Jilly Juice

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Jillian Mai Thi Epperly holding something that she expects you to drink.
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“”I'm proud of being a leader of a poop cult.
—Jillian Mai Thi Epperly[1]

Jilly Juice is a brine solution of cabbage juice left in a warm room for three days. According to its creator, it expunges Candida from the body, and so by drinking a gallon of the juice every day, one can cure themselves of virtually any ailment or condition, including (as stated by the creator) autism, cancer, HIV, Down syndrome, homosexuality, and transgenderism.[2] The creator also claims that drinking the juice can cause you to regrow lost limbs and organs, and live to be over 400 years old. In reality, Jilly Juice can do none of these things. These wild claims have attracted the support of tens of thousands of followers on Facebook, as well as substantial negative attention from the Better Business Bureau.[3]

Jilly Juice is the creation of Jillian Mai Thi Epperly, a woman from Ohio, who states that she cured herself of chronic illnesses and no longer suffers from allergies and common ailments because of the juice.[4][5] Epperly claims that the root of all human disease is the Candida fungus, which naturally occurs in the gut,[6] but that she claims is a gut parasite, and that her juice is the cure. She provides no evidence to back up these claims except for endless piles of woo. Interested customers may, however, explore more by paying her for consulting services on a "members only" part of her webshite.

Critics counter that Epperly's juice, when consumed at the recommended dosage of a gallon a day, causes severe reactions and side effects including nausea, headaches, dizziness ("feeling healing"), and explosive blasts of diarrhea ("waterfalls").[1][7] Nasty side effects of consuming the briny juice are likely, in part, due to salt poisoning.Wikipedia[8][3]

In 2017, Bruce Wilmot, suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer, discovered Epperly's snake oil site on Facebook, and desperate for a cure, brewed up several gallons of the stuff and began "juicing" frantically. Wilmot's daughter stated that he drank the juice to the exclusion of everything else and became emaciated before dying shortly thereafter.[1]

After receiving multiple complaints about Epperly's activities in marketing her brine in 2018, the Ohio state Attorney General opened an investigation into the matter.[5] In what can be described as either incredibly stupid or clueless, Epperly released a remarkable pseudoscientific screed in response to a formal request from state authorities.[9][4] In October 2018, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Ohio Attorney General told Epperly she must remove all unsubstantiated claims from her website and any other advertising materials.[10] Epperly has also suffered a temporary ban from Facebook for violating the platform's hate speech rules by ranting about homosexuals.[11]

How the "Protocol" works, kind of...

Her website has a rather… interesting FAQ section, which is a mix of vague claims (which she admits are deliberately so, in order to cover herself),[12] interspersed with various basic facts about water and salt, which have been cut & pasted from slightly more reputable sites; this is done in a desperate attempt to show that she's got the slightest idea about the science of nutrition or how her magical protocol is supposed to work.

Of particular interest is her mention of "symptoms", where she explains that you should be happy that you're experiencing intense diarrhea, cramping and other signs that you would normally take as a hint to stop doing whatever the hell it is that caused them in the first place. Good nutrition makes you shit waterfalls, didn't you know that?[13]

Ringing endorsements

No less an august (cough cough) personality than Dr. Phil McGraw has called Jilly Juice a dangerous scam,[14] proving that even Dr. Phil can be right on rare occasions. Additionally, prominent YouTubers Jeff Holiday, Pyrocynical, PewDiePie, and Myles Power, as well as OpenYourMind Radio have recently done segments about the Jilly Juice scam and cult.

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Nidhi Subbaraman, On Facebook, Cabbage Juice Is The New Snake Oil. Buzzfeed, 17 March 2018.
  2. ↑ Jillian MaiThi Epperly on Facebook, 23 October 2017.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Alerts and actions at the Better Business Bureau, 30 January 2018.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Kashmira Gander, Woman who claims cabbage juice 'cures' autism and can regrow limbs to be probed by officials. Newsweek, 3 May 2018.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Nidhi Subbaraman, The Ohio Attorney General Is Demanding Answers From The Woman Who Started A Facebook Cabbage Juice Cult. Buzzfeed, 2 May 2018.
  6. ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Candida albicans.
  7. ↑ Exposing the Jilly Juice Cult Saga. Steamit, February 2018.
  8. ↑ Ban Jillian Mai Thi Epperly from Facebook and All Other Social Media. change.org petition, retrieved on 24 May 2018.
  9. ↑ What Is Normal? The Science Behind A Healing Protocol As Related To Cancer, Disease, and Chronic Illness. Jillian Mai Thi Epperly, 13 June 2018.[sic]
  10. ↑ Katie Joy, FTC Says Jillian Epperly Violated Truth in Advertising Laws. patheos.com, 3 October 2018.
  11. ↑ Katie Joy, Jillian Epperly Banned From Facebook For Hate-Speech toward LGBTQ. patheos.com, 14 September 2018.
  12. ↑ On the Jilly Juice website.
  13. ↑ http://www.jillyjuice.com/faq/
  14. ↑ Jilly Juice: Claims to Cure Cancer, Regrow Missing Limbs and Reverse Aging: Is This a Dangerous Scam? drphil.com, 22 May 2018.
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