I was approached to join Agel about 3 months ago by a friend of mine who knew that I was a consumer of nutritional supplements. He was very excited about Agel and said that Agel was ?the best? ?the greatest? and so on. I was invited to listen to some tele-conferences and webcasts to find out how I could become rich and healthy.
I promptly listened to various speakers and I have to tell you that I was initially quite attracted to the products. The gels seemed quite convenient and I even liked the flavor of a couple of them.
In late April I went on a business trip and I got talking to a lady who was sitting next to me on the plane and happened to share my interest in nutrition. When I mentioned Agel to her she warned me about the company and especially about the products. That prompted me to do my own research and find out what was exactly in the gels and if they were likely to be beneficial.
What I found out is quite disturbing and in a nutshell I have to tell you that the gels contain no meaningful doses of any of the listed active ingredients and they are full of useless fillers and artificial additives.
When you listen to the webcasts, it's very clear that the company promotes top networkers/management and the product is just a secondary tool.
They sell the business promoting Randy Gage and a couple of other heavy hitters as well as some guys from the management and the hype is unbelievable. There have been already enough comments made about the management in this thread. All I can say that both the top distributors and the management are known for company hopping so to me it?s a big negative, as obviously they go from one ?biggest opportunity? to another ?greatest opportunity. It is known that Randy?s previous MLM closed down so he is not a very good judge what?s good and what?s not.
Their claims about the "quadra plan" being the most incredible plan ever is simply ridiculous. It?s just a combination of binary and other plans . When you look at it closer it's a recruitment plan designed to benefit the heavy hitters. Just looking at the binary part, you are paid on up to 250,000 cv points per business centre which simply is insane and is going to benefit ONLY the big guys, as they will have to build less business centers to make big money. Can?t people see it! At least with a company like Usana, it has a comp plan that is very ?middle class? and there is a limit of 5,000 points per b.c. preventing the ?people on the top? making all the money. The little guy will be unbalanced and will make very little - as Agel pays on the lesser leg just like the other binary based plans - but this will not matter to the top distributors. No wonder they are raving about the plan.
Now the products. Where do I start. At first I tried to get some answers from my friend or people during the webcasts and each and every time I was sent to their website geldocs.com. The website is a joke, there is no science there. It doesn't really say much different than the regular website. It's just them talking about how great and tasty the gels are. Someone has already mentioned it but the geldocs site lists some references but when you actually read them you?ll realise that the references talk about higher amounts of ingredients than the ones in the Agel gels and all the studies about vitamins are studies done on tablets. The company created a clever, scientific veneer that many people unfortunately are falling for (well I was almost one of them).
Anybody who knows anything about human nutrition or physiology will be absolutely dismayed how anyone could come up with such nutritionally worthless and possibly dangerous products.
First of all the gels are heavily preserved with Sodium Benzoate that is also known under number 211. This chemical is present in soft drinks and confectionery products and have been associated with adverse effects ranging from gastric problems, skin and eye irritation, liver, kidney and neurotoxic effects and regarded as possible teratogen.
In addition it is known to react with vitamin C (either naturally occurring or added) to produce BENZENE ? an ingredient present in petrol and a known carcinogen. This issue has been in the news a lot recently and is a subject of FDA investigation. There are currently 100s of articles on the net and in scientific publications appearing world wide about this issue and the following are some references:
FDA re-opens probe into benzene contamination of soft drinks
Big Soda vs. Our Kids: Better Beware of Benzene in Soda Pop
http://www.ewg.org/news/story.php?id=5312
It is really sad that a company that supposedly produces health-enhancing products includes ingredients that are known to be dangerous.
Four out of the five Agel products (FIT, EXO, MIN, OHM, and UMI) used to contain a ?Proprietary Sweetening Blend? containing, Neotame, and Acesulfame-K. They are apparently have been now removed from the gels (apart from OHM) but they are still present in the gels in Australia.
Neotame is a cheap artificial sweetener that is much worse than aspartame and Acesulfame-K causes cancer in animals. So it potentially can cause cancer in humans.
Neotame - An Enhanced Derivative of Aspartame - possibly more deadly!
http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Neota...d-FDA5jul02.htm
Neotame Toxicity Information Center
Acesulfame potassium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.cspinet.org/reports/asekquot.html
Acesulfame-K Toxicity Information Center
http://www.wholefoods.com/healthinfo/acesulfamek.html
That?s not all. The gels contain flavors (e.g green apple flavour in UMI and meringue flavor FIT) that include propylene glycol (ingredient in anti-freeze, and shampoos), ethyl acetate and ethyl butyrate. They are not nice ingredients to ingest every day. Ethyl acetate is in nail polish and cigarette smoke but it is added to food (as well as ethyl butyratate) because it happens to have a fruity taste.
All these horrible ingredients are in the Agel products but they are very well disguised. I suggest that you look at the Australian Agel site as well as the US one.
The Australians appear to have different regulations as far as the labelling is concerned so the product info is more complete. You have to look at the pdf documens as you won?t hear about these ingredients during webcasts or just by looking at the main Agel website.
The links are:
http://www.agel.com/australia/pdfs/supp_umi.pdf
http://www.agel.com/australia/pdfs/supp_fit.pdf
http://www.agel.com/australia/pdfs/supp_exo.pdf
The US Agel product pdfs are here:
http://www.agel.com/gelceuticals/index.htm
Go to each product, and see the pdf documents. Sodium benzoate is listed but the other additives aren?t.
The following is a short summary of what I found out about each of the individual products:
EXO ? has a few plant extracts which is OK but also contains the above listed additives and preservatives. Several juice concentrates are in it and we all know to avoid them as they are nutritionally poor. It?s well known that juices made out of concentrates have lower nutritional values. The whole lot weighs only 21g which is very little fruit. They were raving about EXO having a ?huge ORAC score? of 800 at some webcast, which actually is not high at all. This is equivalent of a half cup of grapes or 3 strawberries. Certainly not 5 to 6 lots of fruit as it has been claimed by the Agel people. Reference:
DrDavidWilliams.com: ORAC Values of Fruits & Vegetables
By the way ORAC value is not the only way of assessing nutritional value of fruit and veg as it counts only some antioxidants, but if you are after high ORAC score eat just half of a cup of broccoli or have some Eniva that has ORAC score of 2500.
$2 for and EXO pouch seem a lot for tiny amount of fruit extract mixed with a possibly dangerous chemicals.
MIN ? incomplete range of nutrients, very low levels apart from folate and vitamin D.
It has only 30 iu of vitamin E. Well you need at least 200 to 400 iu to make any difference. Also only 150 mg of calcium ? far too low. I suggest that you read this new independent publication produced by CRN. The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) is a Washington-based trade association representing ingredient suppliers and manufacturers in the dietary supplement industry. There is a good 36-page paper there:
http://www.crnusa.org/pdfs/CRN_Posti...LTIVITAMIN.pdf
and when you read it you will know that you need a lot higher levels of nutrients than those included in the MIN gel.
And of course the gel contains sodium benzoate. Again for much less than $2 a day you can buy a high quality vitamin and get a supplement with meaningful doses of minerals and vitamins. Look at Douglas Labs, Nuskin or Usana. They all great, high potency products.
FIT ? this one really stands out. There is some evidence that hydroxycitric acid can assist in weight loss but they put a completely ineffective amount. SuperCitrimax is the active ingredient Agel is using (manufactured by InterHealth Nutraceuticals) and it was shown to be effective in a clinical trial at a dose of 2700 milligrams of HCA (hydroxycytric acid) that is an equivalent of 4500 milligrams Super CitriMax (see
InterHealth Nutraceuticals - 404 - Page Not Found). Some studies show that you need even more to have any effect.
How much do you get from Agel?s FIT ? only 780mg of HCA (1300mg of Super Citrimax). That?s only a quarter of what was shown to be effective!!! Why would you do that? The only reason is to make a cheap product and sell it for a lot of money.
Also the amount of active ingredient in the pack is only 16% (1300 mg of Super CitriMax in 21 g serving of FIT). So the rest (the majority) that is 84% is water, gum, sweetners, sodium benzoate and of course the delicious flavour that contains propylene glycol, ethyl acetate etc. $2 for water and fillers and a bit of HCA? No thank you.
UMI ? as ineffective amount of the active ingredient as in FIT. Fucoidan have shown some anti-tumor activity and although there are thousands of anti-cancerous ingredients in nature (green tea, broccoli, grapes, blueberries etc.) there some people who like to take fucoidan. The inhabitants of Okinawa, Japan enjoy some of the highest life expectancies in Japan. They happen to have one of the highest per capita consumption rates of fucoidan. If you want to take an effective dose of fucoidan take NRx-Fucoidan. Go to
http://www.americannutrition.com/sto..._Fucoidan.html. Two capsules of high purity fucoidan will give you 600 mg of the active ingredient. From Agel?s UMI you will only get 210 mg of fucoidan per 21 g packet ? exactly 1% of the packet?s content. The rest -99% is water, gum, additives, preservatives. Not a bad money maker?
OHM ? has a few vitamins, very low potency as in MIN. Promoted for its proprietary blend containing taurine and D-ribose some ginseng and vinegar. Taurine is an amino acid that is important in metabolism. Adults actually produce taurine from cysteine with the help of pyridoxine, B6 so people generally don?t need to supplement but if you want to, the effective dose is at least 1500 mg and up to 6000 mg per day. Good info can be found here:
Taurine - Elson M. Haas M.D. - HealthWorld Online
Ribose helps your body quickly replace depleted energy levels, and it has been shown to have benefits in the treatment of heart disease and rapid athletic recovery but you need 5000 to 10000 mg of ribose per day to achieve that
http://www.essense-of-life.com/info/...es.htm#ribose1
Unfortunately there is only a fraction of that amount of ribose in OHM.
OHM supplies an unknown amount of taurine and d-ribose but it looks like the amounts are nowhere near optimal as the whole blend weighs 2600 mg and is made up of 6 ingredients (that?s only about 430 mg per ingredient).
In summary: possibly the worst set of products that I have ever seen. Low and ineffective levels of ingredients, artificial flavors, dangerous additives, lots of fillers (some products are mostly fillers) and preservatives. And they say the gels are natural.
And what about this miracle gel. Nothing new about it either. Guar and xantham gums combined together. They are a very common ingredients found in jams, deserts and all sorts of foods as thickeners. Gelceuticals is just a marketing gimmick. Perhaps the Noni Juice people should call their products liquidceuticals - that would make their product sell better. Someone might come up with powderceuticals?? Just an idea.
By the way there are other products on the market that are gels and look almost identical as Agel products. The Monavie acai berry blend is also available in small packets in a gel form. There is also PowerBar Gel available
Page not found After all Agel looks like it is just a ?copy of a copy?.
Personally, I think that there is no way that Agel is going to be a lasting business. People might be greedy but mostly are not stupid. I don?t see any value in the products or the business. The top distributors will grab as much money as they can and move to another ?best opportunity?.
All this will do a lot of damage though. First of all it will damage the network marketing industry that already does not enjoy a good reputation because of the ?get rich quick? approach. Sadly people?s health might be affected, either because of the chemicals in the products or because of the ignorance. I already heard about a lady who has osteoporosis and stopped taking some high potency products and moved to the gels.
On the other hand I also heard that already Agel does not have a very good retention rate as some people already have obviously recognised that the products are like Christmas baubles ? shiny outside and empty inside. :eek:
