Goji juice and health

Many startling claims are made about goji berries and juice and although some of the more outrageous ones have been the subject of legal action, such as cancer cure claims, there remain very many others receiving lots of publicity. When any substance, whether it is a foodstuff, herbal preparation, or pharmaceutical drug, is promoted as having generic benefits across a wide range of illnesses and ailments, we should be suspicious and look for the evidence.

To establish that such a preparation has such a broad spectrum benefit takes a great deal of carefully controlled research, which is very expensive. The likelihood for these claims is that they are unfounded, unevidenced, and probably untrue. Before such claims are justified, there needs to be a lot of evidence and not just anecdotal accounts.

Anecdotal accounts are notoriously biased: people buying expensive goji juice are predisposed to justify their purchase because they wouldn't want to admit that they were being deceived. The only respondents will therefore have a positive bias.

What benefits are claimed?

Just this one site lists an amazing collection of conditions goji juice is supposed to help including coughs, fevers, high blood pressure, cholesterol levels, nosebleeds, tuberculosis, skin rashes, eyesight problems, diabetes, and even genital itching. Of course, improving the immune system is included in there as well. The benefits are claimed regardless of the actual causes of these conditions.

The site, like many others, looks at some of the known constituents of goji juice and lists the medical benefits of those individual components. In fact it cites a webpage from the United States Department of Agriculture which discusses antioxidant actions of certain foods. But if you read the report itself, it doesn't support the claims made. Just as with many other citations of research papers supposedly backing goji juice, the devil is in the detail. Where the paper says "may", the advertisers interpret this as "does". Where the paper says, "is associated with", the advertisers claim "improves". And so it goes on.

Another site makes similar claims. This one lists an improvement to the immune system, boosting energy levels and endurance, and fighting free radical damage, as the main benefits of goji juice.

By way of evidence, they offer a link to another webpage which simply states that in double-blind placebo studies, GoChi produced amazing results after only 14 days including less fatigue, improved athletic performance, increased energy, reduced stress, feeling calmer, increased ability to focus, sharper mental acuity, easier ability to wake up, feeling healthier, feeling more content, feeling happier, and improved bowel regularity.

Unfortunately, there were no links to the research claiming to support these and it is not surprising. Clinical research doesn't use something called "double-blind placebo studies" because they actually use randomised, controlled, double-blind clinical trials. These are designed to eliminate the bias of anecdotal accounts, the bias from prior knowledge of the treatment, and they concentrate on objective measures which are independent of opinion. Quite simply, measures such as feeling more content, happier, healthier don't count as objective clinical measures. The claim to have research support is a sham.

Let's examine the claims

But let's look at those four claims and see whether or not they are true. Firstly, boosting the immune system. What exactly does that mean? Does it mean for example increasing the body's ability to fight off infection? Or does it mean increasing the concentration of a chemical known in certain specific circumstances to have something to do with an immune reaction, antibodies for example? Or does it mean some clinical measure of some immune system marker such as T cells?

There is a real problem with these measures because the immune response is complex and the Stanford School of Medicine has a Human Immune Monitoring Center which carries out such complex assays. They have a site which is worth a look. There you will see that even a simple statement like "improving immune response" is laden with assumptions, and it is entirely inappropriate to make such claims of fruit juice.

In fact, the claims about the immune system derive from an observation that goji juice, just like most vegetables and fruits contain chemicals which have been found to be biologically active. But again, the devil is in the detail. In what concentrations, and in what circumstances, and combined with what, were these chemicals found to be active? And was the level of activity biologically significant?

We know for example that plant cells contain chlorophyll which in the presence of light enable photosynthesis to take place producing oxygen. But inside a human, that chlorophyll is of no use at all because we can't use it to produce oxygen. But we could quite rightly say that chlorophyll is associated with the production of oxygen. The same kind of association is used to link various naturally occurring biological chemicals with claimed benefits, without any credible reliable evidence at all.

The claim that goji berries or juice boost the immune system is an empty claim. There isn't any evidence to support it. When you look at the evidence that is cited it either doesn't support the claims or is altogether unrelated. Those quoting the evidence don't understand what they are reading.

The second claim is about boosting energy levels. Just think about how this might be tested. Is this simply a personal anecdotal account, someone saying they feel they have more energy, or is it about some metabolic measure, some evidenced observation that there is more energy available for metabolism? Unless there are continuous double-blind trials which keep constant all other metabolic factors which influence energy availability, there won't be any evidence that can be taken seriously. And there isn't. And the third claim about endurance is similarly fatuous. It's just marketing hype, "drink this juice because it will make you feel good".

The fourth claim is often repeated, that it fights free radical damage. My suspicion is that whoever wrote this on the webpage has no idea about free radicals, and maybe they don't even know what they are. They certainly don't understand how they work in biological systems like human bodies.

What are free radicals?

In fact free radicals are highly reactive forms of molecules in which there is an unpaired electron. As a result, they try to react with anything nearby and that is often very useful for human biochemistry. For example, such free radicals are essential for nerve transmission. Without free radicals, our nerves wouldn't work. Eliminating all the free radicals in our bodies would kill us. But they do need to be controlled.

The human body has a remarkably effective self-regulating mechanism for managing free radicals including enzymes (such as glutathione peroxidase) that involve them in reactions which render them harmless. Our normal balanced diet contains enough chemicals of a group called antioxidants, to more than cope with the free radicals we have in the body. So why are people worried about antioxidants?

What are antioxidants?

Antioxidants are chemicals that control the free radicals which, if not controlled, would cause some damage. Many of our foods contains chemicals which have an antioxidant effect including vitamins A, C and E. Any fruit has plenty of them.

Free radicals are known to be associated with certain medical conditions and the assumption of health food sellers is that simply adding more antioxidants protects you from these diseases. But the claim is nonsense. They simply don't understand what they are talking about.

For antioxidants to have any effect, they need to be in the right place at the right time at the right concentration and in the right chemical form. They also need to integrate properly with the body's existing mechanism for controlling the free radicals and it's a delicate balance. The clinical trials evidence so far shows that far from being beneficial, adding antioxidants to your diet can harm your health. You can read it yourself here.

So if people are selling health foods based on their antioxidant properties, they are spreading misinformation. Despite their good intentions they may actually be harming health.

There is certainly some evidence to show that goji juice has antioxidant properties just like various other far cheaper herbal teas and even fresh fruit like apples. But the question is whether or not that is a sensible thing to do to your body. You don't need any more antioxidants and taking them could actually harm your health.

Unfortunately, most of the people who set up businesses selling these preparations don't know about the chemistry, and although they might quote the research, they don't understand what it says. They just look for the buzz-words like antioxidant, free radical, and so on.

There has been a rapid growth in the selling of goji berries and juice and particularly the marketing of Himalayan goji juice. There are franchising opportunities with the promise of making money quickly, being your own boss, and of course doing some good in the process. It sounds a very attractive proposition. But there have been legal actions against some of the companies selling these franchises including a class action lawsuit against FreeLife. You can read the full text of the lawsuit here.

The bottom line?

Goji juice is expensive fruit juice. It doesn't have any miraculous properties, has no credible evidence to support its health claims, and the marketing claims are quite simply misrepresenting the scientific studies that have been made.

Some of the companies marketing the juice conduct their own studies without scientific rigour and report their biased results as if they were genuine science. Those controlled studies that have been done have shown no evidence to support the health claims.

Adding extra antioxidants to your diet is not recommended because there is credible evidence that it can do harm. A balanced diet is all that is needed to allow the body itself to maintain control of those essential free radicals that we need for our health.

Postscript

Carrie Thompson, as gojijuicegoodness, wrote a hub on gogi juice but rejected my comments pointing out the negative evidence associated with increasing antioxidants in the diet. Although accepting the point that the research needs to be assessed carefully before health benefit claims are made, she did not want to publicise the links to this critical research on her own hub which was promoting goji juice. And of course, that's her choice and I respect it, though I think restricting access to very pertinent health information isn't a particularly appealing thing to do. We have both agreed to write hubs about this subject.

But I wanted to try to set the record straight, to provide the information to correct what I see as a very misleading set of promotional information about goji berries and juice. Clearly I couldn't do that by offering comments on her hub because she censored them so I have written this hub instead. Comments of course are invited here and links to evidence both positive and negative will be accepted.

For those interested in more detail, there is a sample chapter from my book which deals with these issues available here.