Is Juice Plus Good for You? What Studies Show

Juice Plus is a line of capsules and chewables made from dried, powdered juice concentrates of fruits, vegetables, and berries. A handful of published clinical trials suggest it can raise blood levels of certain antioxidants and reduce some markers of inflammation, but no study has demonstrated that it prevents or treats any disease. The research base is modest in size, and several of the studies have been funded or co-authored by people connected to the company, which is worth keeping in mind as you evaluate the claims.

What Juice Plus Actually Contains

Juice Plus capsules are made by juicing fruits and vegetables, then drying the juice into a powder that gets packed into capsules. The fruit blend typically includes apples, oranges, pineapples, cranberries, peaches, cherries, and other produce. The vegetable blend includes carrots, parsley, beets, broccoli, kale, cabbage, tomatoes, and spinach, among others. Some formulations add a berry blend with concord grape, blueberry, blackberry, and similar fruits.

According to a trial protocol that listed the capsule contents, participants taking the full fruit-vegetable-berry regimen consumed six capsules daily, providing roughly 2,910 micrograms of beta-carotene, 158 milligrams of vitamin C, 18 milligrams of vitamin E, 316 micrograms of folic acid, and over 100 different phenolic compounds totaling about 600 milligrams of polyphenols.¹ Those are meaningful amounts of micronutrients, though they fall well short of what you would get from several servings of actual fruits and vegetables. Juice Plus also lacks the fiber, water content, and full spectrum of phytochemicals present in whole produce.

Does It Actually Raise Nutrient Levels in Your Blood?

The most consistent finding across Juice Plus studies is that taking the capsules increases circulating levels of certain antioxidants. A placebo-controlled trial in healthy adults found significant increases in blood levels of beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, and folate after supplementation, with the post-supplementation ranges falling into territory associated with reduced disease risk.² A separate trial measuring inflammation markers also confirmed significant increases in beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E in participants taking the capsules compared to placebo.³

This is a meaningful result, but it needs context. Raising blood antioxidant levels is not the same as improving health outcomes. You can also raise those levels by eating an extra serving or two of fruits and vegetables each day, or by taking a standard multivitamin that costs a fraction of what Juice Plus retails for. The question that matters is whether those higher blood levels translate into concrete health benefits, and that is where the evidence gets thinner.

Effects on Inflammation

Chronic low-grade inflammation is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and other long-term conditions, so any supplement that genuinely lowers inflammatory markers would be noteworthy. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 117 healthy adults, 60 days of Juice Plus supplementation significantly reduced three inflammatory markers: monocyte chemotactic protein-1, macrophage inflammatory protein 1-beta, and RANTES (a protein involved in immune cell signaling). The same study found that superoxide dismutase, an enzyme the body uses to neutralize harmful molecules, increased in the supplement groups.³

The reductions were statistically significant compared to placebo, and the trial design was solid for its size. But 117 people over 60 days is still a small, short study. We do not know whether those changes in blood markers persist over months or years, or whether they are large enough to meaningfully change someone’s risk of developing an inflammatory disease. Blood marker changes are a useful early signal, not proof of clinical benefit.

Cardiovascular Markers

One of the more interesting Juice Plus studies looked at what happens to your blood vessels after eating a high-fat meal. Eating a greasy meal temporarily impairs the ability of arteries to dilate properly, a phenomenon called endothelial dysfunction. In a trial published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers measured this effect before and after four weeks of Juice Plus supplementation. At baseline, a high-fat meal caused artery dilation to drop by roughly 47%. After four weeks on the supplement, that impairment was nearly eliminated, dropping to less than 2%. The placebo group showed no such improvement. Serum nitrate and nitrite levels, which reflect the availability of nitric oxide (a molecule that helps blood vessels relax), also rose significantly in the supplemented group.⁴

This is a provocative finding, but it measured a short-term vascular response to a single meal in a small group. Nobody has shown that taking Juice Plus for years reduces heart attacks or strokes. The gap between “your arteries respond better after a cheeseburger” and “your heart disease risk goes down” is large, and no Juice Plus trial has bridged it.

DNA Damage Studies

Two studies have examined whether Juice Plus affects DNA damage in white blood cells, a surrogate marker sometimes used to estimate oxidative stress on cells. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, DNA damage in peripheral blood lymphocytes was significantly lower after consuming the juice powder concentrate, and the level of damage correlated with systemic inflammation levels.⁵ An earlier study focused on elderly participants found a highly significant decrease in DNA damage after supplementation, with the measured damage dropping from a pre-treatment score of about 13.2 to roughly 4.4 post-treatment.⁶

These results sound dramatic, but DNA damage in white blood cells is a laboratory measurement, not a clinical endpoint. The cells studied are a convenient tissue to sample from blood draws, and changes in their DNA integrity do not directly tell you whether your cancer risk has changed. The researchers themselves were careful to call the white blood cells “surrogate tissues.” Still, seeing reduced oxidative damage alongside reduced inflammation markers forms a coherent biological story: the antioxidants in the capsules appear to be doing something measurable at the cellular level.

Skin Health

A placebo-controlled trial in healthy women looked at whether Juice Plus affects skin. After 12 weeks, participants taking the supplement showed a 39% increase in microcirculation of the superficial skin blood vessels, a 9% increase in skin hydration, a 6% increase in skin thickness, and a 16% increase in skin density. The placebo group saw a decrease in microcirculation and only a slight change in skin density.⁷

These are objectively measured outcomes using skin analysis instruments, which lends them some credibility. Improved blood flow and hydration in the skin are outcomes that could plausibly result from increased circulating antioxidants. Whether those changes are visible to the naked eye or meaningful compared to, say, using a good moisturizer, is harder to say. The study did not report cosmetic outcomes rated by the participants or by blinded observers.

Periodontal Health

An area you might not expect from a fruit and vegetable supplement is oral health. A double-blind randomized controlled trial tested whether Juice Plus capsules could improve outcomes when added to standard periodontal treatment. Patients who took the fruit and vegetable formulation showed additional improvements in pocket depth compared to placebo at two months. Bleeding on probing and cumulative plaque scores were also lower in the supplement group at later time points. The researchers noted that these benefits appeared in patients who were already nutritionally replete, meaning the improvements were not simply due to correcting a vitamin deficiency.⁸

Gum disease involves chronic inflammation, so it makes sense that an anti-inflammatory supplement might offer some adjunctive benefit. But the effect sizes were modest, and the improvements did not persist uniformly across all time points in the trial. This is a single study and not a reason to skip brushing and flossing.

Where the Evidence Falls Short

The pattern across Juice Plus research is consistent: the capsules raise antioxidant levels, lower some inflammatory markers, and improve various surrogate endpoints. What is missing is evidence for hard clinical outcomes. No published trial has shown that Juice Plus prevents cancer, reduces heart attacks, prevents diabetes, or extends lifespan. The largest clinical outcome trial available tested whether the supplement could prevent preeclampsia in pregnant women. It found no difference: preeclampsia rates were 15.9% in the supplement group and 16.3% in the placebo group. There were non-significant trends toward lower placenta-related complications and lower rates of respiratory distress syndrome in infants born to high-risk mothers taking the supplement, but none of these trends reached statistical significance.⁹

This is a genuinely important gap. Many supplements show promising effects on blood markers in small trials but fail to deliver meaningful clinical benefits when tested more rigorously. Juice Plus has not been tested rigorously enough at the outcome level to know whether it falls into this category or not. The company and its proponents point to the biomarker evidence as promising. Skeptics point out that promising biomarkers are not the same as proven health benefits, and they are right.

Gut Health and the Microbiome

Given the current interest in gut health, you might wonder whether concentrated plant compounds affect the microbiome. A study looking at the effects of vegetable and fruit juicing on gut and oral microbiome composition found no significant shifts in overall gut microbiota composition from the juice intervention. More concerning, certain bacterial taxa associated with gut permeability, inflammation, and cognitive decline actually increased in relative abundance.¹⁰ This study looked at juicing rather than Juice Plus capsules specifically, but it highlights an important point: concentrated plant nutrients stripped of fiber do not necessarily benefit the gut the way whole produce does. Fiber is a primary fuel source for beneficial gut bacteria, and it is largely absent from juice concentrates.

The Regulatory Picture

Juice Plus is classified as a dietary supplement under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which means the FDA regulates it as a food, not as a drug.¹¹ This distinction matters. Unlike drugs, dietary supplements do not need to prove they are effective before going to market. The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring safety and for making sure any health claims are truthful, but the bar for evidence is far lower than what the FDA requires for a pharmaceutical.

Supplement makers are allowed to make “structure/function claims,” which are statements about how a product supports normal body functions. These claims must be supported by evidence, ideally from studies conducted in healthy people, and they cannot claim to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.¹² If a supplement’s label crosses from structure/function claims into disease claims, the FDA can treat the product as an unapproved drug.¹³ Juice Plus marketing tends to stay within these boundaries, emphasizing “bridging the gap” between what you eat and what you should eat rather than making disease-prevention claims directly. The independent distributors who sell Juice Plus through its multi-level marketing structure do not always observe the same restraint, which is how you end up hearing anecdotal claims about the product curing everything from allergies to autoimmune conditions.

The Funding Question

A substantial portion of published Juice Plus research has been funded by NSA (Natural Alternatives International or the Juice Plus parent company) or conducted by researchers with ties to the company. This does not automatically mean the results are wrong. Industry-funded studies that use proper blinding, randomization, and placebo controls can produce legitimate findings, and several of the trials cited above did employ these methods. But industry funding has been shown across many fields to correlate with results that favor the sponsor’s product, often through subtle choices in study design, endpoint selection, or how results are framed. When virtually the entire evidence base for a product comes from industry-connected research, and when no major independent research group has prioritized studying it, extra skepticism is warranted.

It is also worth noting that researchers studying diet and nutrition face a genuine challenge: who else would fund a trial on a specific branded supplement? Government agencies like the NIH typically fund research on nutrients or dietary patterns, not on particular commercial products. So the funding situation for Juice Plus is partly a structural feature of how supplement research works, not necessarily evidence of bias. Still, independent replication by groups with no financial stake would go a long way toward establishing confidence in these findings.

How It Compares to Just Eating Produce

The most relevant comparison for Juice Plus is not another supplement. It is the food the product claims to substitute for. Whole fruits and vegetables deliver fiber, water, and a vastly more complex array of phytochemicals than any capsule can capture. The drying and encapsulation process inevitably loses some heat-sensitive vitamins and volatile compounds. And the fiber that gets stripped out during juicing is itself one of the most well-supported components of a plant-rich diet, with proven benefits for cardiovascular health, blood sugar regulation, and gut function.

Juice Plus distributors often frame the product as a complement to a healthy diet rather than a replacement. That framing is more defensible, but it raises a practical question: if you are already eating well, how much additional benefit do a few extra milligrams of beta-carotene and vitamin C provide? The biomarker studies were conducted in people with typical Western diets, not in people already eating seven servings of produce daily. For someone whose diet is genuinely poor, the capsules may nudge nutrient levels in a helpful direction. For someone who already eats plenty of fruits and vegetables, the marginal benefit is likely small.

Potential Drug Interactions

Because Juice Plus contains concentrated plant compounds, some of which are found in cranberries, grapefruit, and other fruits known to interact with medications, it is reasonable to ask about drug interactions. A comprehensive review of potential warfarin-fruit interactions noted that while several fruit products have been reported to affect blood clotting when combined with warfarin, the scientific evidence for most of these interactions is limited. The review advised clinicians to ask patients about consumption of cranberry products, grapefruit juice, mangos, pomegranate juice, and avocados when assessing potential causes of clotting instability.¹⁴

If you take blood thinners or other medications that interact with fruit compounds, telling your doctor that you are taking concentrated fruit and vegetable capsules is a sensible precaution. The doses of any single fruit in a Juice Plus capsule are small, but the combination of multiple fruit concentrates taken daily could theoretically compound minor effects. No published case reports have specifically linked Juice Plus to a drug interaction, but the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of safety, and the topic has not been studied directly.

The Multi-Level Marketing Factor

Juice Plus is sold through a multi-level marketing (MLM) structure, which means independent distributors earn commissions on their own sales and on sales made by people they recruit. This business model creates strong financial incentives to promote the product aggressively and to overstate its benefits. The retail price for the standard fruit and vegetable capsule combination runs in the range of $70 to $90 per month, which is substantially more than a comparable multivitamin or even a meaningful increase in your weekly produce budget.

The MLM distribution model also means that the person recommending Juice Plus to you is almost always someone with a financial stake in your purchase. That does not mean they are lying or that the product is worthless, but it does mean the recommendation is not disinterested. When evaluating health claims from a Juice Plus distributor, the same rule applies as with any salesperson: check whether independent evidence supports what they are telling you. For the biomarker claims, some evidence exists. For claims about preventing specific diseases or replacing a healthy diet, it does not.

Who Might Reasonably Consider It

If you eat a varied diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, the evidence does not suggest that Juice Plus will add clinically meaningful benefits on top of what you are already getting from food. If your diet is poor and you are unwilling or unable to change it, the capsules may raise your blood levels of certain antioxidants and could modestly reduce some inflammatory markers. Whether those changes translate into better long-term health is genuinely unknown.

People who might benefit most are those with documented low intake of produce who cannot realistically change their eating habits in the near term. Even for this group, a standard multivitamin at a fraction of the cost would address most of the micronutrient shortfalls. What Juice Plus offers beyond a multivitamin is the polyphenol content and the broader spectrum of plant compounds, which a synthetic vitamin pill does not contain. Whether those additional compounds matter enough to justify the price premium is a question the current evidence cannot answer definitively. The honest take on Juice Plus is that it is not harmful, it is not a scam in the sense that it does contain real plant-derived nutrients, but it is also not proven to deliver the kind of health outcomes its marketing implies, and it costs considerably more than alternatives that address the same basic nutritional gaps.