Zrii pasteurized grape juice... what a scam!

With the launch of the Zrii juice product and its association with Deepak Chopra, many readers have been asking NaturalNews to offer our opinion on the product. Many people are excited about Zrii and the associated business opportunity, and the fact that it is endorsed by the Chopra Center lends it credibility in the natural health community. So to learn more about Zrii, I went to the website (www.Zrii.com) to find the nutrition facts on Zrii. That's where this review ran into a significant stumbling block: Zrii doesn't list its "nutrition facts" label on the website! (At least not that I could find as of this writing.)

I'm always suspicious of network marketing products that don't openly advertise their ingredients. Sure, the Zrii website lists the "featured" ingredients -- Amalaki, Ginger, Turmeric, Tulsi, Schizandra, Jujube and Haritaki -- but it does not conspicuously tell you what else is in the juice, but if you dig around the site and read the fine print, you learn that the primary juices in the Zrii product are:

• Apple juice
• Pear juice
• Pomegranate juice

This discovery, all by itself, is worthy of a great deal of skepticism about the integrity and value of the product. But that's not where my concerns end. I'm also concerned that:

• The website does not offer a nutrition facts label that clearly lists all the ingredients. To really find out what's in it, you have to "read the fine print" in the F.A.Q. section.

• The website does not say HOW MUCH of each ingredient is in the juice. Are we talking 99% grape juice and 1% of the other botanicals? Or is it more like 80% / 20%?

• The website says the product is pasteurized. That means it's heat processed, and heat processing destroys many of the natural medicines that the product is touted to contain in the first place!

• The product is packaged in a plastic bottle, not glass. Does the plastic contain the toxic chemical Bisphenol-A? Most plastics do.

On the positive side, the website does explain that the seven botanical ingredients are organically grown and certified free of pesticides, heavy metals and other chemical contaminants, but at the same time the primary ingredients (the grape juice, pear juice and pomegranate juice) are NOT organic. That means the drink is mostly not organic. (How much is "mostly?" They don't say...)

My hype detection sensor is sounding off

Right off the bat, all this makes me suspicious of the integrity of the product. If a product is formulated with quality, potent ingredients, it should tout its "nutrition facts" label and position that information up front, right on its main website. Instead, the Zrii website is lush with an eloquent design and a nice video set against a South American rainforest, but if you try to find real facts about the product, the website is not conducive to that process. In other words: Prepare to be dazzled, but not informed.

Secondly, the primary juices in the bottle are pasteurized grape juice, pear juice and pomegranate juice. I call these "junk juices" because they're used to fill up the bottle and sweeten the juice at a very low cost. I mean, c'mon: How cheap is grape juice, anyway? And besides, if I want grape juice, I think I'd rather just eat fresh grapes, thank you very much.

The fact that four bottles of Zrii costs about $120 also makes me wonder just how much grape juice is worth these days. At $30 a bottle, Zrii seems to be the world's most expensive source of non-organic grape and pear juice, with a relatively small amount of Ayurvedic medicine thrown in to make it seem more valuable.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a strong supporter of Ayurvedic medicine and the healing benefits of the touted ingredients. I openly advocate the use of turmeric to prevent cancer, ginger for circulation, schizandra for immune modulation, and so on. These are powerful ingredients if used with proper potency. But understand this: Nowhere in Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine does it say that you should combine a few milligrams of these ingredients with a bottle of pasteurized, non-organic grape juice and chug it! This product, in my opinion, is an insult to genuine Ayurvedic medicine.

Why I don't recommend Zrii

The formulation and promotional tactics used with Zrii are indicative of many other network marketing companies I've seen that have junk products based mostly on cheap fruit juices combined with tiny amounts of superfruits or medicinal plants. The current talk about Zrii seems focused on two things: 1) The seven key ingredients (which are dwarfed by the grape and pear juices), and 2) The income opportunity.

I don't have a particular bias against network marketing companies -- after all, I openly advocate the Amazon Herb Company's products -- but I'm very selective about who and what I recommend, and I don't recommend network marketing companies based on what I see as being low-quality products packed with cheap fillers.

Furthermore, since Zrii is pasteurized, how much medicine is really left in these plants after they're cooked anyway? Do all the Zrii customers really know they're drinking DEAD, cooked plants mixed in a base of processed grape and pear juice? This is so far from the principles of Ayurvedic medicine that it's almost laughable to see Deepak Chopra's name associated with it. Personally, I'd be embarrassed to have my own name associated with such a product.

I have a lot of respect for Chopra, and I've read many of his books. His teachings and his message is right on about spirituality, enlightened living, and so on. But the use of his name in the promotion of this product makes me seriously question whether he made a serious integrity mistake this time. It seems to me that with this product, profits are clearly taking a priority over integrity and genuine medicine.

Sadly, I see this a lot in the natural health field. A lot of the celebrities and personalities in this industry are too quick to slap their names on products that in my opinion are flat out inferior. Want another example? Just look at the ingredients in the Dr. Weil line of vitamin supplements and see for yourself. Are these really the best products these people can come up with? With all that knowledge and higher wisdom and enlightened living and all that, are you telling me the best stuff these people can come up with is pasteurized, dead juice product that isn't even organic and a line of vitamins made with synthetic isolated chemicals? It just boggles the mind...

What does Zrii taste like?

I've tasted a lot of really potent medicine in my life experience. I've swallowed thousands of glasses of Chinese medicine, raw rainforest medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, Western herbs and other medicines. I've chewed on bark, swallowed gummy pastes, and chugged extremely bitter concoctions. I can tell you this: Zrii does not taste like medicine to me. It tastes like grape juice.

Real Ayurvedic medicine tastes bitter. So does real Chinese medicine, real rainforest medicine and real herbal medicine. Zrii does not taste bitter to me. It tastes primarily like grape juice to my tongue. Perhaps your experience is different, but in my experience, Zrii does not taste like real medicine.

Remember: "Grape juice" is not an ingredient in Ayurvedic medicine. So why is it a primary ingredient in Zrii? Because grape juice is a lot cheaper (and sweeter) than Ayurvedic medicine. Plus, Americans like everything all sugared up. Americans often don't want to drink real medicine. They want to drink a sugared-up beverage and pretend that it's medicine! So many of these network marketing companies tend to formulate their juice products to be full of grape juice and pear juice, leaving little room for truly medicinal ingredients. Instead of formulating products that are truly medicinal, they tend to formulate products that consumers will gulp down, regardless of whether they provide any significant medicinal benefit.

Do your research before jumping on Zrii

I think a lot of folks are currently jumping on the Zrii bandwagon based entirely on the buzzwords: Chopra, Amalaki, Turmeric, and so on. They're not really doing the research and finding out whether the product truly offers anything resembling potent medicine. I know that a lot of our readers are interested in Zrii, and many have already signed on to the Zrii product line based on all the excitement, the opportunity to make money, and the association with Chopra. I certainly honor the positive intentions being expressed by these people, but I think you may want to be more selective about the products you recommend, and don't be hoodwinked by the Zrii promotional materials and product formulation strategy, which disproportionately emphasizes the minor ingredients while downplaying the cheap juices that make up the bulk of the product.

I encourage our readers to think carefully about the Zrii product and business opportunity, and to ask yourself this question: Are you really impressed by the Zrii product, or are you actually just along for the business opportunity? Because no network marketing company based on low-quality products seems to survive very long. The product must be key: It must be a product that people value and would buy on a regular basis anyway, even if the business opportunity didn't exist. And personally, I have no interest in buying the Zrii product. The product doesn't stand on its own, in my opinion. I'd rather just buy some raw ginger root, turmeric root and dried Schizandra berries and blend up some of that in a Vita-Mix. It would be a whole lot cheaper and a lot more potent!

In my personal opinion, the Zrii company will fail unless it substantially reformulates its products. Right now, Zrii appears to be just another diluted grape juice "health" drink with a tiny amount of key ingredients that you could buy on your own at a fraction of the price as nutritional supplements. If you really want to drink grape juice with your Ayurvedic medicine, just go to the store, buy some grape juice, and chug it when you swallow some Ayurvedic supplements. It will cost you about one-tenth the price of Zrii.

A fancy name, appealing bottle design and association with a famous spokesperson (Chopra) does not compensate for the fact that the product just doesn't stand up to scrutiny by anyone schooled in either holistic nutrition or Ayurvedic medicine. Is Zrii healthier than drinking a Coke? Sure it is. But is the product really so unimpressive that we should even have to make such a comparison? Shouldn't we be reaching for the best nutrition possible rather than gulping down something that's just marginally better than mainstream junk beverages? I suppose that for a teenager who's addicted to Pepsi, getting him to drink Zrii would be a positive step in the right direction, but for myself and most of our readers who already follow a healthful diet, drinking Zrii would be a setback due to all the pasteurized liquid fruit sugars contained in the drink.

Raw turmeric and ginger is still the best

Want some powerful turmeric and ginger? Go buy some at the local health food store and drop a chunk of it into your blender each day, along with your other superfood smoothie ingredients. I can guarantee you that fresh, raw turmeric and ginger that you blend yourself is going to be far more potent than any turmeric and ginger you find in a bottled, pasteurized juice product.

I'm here to serve you, my readers, with the most honest, independent assessment I can bring you on products that are gaining attention in the marketplace. Zrii is getting a lot of attention, but my first impression of the product does not leave me feeling impressed. The last thing Americans need is to be chugging is yet more liquid sugars in the form of processed grape juice and pear juice, and the fact that Zrii seems to be de-emphasizing its nutrition facts and highlighting minor ingredients while burying the details about its predominant ingredients makes me rightly skeptical about the integrity of the product.

I will continue to investigate Zrii, and I'll bring you more information on this product as I am able to obtain it. If you're from the Zrii company headquarters (no distributors, please) and you'd like to be interviewed here on this blog, I'm happy to give you that opportunity. But please know that I will ask you the same tough questions I've hinted at here. Nobody gets a free ride on here. You want a good review here? You gotta earn it. And I am not impressed by overpriced grape juice.

I believe that if Chopra is going to lend his name to something, he deserves to be asked some tough questions, too, about what's really in the product... just like Dr. Weil and his line of supplements, which I will likely review here at some point, and which will be subjected to the same scrutiny.

You can bet that I would personally never lend my name to a juice product made primarily with grape, pear and pomegranate juices. I don't care how much money is at stake. The Zrii product apparently sold $3 million on its opening day. Wow. That's a lot of cash. I wonder if it's enough to achieve spiritual enlightenment...?

How to speak Zrii: A translation of Zrii hype

Here's a quick guide to translating the Zrii hype posted on the www.Zrii.com website:

"Prosperity" - The multi-level marketing business plan. It's no longer about making money and getting rich, it's about "prosperity!"

"Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science" - Tiny quantities of medicinal plants meet a whole bottle of grape and pear juice. And then the whole thing is pasteurized.

"Ayurveda: 5000 years of wisdom" - And nowhere in 5,000 years of wisdom did Ayurvedic medicine practitioners recommend that overweight, diabetic people drink pasteurized, processed grape juice and pear juice. To call Zrii "Ayurvedic" is an insult to true Ayurvedic medicine.

"What our ancestors knew about Ayurveda, a health system dating back 5,000 years ago, has been passed down from generation to generation. Its primary message is simple, yet profound: align yourself with the wisdom of nature and you will experience vibrant, glowing health. That's the guiding philosophy behind Zrii."

Yeah, but it's still made mostly with grape juice and pear juice.

Remember this, folks: Talk is cheap. These companies can toss out all kinds of high-vibration language and associate themselves with all sorts of spiritual-sounding philosophies, but when it comes right down to it, Zrii is still mostly non-organic, pasteurized grape juice and pear juice.

And if you think drinking that is going to make your life "abundant" or "wise" or "enlightened," then you're kidding yourself. Enlightenment has never been achieved by anyone selling low-quality products at high prices to gullible consumers.

By the way, the very fact that I'm posting this article tells you how much integrity I have in telling the truth and honoring readers, because if I didn't have great ethics, I would sign up with Zrii myself and write a bogus glowing article about how great Zrii is, and how you can get rich while revolutionizing your health and all that, and I'd make a small fortune off the massive downline business activity. (I've been offered multi-million dollar deals by network marketing companies several times.) . I'm here to provide you with the most accurate and honest information I can about health products, health concepts, dangerous pharmaceuticals and life practices that produce positive results. I honor my role, and I respect my audience. My reputation is not for sale, and I tell it like it is, without sugar-coating the subject (or, with Zrii, grape-juice-coating it).

If Zrii changes their formula and I'm impressed with the new formulation, I'll say so and write a positive review. But based on what I know about Zrii right now, I think the product is a nutritional joke. I don't care if saying that means Deepak Chopra will never be a guest on a ..interview or not. Frankly, if Chopra is going to lend his name to a product like this, he probably doesn't deserve to be on ... in the first place.

I look at what people DO, not just what they SAY. Look at the ingredients on a nutritional supplement or superfruit juice, and you'll learn all you need to know about the integrity (or lack thereof) of the people behind it. Flowery, spiritual-sounding language doesn't make up for junk nutritional ingredients! You can't meditate away the reality of what's really in the bottle.

That's why I continue to openly endorse the Amazon Herb Company and its founder, Amazon "John" Easterling, even though I have absolutely no financial relationship with the Amazon Herb Company. It's an organization that I see as offering honest products with really superb ingredients. Their ethics are straight up, and they're genuinely working to make the world a better place by revolutionizing business models that keep the rainforests alive and intact in South America. To me, the difference between Zrii vs. the Amazon Herb Co. is like night and day.