Miracle drink or the latest fad potion?

The mangosteen's curative properties aren't proved, but its juice generates healthy sums for XanGo.

By Paul Foy
The Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — On stage at a sales convention, XanGo founder Joe Morton said that when he first stumbled across mangosteen, a tropical fruit with purported curative powers, "I didn't have to have it confirmed in the New England medical journal before I would listen."

The multilevel-marketing company has built a huge business around its mangosteen-based juice, which it promotes as an immunity booster. The company still hasn't proved its health benefits -- which it says could include a stronger immune system and improved joint function -- to skeptical experts.

XanGo's website includes a disclaimer noting that the juice is not meant to treat or prevent disease. A lab test arranged by the Associated Press found its antioxidant power to be on par with that of other fruit juices.

Morton, a 37-year-old triathlete nicknamed Ironman Joe, was on a business trip in Malaysia when he saw mangosteen, a white delicacy wrapped in a blood-red leathery shell, on the dessert menu.

From that introduction, Morton and his business partners capitalized on a new brand category of liquid "super-fruits" that is "doing gangbusters," said Jeff Hilton, a partner at Integrated Marketing Group, a branding and packaging consulting firm.

XanGo has more than two dozen competitors that sell fruit juices, powdered drinks and vitamin fizz tablets. Tahitian Noni International Inc. sold $2 billion worth of noni juice, from the French Polynesian fruit, in its first 10 years by 2006. MonaVie, of Utah, bottles a blend of acai juice from the Amazon-basin berry. Pure Fruit Technologies Inc. underprices XanGo on a mangosteen-based juice that sells in health-food stores.

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

An independent lab test performed for the Associated Press shows that XanGo's antioxidant strength is no better than that of other readily available fruit juices, yet it costs nearly $40 a bottle. XanGo insists that 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 at the University of Utah's College of Health.

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

By molecular weight, XanGo's antioxidants measured 14,884 "micromoles" per liter -- slightly more than in cranberry juice but lower than in black cherry and less than half the amount in blueberry juice. Apple juice finished last in the test.

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

XanGo has been warned by the FDA for claiming that mangosteen could ward off disease or cancer. The company insists that those claims were printed by a third party on a brochure at a recruitment seminar and that 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.

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

Bonnie - now will you believe us? Mangosteen, acai, noni...all hype. Save your money and go with the tired and true, copiously researched pomegranate!