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.