More on "Divinenoni"

A couple of years ago a product called "Divinenoni" was being heavily marketed on Facebook. We were told that it was "Now available in Botswana" and that it could help us to feel young and stay healthy.

What was worrying is that it's proponents made a series of remarkable claims including that it was able to cure cancer and that it should be used INSTEAD of orthodox medicine. Dangerous stuff.

Unfortunately this bogus stuff is still around despite there being no real evidence that it does anything except cost you money.

A reader emailed us about it today:

Good morning, i would like to understand this Noni medicine as most of my colleagues are having it. It is said to be detoxifying so i googled it all to find a message from CONSUMER WATCHDOG, i hope to have not understood it. I think your message was that the sellers are over exaggarate what actually the medicine is doing. Is it worth purchase this product even when not sick maybe to detoxify your body or maybe to deal with issues of constipation???

I will be thankful for your advice.

This was my reply.

My feelings about the Divine Noni product are simple. Their claims are so extreme that you have to question the product and business in general. As you can see on the piece I wrote about it they have claimed in the past that it can cure cancer and that it should even be taken instead of real medicine. That's incredibly dangerous. Given that there is NO evidence for any of the claims they make I think you can safely assume that the products is of little or no value. What effects users might relate are almost certainly either confirmation bias, the placebo effect or just wishful thinking.

Also there's the issue of "detoxification" as a whole. The detox industry is, I'm afraid, based on a lie. The lie is that products can remove toxins from your body. Your body is perfectly well equipped to remove toxins itself, so long as you eat healthily and drink lots of water. The detox industry exists for one purpose only: to sell products, mis-educate consumers into buying worthless products and to make lots and lots of money. See the entry on the Skeptic's Dictionary about detox therapies for more background.

Please don't waste your time and money on products that don't actually do anything and about which miraculous claims are made. Instead spend the money on fresh fruit! it even tastes better I'm told.