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FDA Warns XanGo Of Its Claims

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 10:37 pm
by Doc Bunkum
Interesting story in a recent edition of the Ventura County Star about XanGo and MLM in general. Some excerpts:

AP Sunday, March 2, 2008


"XanGo, a private company that doesn't reveal financial statements, said at an October convention in Salt Lake City that since its launch five years ago, sales of the mangosteen-based juice topped a cumulative $1 billion. It ships out bottles by the case from Spanish Fork, Utah, and says it has 700,000 unsalaried sales associates in 17 countries."

However...

"An independent lab test performed for The Associated Press shows XanGo's antioxidant strength is no better than other readily available fruit juices, yet it costs nearly $40 a bottle. XanGo insists mangosteen contains other beneficial chemicals.

"My big concern with XanGo is that the business has gone a long way without showing any benefit in human trials," said Wayne Askew, director of the Division of Nutrition of the University of Utah's College of Health."


Largely unregulated business

Others are skeptical, too.

"It's a Wizard of Oz' story," said Anthony Almada, president and chief executive of GENr8 Inc., a marketer of sports nutrition dietary supplements. "The industry is built on storytelling, and because they do it one-on-one, without advertising, they don't incur the wrath of the FDA."

Dietary supplements are a $22 billion largely unregulated business in the U.S.

For the lab test, The Associated Press shipped a 750-milliliter bottle of XanGo to Oregon State University's Linus Pauling Institute at Corvallis. The institute measured its antioxidant strength against store-bought juices that sell for a few dollars a bottle.

On a scale of molecular weight, XanGo's antioxidants measured 14,884 "micromoles" per liter, slightly higher than cranberry juice but lower than black cherry and less than half the power of blueberry juice. Apple juice finished last in this test.

"In terms of its antioxidant capacity, XanGo is in the middle of the pack," said Balz Frei, the institute's director and chairman.

Jon Taylor, a one-time Nu Skin Enterprises Inc. distributor and trial consultant for disaffected distributors who analyzed XanGo's multitiered compensation plan at the AP's request, said it was little different from scores of other multilevel marketing ventures.


"It's a formula," he said, "that makes money for the top 1 percent of distributors and leaves many other recruits stockpiling products they can't sell."

(Read that sentence again and memorize it).

"The reason you lose money is you have to buy products every month to stay good with the company," Taylor said.

XanGo has been warned by the FDA for claiming that mangosteen could ward off disease or cancer. The company insists those claims were printed by a third party on a brochure at a recruitment seminar and it's not responsible.

XanGo executives said they haven't heard from the FDA since receiving a warning letter last summer and assume the case is closed.


(Yes, that's a wise idea when dealing with the FDA}. :lol:

Paul Teitell, the FDA's assistant district director in Denver, said the matter isn't settled. The agency can seize the product, stop the company from doing business or prosecute, he said.

"The fact they haven't heard from us since last summer doesn't mean the case is closed," Teitell responded. "We warned them, and what happens beyond that warning is based on the way they behave, not how we behave."
:lol:

FDA warns XanGo of its claims as juice sales top $1 billion

Re: FDA Warns XanGo Of Its Claims

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:42 pm
by wserra
In the event that this post is not the prelude to a drive-by spam: The FDA does not "evaluate" so-called "energy drinks". No government agency routinely checks manufacturers' claims on things such as "calories, carbs and stuff". As Doc Bunkum posted, "XanGo has been warned by the FDA for claiming that mangosteen could ward off disease or cancer". False advertising as to ingredients is generally the concern of the FTC (or state equivalents), and they tend to operate only on complaint.

Edit: The user to whom I responded in this post was, in fact, a drive-by spammer, someone who returns a few days after making a post to add spam links. This seems to happen more in the MLM forum than in others. I wonder why that is?