Acai Berry Diet and MLM

I recieved, today, an invite on facebook to a page called "News You NEED to Know" It is listed as an event. It is nothing but! On the page is this link: http://myown.biz.tm/ which leads you to a nicely written "news" article about a reporter trying out the acai berry diet.

First thing I noticed was that I couldn't access any other link to other news on that page (although it could just be a regional thing...but how come I could get this page??). I thought it funny that it was showing this as the HOME page. So red flags were going up there.

I read through the article. Very positive (nothing wrong with that), but it was all anecdotal. For an explanation of the problems with anecdotes:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqerbz8KDc

Where was the reference to science data? (a reference is more than just stating data, but showing where that data came from...see quackwatch.com on how referencing is supposed to be done). References are usually are linked in the body or listed at the bottom of the articles. Well I scrolled down to the bottom and what did I find???

This "news" website is actually selling this product. Red flag number 4. They obviously have a vested interest in promoting this product. Now, because someone can make money off of what they are talking about doesn't mean it's bad, it just means become more aware of what they are saying.

I did some quick research into seeing if this was a scam and came up with the following....or course I visited quackwatch.com, one of my favourite places to check.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/acai.html
http://www.quackwatch.org/02ConsumerProtection/gao_supplements.html
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/01/prweb1879764.htm

From someone actually selling exotic juices:  http://brazilbotanicals.com/acai-berry-diet-scams.aspx

Another quick point .....it says in the articale "One blogger from Windsor, ON claims to have lost 32 pounds in 30 days while taking the Advanced Acai and Advanced Cleanse diet" which I found to be a red flag as well. A lot of advertisers use IP indentifiers to entice you to click on them (many dating and porn sites use this technique).

When I clicked on the other "news" sections I get redirected to a page selling Acai Berry diet products
http://www.topgradeacai/    so I think I can officially say that this News site is totally bogus.

I research more about Acai Berry in regards to MLM (multi-level marketing) I found the following info on Monavie

http://www.lazymanandmoney.com/monavie-scam-was-my-wife-recruited-sell-snake-oil/
http://www.juicescam.com/monavies-d-better-business-bureau-rating/
http://www.juicescam.com/monavie-lies-about-the-orac-score-of-monavie/

Of course that lead to questioning exactly about anitoxidants...
http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/antioxidants.html
http://www.juicescam.com/monavie-vs-an-apple/

I wanted to see what the distributors are actually putting out
http://www.thegreatproduct.com/corp/video-jeffgraham.asp?bhcp=1

I had a question about Anoxia in plants (lack of oxygen) since plants produce oxygen, so how does a submerged root system cause problems. I found this study:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1677-04202002000200002

I also had a question about Glucosamine because I found some info claiming Monavie to be one of the only sources of vegetarian Glucosamine. I quickly found other sources from other alternative medicine/living sites (go figure):
http://www.vegfamily.com/news/glucosamine.htm and also found this
http://www.foodproductdesign.com/news/2009/08/ethical-naturals-announces-settlement-of-patent-dispute.aspx

Delving further...
http://www.juicescam.com/mens-journal-proves-monavie-lacks-nutrition/ which links to
http://www.mensjournal.com/superjuices-on-trial

Shows a significant finding.."Even apple juice (which also tested poorly) has more phenolics "
http://www.juicescam.com/monavie-does-not-treat-medical-conditions/
http://www.juicescam.com/monavie-knows-their-juice-cant-treat-medical-conditions/

Is it organic?
http://www.juicescam.com/is-monavie-organic/

Be sure to check all the references in the postings above and the subsequent blog comments which often have more references.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of information that's out there. I did find this to be the best I found so far from a few hours (3) of research.