TAHITIAN NONI JUICE EXPOSED ON CBS

TAHITIAN NONI JUICE EXPOSED ON CBS, BY DAVID GOLDSTEIN

Noni Juice: Miracle Or False Hope In A Bottle? (17/2/2006)

(CBS) LOS ANGELES They call it a miracle in a bottle. It is the Tahitian Noni juice, a fruit juice that’s taking America by storm. But is it a miracle or just hype? The so-called miracle is a prickly, stinky fruit from Polynesia. Tahitian Noni International based in Utah is the biggest seller of the Noni juice, which they claim promotes good health.

We took a hidden camera into a meeting for sales distributors in Costa Mesa. It sounded like money is growing on trees, at least, the Noni tree. Sales of Tahitian Noni juice are in the billions. “Every 1.7 seconds somebody buys a bottle of Tahitian Noni juice,” one salesman told us.

So why all the hype? We went undercover to find out. We invited two of their distributors, Dee Strubb and Jeanette Bush to our house in Orange County.

They immediately started sharing their stories of medical miracles, testimonials like the woman who was badly burned in an accident. According to Bush, that woman applied massive Noni on the burn and had her wedding in a strapless gown.

Bush’s mother, who supposedly had macular degeneration, recovered when she drank Tahitian Noni juice. “It brought back her eyesight,” she told us.

Then there’s the story of the AIDS patient who survived. We asked if there have been any studies on what it does for HIV. Strubb told us that there have been many studies. “Even dementia, if it’s caught that early then it will put it in reverse,” Strubb added referring to the Noni juice.

During our meeting one of our undercover producers posed as a lupus patient. Sure enough they prescribed Tahitian Noni at $50 a bottle. “For lupus what I would recommend is to start out slow and then an ounce the first two days when you wake up in the morning,” our producer was told. Should we consult her doctor? We asked. “No, just take it,” Strubb said.

Dr. Jeffery Galpin is an immunologist, he’s reviewed studies on Noni juice and their claims and says they can’t back them up. “It’s promoted to do everything with no validation of anything.”

We asked him if Noni juice could cure lupus. “No,” Galpin said. We asked him about reverse dementia or macular degeneration. “Absolutely not,” Galpin told us.

We caught up with Bush to see if she can back up her claims. We asked her if there have been independent scientific studies that show it helps AIDS. “Not that I know of,” she said. We asked about lupus. “Not that I’m aware of.”

So we confronted Bush about the fact that she might be selling false hopes for $50 a bottle. “No, no, no,” she said.

In 1998 the California attorney general’s office issued an injunction against Tahitian Noni International, then called Morinda inc. The company agreed to stop making claims their juice treated, prevented or cured diseases, which may explain why we keep hearing the word: miracle.

“We can’t say it cures anything but it does miracles,” Strubb said. Strubb agrees with us that miracle and cure go hand in hand but says, “the company says we can’t call it a cure. We have to be careful.”

For federal trade commission attorney Ray Mckown the words also go hand and hand. “Whether an advertiser uses the word cured or miracle, it makes no difference.”

Bush stands behind her “miracles” and defends the benefits of Tahitian Noni juice. She insists that she is not just selling false hope to people. She ended the conversation when we requested names of her so-called patients.

We spoke to Noni International officials who say these distributors were breaking company rules. They prohibit distributors from making therapeutic or medical claims.

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