Excerpts from “Aloe Vera: A Mission Discovered” By Lee Ritter

If you take a 10,000-gallon vat and put one gallon of Aloe vera juice in it and then add 9,999 gallons of water, you can advertise that it contains 100 percent pure stabilized Aloe vera. That has been the position of the Food and Drug Administration to date. One FDA representative said to me, “It’s not our responsibility to say how much water is in a tomato, an orange, or in Aloe vera.”

Dr. Reginald McDaniel indicated to me that of over 200 Aloe vera beverages tested in the mid-1980s, only three contained a sufficient content of Aloe to be of any medical value to the consumer. The tests that I have run would indicate that even today, less than one percent of readily available brands contain acceptable levels of Aloe vera.

The harm that is done by putting out an aloe vera beverage with only diluted, minute quantities of aloe vera in it is tremendous. The consumer receives no benefit and comes to the conclusion that aloe vera doesn’t work.

In every case where someone has told me that aloe vera did not do them any good, the story has been the same. There were insufficient quantities of aloe vera in the drink.

The blame for selling worthless products should not be placed on the health food stores for the most part. The distributor tells them that it is a good product and they purchase it for their customers. They don’t have any idea how to test it. Even the label says, “One Hundred Percent Pure, Stabilized Aloe Vera”. Remember, that label does not tell you how much aloe vera is in the bottle, just that what is there is pure. It’s the producers and distributors who incur my wrath. They know exactly what they are doing.

There are over 1,000 brands of aloe vera available on the market, most of which are privately labeled by about 20 producers. Senator Orrin Hatch spoke to the health food industry. He indicated that the greatest threat to them is their inability to control themselves, particularly those who deliberately misrepresent their product or its potential value. It was the dilution problem that brought me to the conclusion that the purchase of a concentrate was the best and safest approach. With a concentrate, you know how much aloe vera you are taking.

There are other problems besides that of dilution in purchasing a product. How is the aloe prepared? Much of the chemical value of the Aloe Vera plant is found in the leaves. However, just under the rind is a yellow sap called Aloin. This substance is a very strong laxative and needs to be removed. The process is complicated. Aloe Vera juice is mostly water. All the remaining chemicals together amount to no more than one percent of the aloe leaf. In that one percent, there are over 200 different constituents or ingredients. The manner in which they work on each other and together (synergism) is not scientifically understood. Thus, it is essential that all of the ingredients be retained and not altered. Research studies show that using just the mannose from the aloe plant and nothing else doesn’t work as well as the entire plant.