Have you ever popped open a bottle of Juice Plus+ and wondered, “How is Juice Plus+ made? Well, you probably already know the Fruit, Vegetable and Berry Blend capsules are filled with the powder of 30 different fruits, vegetables and berries, like beets, blueberries, broccoli, carrots and kale. And that our plant-based Omega Blend capsules are made from algae, berry and plant seed oils.
That’s the short answer. For a deeper dive into how Juice Plus+ is made, read on.
What is Juice Plus+?
Juice Plus+ capsules come in four varieties:
- Fruit Blend, featuring apple, peach, cranberry, orange, mango, lemon peel, acerola cherry, pineapple, prune, date and beet
- Vegetable Blend, which contains broccoli, parsley, tomato, carrot, garlic, beet, spinach, cabbage, lemon peel, rice bran and kale
- Berry Blend, with raspberry, bilberry, blueberry, cranberry, pomegranate, Concord grape, black currant, blackberry, elderberry and artichoke
- Omega Blend, which includes algal oil, pomegranate seed oil, raspberry seed oil, sea buckthorn berry oil, safflower seed oil, tomato seed oil.
How is Juice Plus+ Made: Fruit, Vegetable and Berry Blends
To get from the farm to your kitchen counter, these plant-based ingredients go on a journey through five key phases:
1. Farming
Juice Plus+ ingredients are grown on small to midsize family farms, which are big enough to supply the quantities of fruits and vegetables we need, but small enough to keep a careful eye on quality. We visit the farms ourselves, observing everything from weed control to the harvesting process.
2. Harvesting
The first step in capturing plant-based nutrition at its best is to let the fruits and vegetables fully ripen. (Ripe produce equals nutritious produce!) That seems obvious, but too often crops are picked weeks early to make them easier to transport long distances to factories or grocery stores. That’s just not good enough for us.
Juice Plus+ ingredients are allowed to reach their nutritional peak before being picked from the ground, tree, bush or vine.
3. Freezing
When fruits and vegetables can’t be processed onsite, they are immediately frozen whole and sent to the nearest processing facility. As Mike, the Purchasing Director for one of our key powder partners, notes, “There’s a very short amount of time from when they [the fruits and vegetables] are harvested to when they’re frozen, locking in the freshness and nutrients.” In fact, it’s only about five hours - or less!
4. Pulverizing, Drying, Blending, and Encapsulating
Once they make it to the processing plant, the fruits, vegetables and berries are washed, pulverized whole with their peels, leaves and seeds whenever possible, and carefully dried into a nutritious plant-based powder. We combine the powders with selected vitamins and other plant ingredients, such as lemon peel. Why pulverize everything? To harvest the greatest amount of nutrients, of course! People don’t tend to eat the peel, leaves and seeds of fruits and vegetables in everyday life, but they are nutritional storehouses! Why let all that nutritional goodness go to waste?
Juice Plus+ uses a proprietary low-temperature drying process to protect the fragile nutrients in our produce. “There is so much care taken through the process of taking the produce to powders,” explains Liza Pepple, Director, Global Product Development at the Juice Plus+ Company. “We evaluate each and every fruit and vegetable for the specific time and temperature that is needed to effectively dry the produce while still remaining highly nutritionally active. This attention to detail is what separates the Juice Plus+ powders from competitor products.”
After drying, the fruits and veggies arrive at one of our state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, all of which meet or exceed food quality standards and have a range of certifications that are second to none. There, they are blended and encapsulated in easy-to-swallow vegan capsules.
5. Packaging and Mailing
Finally, the capsules are packed into special bottles that protect them from moisture and oxygen, ensuring their contents stay fresh on the journey. The bottles are safety-sealed and sent straight to your door.
How is Juice Plus+ Made: Omega Blend
Most omega products are made from fish oil, but Juice Plus+ is committed to providing the best in plant-based nutrition, so our Omega Blend is different. It’s a balanced, cold-pressed mixture of oils from algae, pomegranate seeds, sea buckthorn berries, raspberry seeds, tomato seeds and safflower seeds. These oils supply a full spectrum of omega fatty acids, including omega-3, omega-5, omega-6, omega-7 and omega-9!
Juice Plus+ Omega Blend is made in much the same way as Juice Plus+ Fruit, Vegetable and Berry Blends, with a few key differences.
1. Farming & Harvesting
Instead of fruits and vegetables, we source algae, sea buckthorn berries and other plant and fruit seeds from farmers we know and trust. The algae is farmed in a carefully controlled environment to yield the highest quality vegan omega fatty acids. That lets us skip the middle fish and go straight to the original source.
2. Oil Extraction & Cold-Pressing
After harvesting, we extract oil from algae and berries - and we cold press to extract the oil from the seeds. Why cold pressing? Heat can degrade oils, damaging delicate antioxidants content. Cold processing preserves these precious nutrients.
3. Encapsulation
The extracted oil is then encapsulated into a two-piece, vegan hard shell capsule made from tapioca starch, using a proprietary technique with no heat. We also add a nitrogen bubble, so there’s no room for oxygen to enter the capsule. (Like heat, oxygen also degrades oils.) We are serious about protecting the nutritional quality of the oil, so we don’t want anything to go wrong at the finish line!
4. Packaging and Mailing
Finally, the Juice Plus+ Omega Blend capsules are shipped from the warehouse to you! Our suppliers observe strict quality control methods to deliver the products safely to your door.
How is Juice Plus+ Made: With Purity
Juice Plus+ works with growers who use organic principles when growing the produce. We have a more than 20 year relationship with our growers and know the great care they take of the produce they grow. In addition to high-quality produce, we also have NSF certification!
Juice Plus+ capsules have been certified for purity by NSF, an independent organization that has developed testing standards and a product certification program just for nutritional products. To wear the NSF-certified seal, nutritional products must go through a rigorous facility inspection process and laboratory testing to make sure they contain everything they should (e.g. what’s inside the bottle matches what’s on the label) and nothing they shouldn’t (e.g. no undeclared allergens and strict limits on heavy metals, harmful microbes, and pesticide residues.)
We think being NSF-certified is better than being certified organic because organic certification guarantees the process by which crops are grown, but NSF certification guarantees the final product. While organically grown produce must be grown without most synthetic pesticides, the mature crops aren’t tested for pesticide residue. But NSF-certified products are!
Keep in mind, there are only 11 GMO crops that have been approved for sale in the United States: soybeans, corn, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, summer squash, papaya, apples and potatoes. But even knowing this, only non-GMO sources are used for everything in our products, including processing aids. We even have the True North Non-GMO certification!
How Is Juice Plus+ Made: With Care
All our manufacturing partners — whether they’re growers, juicers or encapsulators — adhere to strict quality control procedures that we have reviewed and approved at every step of the process. They all run their own labs, do their own testing and provide certificates of analysis that match our specifications before they ship the product.
How Is Juice Plus+ Made: With Pride
Tim, a blueberry farmer and Vice President, Procurement at one of our powder producers, puts it best:
“My favorite part of working with Juice Plus+ is knowing that people are benefiting from what we’re doing. We put a lot of work into how we grow our ingredients and how we process them so that they’re safe and high-quality and nutritious. It’s neat to see the results of that by seeing the customers that use them and seeing their lives improved from some of the healthy ingredients and produce we process.”
So if you’ve ever wondered “How is Juice Plus+ made?” now you know!