MonaVie Scam » Dr. Alex Schauss

MonaVie Admits AIBMR is the Only Source of Their Biased “Research”

MonaVie Scam — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:47:31 +0000

The following is an email from MonaVie Product Specialist Erica Bryant sent to distributors. I would like to thank an anonymous contributor for sending it along.

One of the things that catches the eye is the tight integration between MonaVie, TEAM, AIBMR, and Dr. Alex Schauss. It’s interesting that all 10 “research” articles recommended by MonaVie have MonaVie’s own Dr. Alex Schauss in them… you can’t get more biased. Another interesting thing is that MonaVie directs distributors to AIBMR as “the website to check when new studies, articles, or books are published.” No one else outside of this Dr. Alex Schauss-biased organization will be producing any “research” as they say “All science and research can be found on www.aibmr.com.”

Furthermore, it’s interesting that MonaVie treats biased “research” on acai, as something that distributors should be talking about. It is once again worth reiterating that MonaVie is not acai and acai is not MonaVie.

Distributors,

Hi, it was nice to meet you at the TEAM leadership conference! Thank you for signing up for product information, science, and research on the products.

For those of you who requested product FAQ’s, these are found in your Virtual Office. Sign into your virtual office with your distributor ID and password. On the left hand side, click on “Corporate” and “document library” will pop up below under resources. Click on “Document Library” and scroll to the bottom of the page. All of the FAQs (except for Emv lite) should be listed. If you still can’t find the FAQ’s, let me know, and I will help you navigate (email productquestions@monavie.com).

All science and research can be found on www.aibmr.com. I attached some additional documents to this email that you might be interested in. The Pulse study summary, ROM (Range of Motion) summary and poster are studies that are in progress. The MonaVie antioxidant summary is a summary of the In Vitro In Vivo published study. The açai poster talks about the safety of MonaVie Active, and then I included the glycemic index results as well (also available on www.monavie.com from a link).

Here is some Scientific Literature on açai and MonaVie found on www.aibmr.com. This is the website to check when new studies, articles, or books are published. Not all of the studies are available for free, some you may have to look up online and download for a fee (copyright law) if you want access to the full study, especially the newer studies published this year.

Schauss, A. G., Wu, X., Prior, R. L., Ou, B., Patel, D., Huang, D. and Kababick, J. P. 2006. Phytochemical and nutrient composition of the freeze-dried amazonian palm berry, Euterpe oleraceae mart. (acai). J Agric Food Chem 54: 8598-603.

Schauss, A. G., Wu, X., Prior, R. L., Ou, B., Huang, D., Owens, J., Agarwal, A., Jensen, G. S., Hart, A. N. and Shanbrom, E. 2006. Antioxidant capacity and other bioactivities of the freeze-dried amazonian palm berry, Euterpe oleraceae mart. (açai). J Agric Food Chem 54: 8604-10.

Jensen GS, Patterson KM, Barnes J, Certer SG, Wu, W, Scherwitz L, Beaman R, Endres JR, Schauss AG. In vitro and in vivo antioxidant and anti-inflammatory capacity of an antioxidant-rich fruit and berry juice blend. Results of a pilot and randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 2008, 56(18): 8326–8333.

Honzel D, Carter SG, Redman KA, Schauss AG, Endres J, and Jensen GS. Comparison of chemical and cell-based antioxidant methods for evaluation of foods and natural products: Generating multifaceted data by parallel testing using erythrocytes and polymorphonuclear cells. Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 2008, 56(18): 8319–8325.

Schauss AG, Wu X, Jensen GS. Increased Antioxidant Capacity and Inhibition of Lipid Peroxidation in Healthy Adults Consuming an Açai (Euterpe oleracea) Fruit-Based Juice. Proc. IInd IS on Human Health Effects of F&V Ed.: B. Patil. Acta Hort. 841, ISHS 2009.

Schauss AG, Clewell A, Balogh L, Szakonyi IP, Financsek I, Horvath J, Thuroczy J, Beres E, Vertesi A, Hirka G. Safety evaluation of an açai-fortified fruit and berry functional juice beverage (Monavie Active®). Toxicol. 2010 May 6 [Epub ahead of print]

Kang J, Li Z, Wu T, Jensen GS, Schauss AG, Wu X. Anti-oxidant capacities of flavonoid compounds isolated from açai pulp (Euterpe oleracea Mart.). Food Chem. 2010;122:610-617.

Schauss AG, Jensen GS, Wu X. Acai (Euterpe oleracea): An Amazonian palm fruit with broad antioxidant activity. Evidence of antioxidant availability and anti-inflammatory activity based on a series of bioassays and clinical pilot studies to test a complex natural fruit product. In: Flavor and Health Benefits of Small Fruit. Qian M, Rimando A [eds.] American Chemical Society (ACS) Symposium Series: Oxford University Press, 2010. Chapter 13, pp 213-223.

Sun X, Seeberger J, Albericol T, Schauss AG, Zou S. Açai palm fruit (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) pulp improves survival of flies on a high fat diet. Exp Gerontol. 2010;45:243-251.

Schauss AG. A macro and nutrient rich palm fruit from the Amazon rain forest with demonstrated bioactivities in vitro and in vivo. In: Watson RR, Preedy VR, eds. Bioactive Foods in Promoting Health. Oxford: Academic Press; 2009; p. 479–490.

If you have any specific product questions, please send an email to productquestions@monavie.com.

Please feel free to contact me with further questions or assistance. Thank you,

ERICA BRYANT
product specialist, technical services
product management

Originally posted 2010-07-13 20:39:40.

Dr. Alex Schauss, ORAC, and Freeze-Dried Acai

MonaVie Scam — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:30:46 +0000

I would like to thank Scott for passing on Dr. Alex Schauss’ presentation of freeze-dried acai:

I was initially quite excited that freeze-dried acai could scientifically be proven to have far greater ORAC scores than other berries. Perhaps it is the scientific break-through that he claims it to be. To review, here’s what Alex Schauss says:

I would have needed another three screens to the right of my computer to let that arrow accurately define it’s difference compared to freeze-dried samples of other foods that we looked at – that the USDA looked at. It was off the chart.(Timestamp of 2:23)

The bold emphasis there is mine. There’s also this:

again you can see the high bar that is acai and all of these others which are moisture equivalent and they are also freeze-dried samples. So you can there is a vast difference between the two. So Gram to gram… (Timestamp of 3:43)

I had always contended that Schauss was measuring two different things: one freeze-dried acai… the other typical berries. This would be a troubling comparison because most everyone knows that water makes up 90% of fruit. If you take the water out of acai you can get 10x more ORAC score if you are measuring “gram to gram” of something that still has 90% of it’s water. As such, I always thought that we needed a fair test, one that is moisture equivalent as he states. And now that we have it, let’s celebrate the freeze-dried acai berry, right?

Unfortunately, we can’t break out the party hats yet. My friend Vogel as usual digs up the hard evidence to discount that information, noting the following:

The bar chart falsely quotes one of Schauss’ studies [J Agric Food Chem. 2006;54(22):8604-10] as the source of this data, when in fact his study did not report the ORAC values of other fruits.
Schauss says, From our results the H-ORAC of freeze-dried acai was 996.9 umol TE/g, which is significantly higher than that of most dark colored berry or any fruit or vegetable tested to date when appropriately converting fresh weight to dry weights(14).
Reference #14 in the previous bullet point was a study listed the ORAC values for various non-freeze-dried fruits published by Wu et al. [J Agric Food Chem. 2004;52:4026-37].
The H-ORAC values for “full moisture” cranberry and blueberry listed in the Wu article are about 92 per gram
Since we know that 90% of the weight of full moisture berries is water, we would need to multiply the cranberry and blueberry by 10 to get their freeze-dried ORAC score.
That gives us 996.9 umol TE/g for acai vs. 920 umol TE/g for blueberry cranberry. Dr. Alex Schauss didn’t seem to convert for wet vs. dry very well. Acai still wins, but by less than 10% – clearly not the “three computer screens” that Dr. Alex Schauss says suggests.

This victory for minor victory for freeze-dried acai is short-lived… the paper goes on to say:

Contradictorily and surprisingly, the contents of anthocyanins, proanthocyanadins, and other polyphenol compounds in this freeze-dried product were found to be much lower than those found in blueberry or other berries with elevated H-ORAC values. To make things even more confusing, the total phenolics in acai was found to be only 13.9 mg/g GAE

The interesting thing to me is that this is exactly what Men’s Journal said about MonaVie, “[MonaVie Active] tested extremely low in anthocyanins and phenolics… even apple juice (which also tested poorly) has more phenolics…”

Now is a good time to mention that freeze-dried acai and MonaVie are not one in the same. Most distributors will talk about freeze-dried acai, and then hand you a bottle of MonaVie as if it’s the same thing. We know the ORAC scores on MonaVie from other AIMBR tests and that’s not any prettier.

Originally posted 2009-09-17 13:54:26.

Freeze-Dried Acai ORAC Scores are Misleading

MonaVie Scam — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:45:29 +0000

You may read that MonaVie uses freeze-dried acai which has extremely high ORAC score. In fact Dr. Alex Schauss has a presentation showing as much. While that is true, it’s simple why this would be case. I’ll let the unbiased Wikipedia explain:

“When comparing ORAC data, care must be taken to ensure that the units and food being compared are similar. Some evaluations will compare ORAC units per grams dry weight, others will evaluate ORAC units wet weight and still others will look at ORAC units/serving. Under each evaluation, different foods can appear to have higher ORAC values. Although a raisin has no more antioxidant potential than the grape from which it was dried, raisins will appear to have a much higher ORAC value per gram wet weight than grapes due to their reduced water content. Likewise, watermelons large water content can make it appear as though they are very low in antioxidants.”

So in short, one must consider the amount of water in the food sample. The more water, the lower the ORAC score per gram of that food. When something that is freeze-dried the water is removed. With all the water weight taken out, you are left with a nutrient-dense power. This is the reason for the high ORAC scores.

So because MonaVie has freeze-dried acai as the first ingredient on the label, it must have a high ORAC value, right? Well, no. You’ll note that the first ingredient is actually “Proprietary blend of Acai (freeze-dried powder and acai puree).” There’s no way to know how much freeze-dried acai is part of that proprietary blend. It could legally be one-billionth of a gram. This would explain why AIBMR’s study by MonaVie board member Alex Schauss showed that MonaVie actually didn’t have a high ORAC score (getting trounced by an apple: MonaVie vs. an Apple).

Originally posted 2009-12-03 14:46:28.