plan and recipes are provided for shakes, meals and snacks"

You can find any good recipe on the internet. JP is not needed to find recipes.

"✅ The shakes are not fruit juice, they contain the essence of 17 portions of fruit and veg in high nutritional powder form but are chocolate or vanilla flavour"

Here are the ingredients for the chocolate shake. I see barely any fruit in the ingredients nor can I even find a fruit-flavoured shake - only chocolate and vanilla.

"✅ JP is not just a diet, we have lots of products for the whole family which have very versatile uses, but they all boost your daily nutritional intake with massive benefits to your body"

They are mediocre multi-vitamins. I get 20 more vitamins in my cheap ass tablets than people get in JP products.

"✅ JP teaches you how to eat and live healthily with a clean eating plan, it is a change of lifestyle and very sustainable"

JP doesn't, the distributors do. Obese distributors like Jenny who know nothing about health and fitness.

"✅ The capsules contain the essence of 30 portions of fruit, veg and berries and they again massively boost your system through good nutrition, resulting in many benefits to the body"

We have already established that this is bunk. JP capsules have four - 4 - vitamins, that's it.

"✅ Erm... How can consuming more fruit and vegetables be bad for you???"

It isn't. That's why people, you know, should eat more fruit and vegetables. Not your overpriced substitute, but real, proper food.

"✅ JP is a whole food plant based supplement which is bioavailable it goes straight into your blood stream and is used efficiently by the body, unlike whey proteins."

I am not even going to pretend I can address this. I would gladly love to see a source for this from any distributor.

"If you want to feel amazing, get healthy and lose weight in the process...

Yal no what to doooooo "

Precisely: eat better, eat less and hit the gym - NOT consult copy-n-paste crap from distributors who know nothing about health and fitness.

Jenny's latest Facebook page number is at 507. Eight more people need to leave the group to each the sub-500 number. I reckon it'll be past that stage by Easter.

Yeah. Really.

Jenny seriously wants you to believe that this lady lost weight by doing nothing but taking premium capsules every morning. In other words, to lose weight, all you need to do is take those capsules and BOOM, you become thin.

Of course, the red flags are:

1) JP themselves do not market their products as weight loss aids. These claims are made up out of thin air by the distributors.

2) Jenny does not explain the content of the capsules and how this works. As already discovered, these capsules contain four vitamins. That's it. I take multi-vitamins with 24 vitamins so by Jenny's logic alone I stand to lose weight by just taking them.

3) No statistics are given for this woman. No weight, no information about her diet, no information about her lifestyle.

4) Without the above information the likelihood of this claim being true is simply non-existent. It is impossible to lose weight if you do not change your diet; if this lady continued to eat the same diet as she had in the first photo then she would stay the exact same weight. This is called calories-in-calories-out (CICO). A magic pill that allows you to lose weight and continue to eat the same diet defies the laws of physics.

5) That lady isn't Jenny.

Jenny is quick to use before and after photos of random strangers but is yet to show us anything from her own weight loss journey. She has been selling these products since May 2015, 9 months ago. That is more than enough time to see a substantial change in your weight, yet funnily enough, in Jenny's recent pictures she is still as obese as ever. So, why is that? How can JP products work so amazingly for some people, but not for others?

Hint: maybe it's because there's more to this lady's weight loss story than taking a second rate multi-vitamin every morning.

Latest Facebook tally: 509. It's still dropping.

So today I went shopping...

And I got myself this container of multi-vitamin capsules from Costco. Not a special brand, not a marketed wonder product, just a bog-standard "does what it says on the tin" multi-vitamin.

You may recall a post I made last month assessing the value of JP's fruit and vegetable capsules. You know, the products Jenny and other distributors market as being wonder products capable of helping people lose weight, fight diseases and have bags of energy.

In this post I am going to compare three different criteria between my multi-vitamins and JP's fruit and veg capsules. They will be price, quantity and quality.

1) Price

Jenny charges a combination of fruit and veg capsules for £37.75 per month for a total of four months. This amounts to £151. The product I bought cost £14.14.

That is a colossal difference of £136.86. Multi-vitamin wins this round in a similar way to Floyd Mayweather winning a boxing match by just breathing on his opponent - it's that embarrassing.

2) Quantity.

So, the pressure's on JP. They have to justify a huge financial gulf with quality and quantity. Quantity is up next.

Jenny's fruit and veg combo deal: 240 capsules. The recommended dosage can be one of the following: two of each a day, as the product labels recommend, or one of each a day. Depending on which method you pick these capsules either run out in 60 days or 120 days. I am going to be nice and assume that this deal is meant to  last customers the whole four months with one of each capsule a day.

Now the multi-vitamin. How many tablets do I get? 500. Recommended dose? One a day. This means, obviously, that I will not need to buy another container for well over a year. If I were to stick with a strict one-a-day routine then I won't need to purchase another container until May 2017.

That is a substantial gap of 260 capsules. By the time a JP customer finishes taking their 240 capsules in 120 days, I'll still have 380 of mine remaining.

So far, my multi-vitamins are 2-0 up. Can JP dramatically come back with product quality?

JP capsules, as I discussed in my post, contain only four vitamins: A, E, C and folic acid. It doesn't matter whether you take the fruit or veg capsules - that's all they contain. The only difference is the level of each vitamin you receive from them.

Compare this to the contents of my bog-standard multi-vitamin:

First, apologies for the quality - my phone camera is cracked, so I have to take funky pictures using the selfie lense.

To make the contents clearer these tablets contain:

Vitamins A, D, E, C, B1, B2, Niacin, B6, folic acid, B12, biotin, pantothenic acid, K, calcium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, zinc, iodine, chromium, copper, manganese, molybdenum and selenium. Yes, I haven't heard of half of those either.

JP capsules contain four vitamins. That's it. My bog-standard cheap ass tablets contain 24. 

And I don't want to stop there. I want to compare the volumes of the vitamins in the respective products too.

In a daily one-veg-one-fruit capsule dose, a customer of Jenny's receives 30.5% of the daily recommended intake (DRI) for vitamin A.

For vitamin E, they receive 50% DRI.

Vitamin C, 79% DRI.

Folic acid, 94%.

Only folic acid gives the customer anywhere near the max needed in a daily dose. Vitamins A and E don't even give more than half.

Compared to a one-a-day tablet of mine I get 84% of my RDI for vitamin A, 83% for vitamin E, 75% for vitamin C and bang on 100% RDI for folic acid.

Again, my cheap, bog-standard, average supermarket multi-vitamin mops the floor with JP capsules.

In every assessment I just made, my multi-vitamin outshone JP at embarrassing levels. It demonstrates that JP's capsules are vastly overpriced and vastly overrated. Why spend £151 for a four months supply of four vitamins when you can get way more for just over 9% of the cost by just buying multi-vitamins? The mind wonders.

On a final note, it is worth a serious reminder that some distributors, like Jenny, massively overstate the benefits of JP products. They claim the products help lose weight. They claim the products help with pregnancy/conception. They claim the products can help with diseases like Crohns and diabetes. I have even read reviews of people who attended distributor events who implied - key word, implied - that JP products help fight cancer. This is simply bunk and dangerous marketing.

The fact of the matter is if JP products really do have the power to fight these diseases and lose weight, then I should basically be Superman by just taking these tablets. But I will still get sick, I will still have ill days, I will still put on weight if I live on junk.

I cannot emphasise it enough. Before purchasing from someone like Jenny, ask them for their own, direct knowledge of the product. Check the contents of the products. Compare them to others. Quite simply, do your homework and don't be misled by salespeople who only care about making a quick buck.

Try before you Buy...

... or, buy before you try.

I don't think Jenny quite gets how trials are meant to work, or at least entice people into doing trials at all.

Jenny has this weird idea of trials being a reduced quantity of the product with a price that is still, in comparison, over-priced. I have already shown that based on Jenny's quantity and pricing structure for JP products, customers won't even receive enough capsules to last for the four months they pay for. That's already a rip-off.

Who, honestly, want to pay £20 for a trial of shakes? How much do you get? How much does it last? How long are you supposed to take these shakes before you supposedly see a difference in your weight/general health? Jenny doesn't say.

But remember: this is a "senior direct distributor" at work here. This is her business and Jenny will be motivated to reach that six figure income within two years as previously claimed. Somehow. Someday. Maybe that includes inflation? Who knows.

Paint me shocked but don't expect to see Jenny on Dragons Den any time soon.

Some Clarity on My Blog

I recently noticed someone left a comment on my post regarding Jenny's JP promotions involving other distributors. The person was concerned with my fact finding regarding Clara and warned me that this could be interpreted as slander, and therefore, unlawful.

I believe I need to clarify a few things about my blog:

1) This is my place to express my views on an issue that matters to me. I passionately believe that more needs to be done to educate people on health and diet, and believe that people like Jenny, who may have good intentions, simply do not help through promotions like JP.

My official opinion on JP is not that their products cannot help with healthy lifestyle changes, I appreciate that they potentially can. I also accept that, in the eyes of the law, their business model is legitimate.

My opinions is that their products, compared to others on the market, are overpriced and overated. This opinion is backed up by critiques of people more knowledgeable in the world of supplements than I am.   My argument is that you can get more value for money by simply buying a basic supermarket multi-vitamin or just eating fruit and vegetables.

I also dispute JP's business model and the effect it has on people like Jenny. Again, I accept that what they do is entirely legal, but that does not mean I have to agree with it. I believe their business model is highly unethical.

2)  Other than when I believe I need to provide sources for factual claims (i.e. the nutritional information in JP products or fruit and veg, or linking poor mental health to obesity), I am very mindful about making statements about Jenny or other people which may indeed be slanderous. I welcome all criticism and will willingly retract any statement that, unintentionally, is slanderous in the eyes of a qualified legal practitioner. 

Most, if not all posts, stem from Jenny's own content on her distributor page.

3) As previously mentioned, I strive to ensure that Jenny's real identity is kept confidential. I would never condone people to contact her to harass her or directly try to affect her business. That also goes for other people I have mentioned on this blog.

It is annoying that in this era people are quick to mention lawsuits if they read something they don't like the sound of. If I have made outright factual inaccuracies, I will apologise and gladly remove them from my blog. But I will not buckle down if it means silencing my right to express my own views. 

This blog is not unique; there are other blogs, far more detailed than mine, far more critical than mine, on JP, its products, its distributors and its business model. If my blog has any hint of slander, then it looks like court rooms across the West are going to be chock-a-bloc with cases.

If anybody has an issue with specific content on my blog then message me, highlighting the specific post and content, and I will happily discuss it with you.

Jenny the "Senior Direct Distributor"

In recent weeks I kept putting off posting due to generally getting fatigued with Jenny's stupidity along with other things in life getting in the way. She has posted a number of typically moronic stuff, but tonight I decided to pick just one to talk about - and that is Jenny's apparent motivation to work her way up the JP ladder of success and big money.

 

Does anybody remember these? This was a UK promotion run by Kelloggs when the Simpsons was all over channel 4 and Sky TV. These were squirt rings that you got in cereal boxes; for kids, these were nifty little waterguns, whereas for parents and teachers they were little nightmares.

Jenny is apparently a "senior direct distributor" for JP. The next step? Sales co-ordinator. What is the difference? Do they get paid differently? How do you earn the promotion at all? Funnily enough, Jenny doesn't say.

I am sure you already know where I am going with this. These job titles are like cheap little squirt rings you get from cereal. They're not achievements, they're not earned, they're not unique. If I joined JP I have no doubt that I too would be a "senior direct distributor" after a couple of months of mediocre sales. As far as JP are concerned it is all about keeping the charade going so that people like Jenny believe they are well on their way to success.

And then you ask to look at the balance sheet. And then you realise Jenny makes hardly any money from this business. But it doesn't matter because she has a nifty new job title.

Also, in a previous post I wrongly said that the Birmingham JP convention is in April - that is false. It is actually this upcoming weekend in late February. Jenny has said nothing about the convention since the turn of the year - has the financial reality hit her? Possibly. We await with bated breath to see if Jenny spends hundreds of pounds of her own money to hear from the people she's paying how to make hundreds of pounds of money.

But hey, at least she got a Simpsons watergun out of it.

The Breakfast Boost Challenge

Another promotion, another list of fantastic claims about the magical effects of JP products.

Yesterday, Jenny launched the "breakfast boost challenge" which, basically, is a two week routine of replacing your breakfast with a shake and taking a booster before dinner. That's it. A JP shakes pouch costs around £20 for a 20 days supply, while for boosters you need to sign up for a four-month supply, costing £72, which... doesn't even last a month if you take three a day, as outlined in an earlier post.

Let's assume you get one pouch and one month's supply of boosters, making it an eye-watering total of £39.50 for just a trial of these products. Is it worth it? Let's look at the claimed benefits.

Weight loss. Ah, that old chestnut. A JP shake with skimmed milk contains 220 calories. That's about the same as my own breakfast of a protein shake in skimmed milk, so fair enough. But, that's it. You cannot say that weight loss will come with the challenge if you do not know the diet of the customer. If your daily calorific intake is more than your daily recommended allowance, then you gain weight irrespective of what you have for breakfast. The shakes can play a part in helping to reduce your intake, but if your current breakfast is around 220 calories then there is no real point in changing it. Calories are king.

Nutrition. Nutrition is not a benefit; all food contains nutrition. A whopper burger from Burger King has nutrition. So do grapes, so does Weeatabix, etc.

Increased energy, metabolism and better mood. Again, these depend on the overall diet and lifestyle of the customer. You cannot say that the shakes and boosters will give someone increased energy if they are not living and eating healthily.

Feeling fuller for longer and less food cravings. The booster can certainly help with this, that is undeniable. Yet, as explained in a previous post, for the cost of £72 for 90 sachets it is simply unnecessary to spend so much money when you can get just as effective products for much cheaper. If you need to reduce food cravings, eat food with fibre. Kill two birds with one stone by keeping your stomach full with something simple like an apple, which also keeps you full, instead of blowing money away on boosters. This time, JP is undone by the cost of the product rather than its benefit.

Calories cut by 25%. This is my favourite claim because it is just so ludicrous and clearly written by someone who does not have a clue about calorie maintenance. You cannot, in any shape or form, make this claim if you do not know the TDEE of the customer. Mine is 2,500 calories a day. If I eat more, I gain weight, if I eat less, I lose it. If I match it I stay the same.

If I cut my calorific intake by 25% I'd have to be eating 1,875 calories a day. As already mentioned, my current breakfast is roughly the same amount of calories as a JP shake. Thus, if I did this challenge and didn't change my diet other than replacing my protein shake with the JP shake, it would basically stay the same. My calorific intake wouldn't budge an inch, let alone be cut by a whopping 25%.

For all her harping about weight loss, we have seen no progress pics from Jenny since the start of the year when she hopped back onto the JP bandwagon. We're already a month into 2016. When, Jenny, are you going to back up your fantastic claims about these JP wonder products with solid, first-hand evidence?

Also, Jenny has another competition going where the person who adds the most people to the group wins a shakes pouch. The number has changed from 523 to... 521. Nobody is adding anyone again, so that shake won't be going anywhere.

We also await to see the winner of the blender for Jenny's January promotion. Considering one person did make a purchase, the blender should have a new home. But, this is Jenny we're talking about who has a dodgy history with promotions as already outlined in a previous post.

Total figures for 2016 to date: members of group: 521. Products sold: 1. Members recruited: 0. Total earnings: £25.

More Magnificent Claims for Juice Plus Miracle Merch

Today, Jenny posted this. Nothing special, just a typical list of aliments and problems that JP can magically solve.

The question is: does Jenny have any qualifications or experience of health, nutrition and exercise?

Answer: no.

You don't even need to be an expert to know that many of those issues are related to each other, meaning by tweaking your diet and lifestyle choices you can address many of these issues at the same time. Notwithstanding "additional income" which is casually slipped in, but I cannot be bothered once again slamming JP's highly unethical business model. Let's address the other aspects one by one.

Weightloss. The number one issue distributors peddle JP products as solutions for. Yet, funnily enough, Jenny has never explained how JP helps weight loss. And I can't blame her, because the official JP channels do not make this implication because they know that, other than the booster product that fills you up with glucomannan which makes you less inclined to eat, there is no real solution to weight loss other than just putting down the fork. If you want to lose weight, eat less. It's that simple and you don't need to spend a penny on anything to do this.

Better sleep. This can be a legitimate problem that anybody could be dealing with. For others, it is simply down to poor life choices. Want to guess one of the biggest factors in sleeping problems? That's right - obesity. Something that can be addressed by simply eating less food.

Better skin and looking younger. I cannot comment on this because, unlike Jenny, I do not claim to have knowledge on things I am clueless about. Again, though, the heavier you are, the older you look.

Healthier. Can be down to many things. Perhaps you have a poor diet. Perhaps you don't exercise. Perhaps you smoke. Perhaps you don't bathe. Etc, etc, etc. It stems back to making healthier life choices which does not require spending money on needless JP products.

Mental alertness. See a pattern here? This can be resolved with a better sleeping routine. They all link together. Furthermore, this 2011 NHS report shows a strong link between obesity and poor mental health in teenagers and adults.

The irony in the rubbish Jenny posts is that a big influence on the aliments she posted is obesity. Jenny is obese. But she knows that the products she peddles are the solution to problems many people suffer from.

The number one thing to take home is if you have a condition - and I certainly appreciate that many, many people out there have conditions and obesity/being overweight is not the problem - then you go straight to a doctor. You do not talk to an uneducated hypocrite on the internet whose primary goal is not your health, but to make money.

This is one of the biggest bug bears I have with JP. Quality of reps, doesn't matter. Quality of products, doesn't matter. Just recruit, sell, make money, kerching - and give people who desperately want a solution to their health problems some false hope in the process.

Another Promotion...

If you make a purchase with Jenny this month you are in a draw to win a Blendactive blender. Jenny has done this exact same promotion before, and considering a winner was never announced it is likely that this is the same poor blender who has been living in that same dark box, awaiting rescue by a poor sap's purchase.

As outlined in a recent post, the cost of JP products are downright scandalous. The supply you get to last a four month purchase can be gone in as little as a month (for boosters) or two (for capsules). Furthermore, I demonstrated that you get much more vitamins and nutrients by simply buying fruit and vegetables from a supermarket.

Let's say you desperately want a blender. Blenders can certainly be handy tools, particularly if you decide to make healthier diet choices such as blending fruit for smoothies or some vegetables for soup or whatever. That's fine. How much is Jenny's blender going for in the market place?:

£19.99 for a brand new one - I saw one being priced at £17.99 for a used one on EBay.

A brand new blender is only 49p more expensive than just one month of a four month commitment to JP's cheapest product, the booster. There is therefore no point in buying an overpriced product from Jenny when the prize, by comparison, very cheap.

I will be keeping an eye on Jenny's promotion because she has made one sale so far this month. That means, currently, that poor sap is currently in a one-person raffle for the blender. Therefore, by close of play this month, Jenny should be minus a blender. Yet, as I have shown in my previous post, Jenny has been devious in running promotions before so may conveniently never announce a winner at all.

Rest assured, Jenny, that Advertising Standards would once again be keen to hear about any suspicious activity with your JP promotions.

Jenny's 2016 totals to date: sales, 1. Recruitments, 0. Total earned: £25.

Juice Plus: even good for "preganant" Mums

As I've said a number of times in this blog, JP do have not a screening process when it comes to recruiting distributors. They do not check the applicant's knowledge of the products, knowledge of health, knowledge of diet, knowledge of exercise, knowledge of, well anything. JP do not care who you are, even if you are an obese uneducated person like Jenny who should be outright banned from giving anybody advice on health.

It's no surprise, therefore, that when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. You scrape the barrel of the employment world, you get the dregs. Thus, you get embarrassing adverts like the above by people who can't even spell or write basic English. I'm not meaning to be one of those grammar Nazis who get anal over typos - my blog has its fair share - but when the level of literacy is so terrible that people still can't tell the difference between "lose" and "loose", doesn't know when to use "they're", "there" and "their" and think that preganant women benefit from JP, I think I have reason to groan. And the most worrying thing is that these are routine mistakes made by many distributors.

That advert is just a joke, but Jenny, of course, doesn't care. Just copies, pastes, job done.

By the way, you know what else works with lack of energy, loss of appetite, fulfilling cravings and low mood? Fruit. An apple. A bag of which from a shop like Tesco costs £1.50 and can last a week.

I think I need to lay down after putting myself through this post...

Without Context...

... things make absolutely no sense.

This is another example of Jenny copying and pasting something without properly understanding what it means. To a casual observer with no understanding of calories and how a person's daily intake varies due to height and weight, this doesn't really say much.

It's true that you don't have to severely limit your daily intake of food to lose weight. To think otherwise requires the intelligence of a slug and leads to anorexia.

It doesn't mean, however, that you can pile your plate with mountains of food, even if it is vegetables like the picture. The fact is in order to gain, lose or maintain weight, you need to calculate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) and eat accordingly. For example, for me to maintain my bodyweight requires me to eat 2,500 calories a day. I therefore know that eating less leads to weight lose, and vice versa, while eating around that figure will keep me the same. That means plate portions have to match those requirements.

Has Jenny heard of TDEE? Probably not. But hey, again, she's the expert selling magic pills and shakes so what do I know about weight loss.

Is the Cost of Juice Plus Products Worth It?

 Jenny has finally given us an idea of how much she charges for JP products. Right off the bat the rates are ridiculous in terms of quantity. The boosters - the cheapest product on offer at £78 for four months - would barely last someone three months if they only took one a day. If someone did take three a day, as JP distributors recommend, then the customer would be out of boosters within a month. That is absolutely insane.

This post, meanwhile, is focussing on the fruit and vegetable capsules that are the biggest priced products in the menu. At £37.75 Jenny is charging people £151 for four months supply of fruit and veg capsules, 120 of each. With the recommended dosage being two of each a day, a dedicated customer taking these capsules would be finished in just under two months - 60 days - with a whole two months to go of paying money for absolutely nothing.

Edit 27th February 2016: This is based on the respective products' two capsules per day instruction which would mean four a day overall. If it is one capsule of each a day, the number would even out to 120 days.

Clearly it hasn't taken much effort to demonstrate that JP is a phenomenal rip-off in quantity alone, with their products woefully understocked to cover a four month period that customers have to sign up for. The question now is about what quality? Could it be that the four month fee isn't earned by the amount of capsules you take, but the results?

Here are the vitamins and nutrients you get in JP fruit and veg capsules:

The fruit capsules contain vitamin C, E, A and folic acid.

And the veg capsules contain vitamins C, E, A and... folic acid. Just like the fruit capsules.

Right away other than variance in the amount of each vitamin in the respective capsules, we can see that regardless of them being fruit or veg capsules they both contain the exact same vitamins. It begs the question over what exactly is the difference between fruit and veg capsules.

Jenny wants you to buy these capsules from her for £151. But me being me, like most sane people out there, I'm confident that I can get a much better deal for cheaper. So let's go shopping.

I looked up "apples" in Tesco and found this:

Let's be harsh and assume that each bag of Tesco apples contains the minimum of five. At £1.50 a bag a total number of apples, assuming I eat one a day for four months (as is the case for Jenny's capsules period) would cost me a total of £25.50. I'd actually get stock to last me the whole period and it costs £12.25 cheaper than just one month of Jenny's capsules.

Comparing the vitamins between a regular apple and JP capsules is just embarrassing. There are so, so many nutrients and vitamins in an apple that I have to link you directly to the table because it is far too big for me to put in this blog. But hey, why spend less money for more bang for your buck when you can buy capsules from Jenny?

The same goes for vegetables too. I used my old favourite, broccoli, as the benchmark:

 I get about two meals worth from one loose head of broccoli. Let's assume in an average seven day week I go through four heads, meaning a total of £2.12 a week spent on broccoli.

Overall, in four months, I'd spend £36.04 on broccoli.

Is it worth it? You decide.

Overall, combined, a four month's supply of apples and broccoli comes to £61.54, or, just under £15.38 a month. That's not just cheaper than the fruit and veg capsules, that's cheaper than the boosters. If you had a good look at the nutrients in apples and broccoli, you'd also see that they both contain fibre which does the exact same job as glucomannan in the boosters. So basically, you get all the benefits of Juice Plus products for even cheaper than their cheapest product.

This is a slam-dunk against the overpriced rubbish that JP sells. I am not meaning to say that JP capsules cannot act as supplement for healthy diets, certainly not. I am saying that it is so, so unnecessary when you get much more for your money by just buying fruit and veg from the supermarket. It really doesn't take much effort to grab an apple for a snack or chop up some broccoli for a stir-fry.

It also ends the myth that people cannot afford to eat healthy. £1.50 for a week's worth of apples is cheaper than two large Mars bars. It's cheaper than a pizza. It's marginally more expensive than a single bottle of coke. There is no excuses here, whatsoever.

But don't tell Jenny. Clearly the health expert that is our obese distributor who has taken eight months since joining the scam to start taking weight loss seriously knows more about a guy on the internet who bothered to research the facts.

Unsurprisingly, Jenny hasn't made a sale. She hasn't made more recruitment. As such, our distributor who should be earning a six figure income by May 2017 has made £25 so far in 2016. Fantastic for the first half of the first month of the year.

Eight months after joining Juice Plus...

... Jenny has decided it's time to start taking her weight loss plan seriously.

For context, Jenny is engaged and planning for a wedding. Taking aside her JP antics, that is fantastic news and I hope when the day comes she, her fiancé, friends and loved ones have a wonderful day. Naturally, Jenny is thinking about how she will look in her wedding dress and suddenly the issue of losing weight becomes more of a priority.

But to say that she has "started" to do something about it EIGHT MONTHS after joining JP does not fill me with confidence. How can someone who has been promoting health products and the idea that she can help people on their weight loss journey take so long to address her own obesity? That is absurd. It is like an alcoholic helping others go dry in between swigs of beer and vodka.

The problem here is that it is highly likely based on Jenny's past history that her motivation will die away and her usual habits will remain. The clearest indication of this is the simple fact that her mind is focused on the wedding dress; it is all about looking good for one day. Yet the most frustrating aspect about this is the one thing Jenny seems to have no problem being motivated for... is JP. Eight months into this scam and she still believes this is an excellent business opportunity, oblivious to the blatant red flags that this is a pyramid scheme.

Short-termism is a common mistake by people, particularly new years resolutioners, who commit to weight loss and fitness without properly understanding that this has to be a lifestyle change. It can't just be for the sake of looking good at a wedding. To look good and feel good you have to commit to a diet where you cannot "cheat" pretty much every day. Want to build muscle? You need to go to the gym on a fairly regular basis.

Which brings me back to JP. For all the capsules, shakes and boosters people like Jenny has consumed and spent money on, she's made no progress whatsoever. If anything she is even more obese than when she started this charade. I, meanwhile, have spent not a penny on JP products and am in the best shape of my life - simply by counting my calories, eating a decent diet and going to the gym three times a week.

It would be fantastic to see Jenny lose the weight, be ready for her wedding and generally become a more healthier person with a better understanding of exercise and nutrition, but sadly I do not see it happening. While she remains wrapped up in this JP nonsense, she will continue to be played like a fiddle. And that's just sad.

Total 2016 sales to date: 1. Recruitments: 0 Total page followers: 530.

New Promotion, Same Old Result

And by 5pm her number had changed from 532 people...

To 531.

Jenny also linked a video to a Juice Plus distributor explaining how to do the complex thing of how to open a sachet and consume the booster. Real rocket science stuff. Yet Carly, the distributor, also mentions that boosters come in boxes of 90 sachets with an average cost of 80p each, recommending that you take up to three a day.

That means for a box of boosters a person needs to pay about £72. For that box alone, someone is spending more than I personally spend on my gym membership and chicken that lasts me about a month (bulk buy, freeze, basically live on chicken).

Considering the contents of the booster as outlined in my previous post, namely that it is basically nothing more than glucomannan, that is an extortionate price to pay for a simple product. And, as with all JP products, it is an unnecessary waste of money for the same effects you can get for cheaper.

The booster's purpose is to make you feel full, thus be less inclined to overeat and put on weight. Yet eating fruit does the same thing because it contains fibre, which also fills you up. Heck, you can even lose weight for free by using that little thing called willpower. If your willpower is that weak that you'd rather spend £72 on over-hyped boosters, then even with them you are still destined to fail. Willpower, above all else, decides if you lose weight or not, decides if you stick to the gym or not, decides if you eat cake or salad or not. It's that simple, no magic product required.

But try telling that to Jenny, who has no willpower. At the time of typing she is now offering a "trial" period of boosters for £19. She does not mention how many sachets this includes, but by the average cost of 80p a sachet that should come to about 23 sachets, lasting someone just over a week on three a day. I don't think Jenny quite understands that a "trial" is meant to be a much reduced price for a genuine attempt at the product, not simply selling for roughly the same price for a reduced quantity. But hey, what do I know about business.

At this point I'd simply wrap things up but a further twist occurred: Jenny actually made a sale. In honour of Jenny's wonderful achievement I will now finish every post with a tally of Jenny's total sales and distributor recruitments for 2016. To date, this year Jenny has made one sale and no recruitments. To also measure the effects of this super-awesome money making business venture we'll be extra nice to Jenny and assume that every sale she makes is a premium JP product to the cost of £50, where she gets £25 commission (ignoring tax for argument's sake). Every recruitment we'll give her £25 as half of the £50 joining fee.

Thus, so far in 2016 Jenny has made £25 from her JP "company". Stay tuned to find out how long it takes our entrepreneur to reach that six figure income within two years of joining - this May will be the halfway point!

Jenny's Barmy Booster Bravado

Today, Jenny posted this:

I've included her member count to demonstrate that her claim, as if you didn't know, runs completely against reality. The fact is that her Facebook page number is still going down; at the start of the year it was at 537. This means that Jenny's losing on average a person a day so far this year. But sure, don't let that change your sales pitch.

You've no doubt read in my past posts a number of times where I have mentioned the booster, JP's wonder product that Jenny treats like manna from heaven. But what, exactly, is the booster?

Allow me to finally explain. JP's booster is nothing more than glucomannan and caffeine as you can see in their own product description. Glucomannan is used as a dietary supplement to help reduce hunger cravings, thus companies like JP use them in their weight loss products. The cost of this product is anyone's guess - Jenny has never mentioned how much she charges for them - but I have no doubt that it will be excessive for what the product is really worth.

The saddest thing here is that if Jenny ever bothered researching nutrition then she would realise that she can get this booster product for much cheaper. It is called - guess what - fruit. You know, the very stuff that JP markets its products as containing.

The difference between fruit and JP products is that fruit contains fibre which glucomannan acts as a substitute for. That is why it isn't rocket science to pick an apple over a chocolate bar when you're hungry; the fibre adds to the snack and makes you less hungry during the day. That's why I, personally, always have grapes in the fridge if I ever have an urge to snack. JP inexplicably doesn't think fibre is helpful so extract it from their capsules to keep a handful of vitamins. I have just checked their shakes, however, that do contain fibre.

So in summary, once again, JP are marketing products that are simply unnecessary if someone is committed to weight loss. I am not denying that the booster could help someone with weight loss if it was marketed at a more appropriate price. Unfortunately, as is typical of JP, the wellbeing of people comes secondary to profit and distributors like Jenny are encouraged to sell these boosters for as high a price as they can get away with. Meanwhile, fruit is conveniently never mentioned which does the exact same job for cheaper (and more tastier to boot).

So will Jenny get orders? I doubt it. I believe she sold a few last time the boosters were stocked but otherwise as shown earlier in this post people are continuing to leave the page and her posts remain unanswered.

On a final note, remember her £100 raffle prize for December orders? A winner was never declared. I don't think it's because this was a scam, I think it was because she did not receive a single order in the whole month. But no worries, Jenny will get super marketing tips when she makes that Birmingham "business trip" in April.

More "Testimonies" from Juice Plus

Recently Jenny has got back onto the wagon in line with her New Years resolution, declaring that she is back on the JP capsules and adding a booster drink to her lunches. She doesn't exactly mention what else is included in her lunches or what she eats on a daily basis. As such, it probably means these capsules and shakes will make no impact if Jenny continues to overeat.

Anyway, in the last week Jenny has posted two more testimonies to encourage people to take on the shakes. The first one isn't a stranger to my blog; it is Clara's before and after photos complete with a cringey message from Jenny:

 

 

I have already written about Clara in previous blogs as she appears to be the golden girl of the JP branch for this area. Basically she was overweight and lost it thanks to JP. She then, inspired by these products, got involved as a distributor,made barrel loads of money (which led to a big house, fancy car, early retirement for both herself and her husband) and is now determined to help other distributors achieve their dream of making big money in the franchise.

It's frankly rich that Jenny, who is obese, can dictate to people that there are "no excuses" for not losing weight. Yes, that's Jenny saying so. If Clara's only problems were maintaining a house and taking care of two children, then gosh what a poor hard done by little soul. There's working parents out there, many of whom are single, who have to work as well as take care of the kids and home and yet a number of them have no problem whatsoever in losing or maintaining a healthy weight. It's all to do with willpower. If Clara's only problems were that of a simple housewife then frankly it's shameful that she was even fat in the first place.

Jenny then linked to a testimony made by a man I shall call Dave. I'd do my usual quote-n-dissect routine but there's too much text, many of which doesn't really say anything. I'll just summarise Dave's key points.

Basically, Dave says he wants to address the concerns raised by the "pyramid scheme" that is JP. Right away he had my attention; was somebody finally going to explain how JP is not a scam? Well, sadly no, Dave doesn't address this issue.

He starts by saying that he is a level three nutritional PT, master PT and a GP referrel (?). Basically, look at me, I'm a fitness person. Dave then says this which should be a massive red flag to anyone:

"I don't understand science studies so I asked someone who did to check them out to which they said were VERY impressive."

Okay. So Dave, despite listing qualifications to make himself sound an authority on health and nutrition, couldn't understand the JP studies on the products. He got a mysterious person to read them for him, who were then impressed with the findings. Right okay, that definitely happened.

Regarding the sugar content in JP shakes Dave says:

"The "high" sugar content, we can all use lovely technical terms and explain things that go on inside the body but let me keep this simple.
It is from natral sources
If you picked a mango from a tree strawberries from a field you wouldn't know or worry about the grams of natural sugar"

That's not a "lovely technical term", it's plain English. High means "a lot of", sugar means sugar, "content" is what it contains. If you think that is difficult for the everyday person to understand then I dread to think of British standards of English.

The real issue however is when Dave says "you wouldn't know or worry about the grams of natural sugar". That's just an outright lie. 100 grams worth of mango has 14 grams of sugar; 100 grams of strawberries have 4.9 grams. I found that out in literally two minutes by doing a Google search.

Furthermore, you should be worrying about the amount of sugar you eat in your diet. Sugar is without doubt the worst offender for high calorie intake; that's why there is a nationally-recommended level for the amount men and women should eat in a day. That they come from fruit makes no difference - sugar is still sugar - and if you stuff your face with too much fruit, you'll still gain weight. You don't earn brownie points because the sugar so happened to come from an apple rather than a cake.

Deflecting the issue from the JP products to fruit also doesn't hide the fact that JP shakes still have sugar, so why Dave decided to talk about fruit is beyond me.

Dave then goes on a tangent about how the wonder JP products have helped his hair, nails etc - the usual spiel - so there is nothing much more to add here except that he doesn't remotely mention that JP products do not contain fibre like fruit does. As such people are wasting money by missing out on a natural suppressant that would help them feel fuller and less inclined to eat. That's why people like Jenny waste money on both the shakes and a "booster" product which does the same thing for much more.

To finish, it appears that Jenny probably didn't read the comments in Dave's post:

Why would Dave leave JP if it is so profitable that it can earn you six figures within two years? The mind wonders.