Thursday, December 22, 2011

Health News and Acai Berry - The Mysterious Connection

In the last few weeks we have received numerous emails about Julia Miller - a health news reporter - who investigated the weight loss benefits of the Acai Berry. We have heard so much about the Acai Berry and claims that it could help you lose weight, that we were excited to learn that a health news reported had some testing on the supplement. Unforunately, as we investigated further we learned that Julia Miller was not who she claimed to be.

Some Background on the Acai Berry

The Acai Berry is a small purple berry that grows in the Amazon Rainforest. The berry grows in bunches high in the Acai Palm tree. The Acai berry has a very large seed - with only about 10% of the berry edible skin and pulp. While the Acai Berry is small in size, it is large in nutrition - with more antioxidants than any other fruit. The fact that the Acai berry can help increase energy, improve sleep patterns, reduce inflammation, boost the immune system and aide in digestion is widely accepted. What is much more open to debate are the weight loss powers of the Acai berry.

The Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse - A Match Made in Marketing Heaven?

One of the common themes among web sites that promote Acai for weight loss is to pair it with a colon cleanse. This seems liked an interesting combination so we did a search at PubMed for any clinical studies on the combination of Acai and a colon cleanse - we did not find any studies. It looks like the idea that the two supplements need to be used together is more a matter of marketing than science.


Julia Miller And Her 4 Weeks of Weight Loss

So we were skeptical about weight loss claims, but the report we read from Health News 7 sounded so promising. Julia Miller, a senior Health Reporter, decided to try an Acai supplement and a colon cleanse to see if she really lost weight. In the article, she reports on her results each week and in the end she lost over 28 pounds in 30 days! The article also contains plenty of positive reports from other readers who left comments. We were thrilled until we decided to dig a little deeper and find out more about Julia Miller and her network - Health News 7.

Will the Real Julia Miller Please Stand Up?

We used Google to do a search on Julia Miller and Acai and we were shocked what we found. We found at least 8 different sites with slightly different news names - Health News 6, News Health 9, New 7 Health, etc. They all had the same report from Julia Miller - and a picture of Julia Miller. Here is the amazing thing - every picture of Julia Miller is different! We are not talking a little difference, in one photo she is blond with blue eyes - in the next she has brown hair, brown eyes and about 10 years younger. No way Acai could do that!

It was starting to become clear that this health reporter was really just different stock photos and not a reporter at all. It also was becoming clear that the news sites were not actually news sites at all. We felt we were getting very close to the truth on this story, we just needed to dig a little deeper.

The Sad Truth about Julia Miller and the Health News Sites...

After a few more searches, we found an incredible article detailing the whole truth on Julia Miller and the network of health news sites. The above article does an incredible job of clearly explaining the truth about these "news reports".

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