Does Balance of Nature Provide Daily Serving Of Fruits and Veggies?

Balance of Nature “Fruits and Veggies” claim to provide a full complement of fruits and veggies. They are promoted as containing a blend of 16 whole fruits and 15 whole vegetables. If you take only 3 capsules each of the Fruits and Veggies, you will have consumed your full recommended dietary intake.

At least, this is what their promotional videos imply. The product labels, at this time, do not actually make this bold claim, and instead list the various fruits and vegetables found in the products, respectively. But what amount of powdered fruits and vegetables could three capsules contain?

Fruits and vegetables, on average, contain around 90% water. This means that to make two grams of powder you need around 20 grams of fruits or vegetables. One serving of Balance of Nature Fruits or Veggies provides two grams.

Therefore, one serving provides around 20 grams of fruits or vegetables. This is roughly equivalent to 1/5 cup of fruits or vegetables, far below the recommended intake of fruits or vegetables if you follow the government’s “My Plate” guidelines.

The My Plate guidelines call for two cups of fruit and 3 cups of vegetables daily. Even if you do not follow these guidelines, you will probably agree that 1/5 cup of fruit or veggies is a very small amount. Yet, it will cost you about three dollars a day to get this amount.

The supplement facts label on both Balance of Nature products, which are sold together, do not list the actual amounts of individual fruits or veggies and instead name them as part of three ‘proprietary blends.’

The fruits label claims two grams of carbohydrates and the veggies label claims one gram of carbohydrates. You’ll probably get more nutrition from one piece of fruit or one carrot than you’ll get from a daily serving of Balance of Nature.

Balance of Nature Lawsuit

Balance of Nature agreed in August to settle a $1.1 million lawsuit brought by several district attorneys in California over false advertising.

Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley described the lawsuit as being about the company “making misleading statements about their products and signing customers up for recurring charges without their knowledge.”

The misleading claims were the ones I described above, where Balance of Nature claimed that one serving of its fruit products, weighing only 2 grams, contained the “nutritional equivalent of over 5 servings of fruits per dose” and that 3 veggie capsules had as much nutrition as “10 servings of a salad made with 31 different fruits and vegetables.”

The company was also sued for making various claims that their product could treat or even cure serious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. ¹https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/balance-of-nature-supplements-evig-settle-1-1m-false-advertising-case-bay-area-district-attorneys/ The FDA also included these ‘drug’ claims in a warning letter.

FDA Infractions

Balance of Nature also has a history of FDA infractions. The company has received a warning letter from the FDA for its product claims and has been cited for numerous violations of Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs), including failures “to implement controls to ensure the quality of the dietary supplement and that the dietary supplement is packaged and labeled as specified in the master manufacturing record…”

Heavy Metals in Balance of Nature

You may be concerned about the presence of heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and mercury in Balance of Nature and other similar green food products.

Independent tests have shown that Balance of Nature contains an amount of lead and other heavy metals as would be expected in such a natural product, as do most such products.

In other words, the product contains the amount of heavy metals that you would expect to find in an equivalent serving of fruits and vegetables, but these amounts are very low.

The product does contain less lead than Athletic Greens AGI, according to these tests. ²

“Fruits, Veggies, and Other Greens Supplements Review (Including Spirulina and Chlorella).” ConsumerLab.Com, ConsumerLab.com, 3 Aug. 2023, www.consumerlab.com/reviews/greens-whole-foods-powders-supplements/greens/.