<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

Thanks so much.  I had great responses both supporting and against. See
below:


Support the use of Juice Plus:

I am a representative of Juice Plus and have been working extensively on
 the
gluten issue of late. Here is the story...I tried to post it to the list,
but apparently they didn't let it go through.

We are currently in compliance with what the Celiac Sprue Association
requires for a product to be called gluten-free. This goes for ALL
products,
so when something says gluten-free, this is what it means. The test that
 was
available up till sometime this year only tested to a sensitivity of "less
than 200 parts per million". Testing "ppm" is the way all tests,
including
herbicidal tests, are read. A more sensitive test has become available (will
test to 20 ppm) but we are not currently using that test because the
Celiac
Sprue Assoc. has not changed their guidelines. When they do, we will
retest.

We have celiac patients on the product and they are not experiencing any
problems. The part of the barley and oats that are used are the outer
parts
of the grain, not the inner parts, which is where most of the gluten
comes
from.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have a Celiac son who takes the Juice Plus gummies. He has taken them
for a year, every day, fruit in the morning and veggies in the evening.
He recently had an egd and colonoscopy done to explore another medical
issue he was having. Turns out his colon is slowly healing from an
infection. His small intestine looked perfect, beautiful, and absolutely
 normal, biopsies and all. So I take that as proof enough for me that
they are gf.

Btw, we were recommended them by a celiac RN. She has taught nutrition
classes and is very knowledgeable about Celiac disease. She was
literally near death when she started taking juice plus. She contributes
 much of her recovery to them.


Against
I did attend a meeting in Kansas City last week and talked with a
representative of ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland) Co.  They do a lot of
grain
milling and he said that the bran and germ fractions are mostly used for
animal feed.  The small amount they sell for human consumption is not
specially processed by them.  It might be washed slightly by the user,
but
the feeling of the person I talked with was that thorough washing would
be
unlikely.

So, even though I can't come up with any quantitative information on the
amount of endosperm remaining with the bran and germ fractions (it will
probably vary according to the end user's processing), my feeling is
that
too much is present for a celiac patient to risk eating products that
contain a significant proportion of either wheat bran or germ. The ADM
executive was in agreement on that. As I said in my earlier post, white
bits
of endosperm attached to the bran are very noticeable in a freshly
milled
bran fraction from a Brabender Quadrumat Senior mill, which is a fairly
sophisticated experimental mill that I have used occasionally.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I looked into the same issue w/ my celiac son. I was given the same info
from the company about juice plus being GF. A few listmates also wrote
me
and said they take them with no problems. HOWEVER, I spoke w/ Dr.
Michelle
Pietzak (Director of Celiac Research- West Coast)about the claim that
the
gluten is removed, and she said if the label says barley (in any
form)...don't use it. There's no evidence that gluten can be 100%
removed.
SO- I chose not to use it. While I'm sure it's a great product, there
are
plenty of others that are GF.

*Support summarization of posts, reply to the SENDER not the Celiac List*