#845: Jay Kordich

A.k.a. “the Juice Man”

Jay Kordich, the Juice Man, is a television personality, author, motivational speaker, and lecturer, and is known as “a father” (which is, of course, deliberately not the same as “an expert”) in the field of vegetable juicing, fruit juicing and nutrition. Kordich is an advocate of rawfoodism, and suggests that avoiding cooked food and drinking a lot of juice is helpful with regard to health issues.

According to his bio he was at some point diagnosed with bladder cancer, for which he sought out Max Gerson’s quack treatment focusing on raw juices and cleansing diets, went on a regimen of 13 eight-ounce glasses of carrot-apple juice a day, and claims that the regimen cured him. He doesn’t have a shred of proof that juice cured him of cancer, but – you know – nothing beats a dubious anecdote, especially when it is coupled with some fallacious appeals to nature. From there on, he would devote his life to making television appearances promoting juicing, and actually managed to gain some popularity for that. He is also the author e.g. of Live Foods, Live Bodies, a raw food preparation book coauthored with his wife Linda.

He has a substantial Quackwatch presence, and his methods are covered in detail here.

Diagnosis: As usual, we assume that his efforts are intended to help, but, sadly, when critical thinking skills and understanding of evidence and reality are absent, such efforts can have rather insidious consequences. Dangerous.