Amare Happy Juice drink mixes have surged in popularity, claiming to boost overall mood through a unique blend of compounds targeting the gut-brain axis. This article delves into the ingredients of Amare Happy Juice and explores its potential effects on weight loss.
Functional Foods and the Rise of Amare Global
The demand for functional foods, which offer health benefits beyond basic nutrition, is growing. Amare Global, a company focused on optimizing mental wellness, has capitalized on this trend with products like Happy Juice.
Amare global is a company that creates a variety of products and programs specifically aimed at optimizing mental wellness. These products claim to promote mental wellness by enhancing mental fitness, physical performance, stress resilience, confidence, and more. There are many offerings through Amare Global that I can absolutely get behind. They have a variety of mindfulness programs, exercise examples, and even some nutrition plans that are straight forward and will likely have positive impacts on health. As a health professional, I think it’s fantastic to find habits, foods, and maybe even products that support mental wellness.
However, Amare Global operates as a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) company, which raises concerns about marketing tactics and scientific evidence.
For sales, Amare global aims to “connect like minded individuals” to promote and sell their products. Simply put, Amare Global is an MLM or “Multi Level Marketing company” that recruits people who then recruit people who all make commission when you buy the products they promote. As much as this may make some people upset, MLM companies can often experience blurred lines between honest and not so honest marketing. While I’m sure there are PLENTY of people who promote these products because they absolutely love them, it’s something to consider before you purchase.
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Decoding Amare Happy Juice
Happy Juice by Amare Global is a powdered drink mix designed to be mixed with water. It consists of three key products: Mentabiotics, AmareEDGE+, and Energy+.
Mentabiotics: Gut Health and Mental Wellness
Mentabiotics is a drink mix that focuses on promoting mental health by supporting gut health. It contains a blend of probiotics, prebiotics, phytobiotics, and “digestive performance ingredients” that it claims will support mental wellness through the gut-brain axis.
The label of the original Mentabiotics lists the following ingredients:
- Proprietary Probiotic Blend: Specific strains of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are included, claiming to positively impact mood, stress resilience, and gut health.
- Proprietary Prebiotic Blend: A blend of prebiotics like iso-malto oligosaccharides, galactic-oligo-saccharides, and galactomannan fibre. Prebiotics feed gut bacteria and this proprietary blend is designed to complement the proprietary probiotic blend also in this product.
- Phytobiotics: Plant extracts with disease-fighting properties. This product contains various extracts from plants, plant seeds, and plant bark.
- Digestive Performance Ingredients: Including L-Glutamine and different plant extracts like those from Ginger and Artichoke leaf.
The effectiveness of Mentabiotics is difficult to determine because the blends are proprietary, meaning the exact quantity of each ingredient is unknown. While the product contains health-promoting ingredients like probiotics and prebiotics, these nutrients can also be obtained from a balanced diet with targeted food choices (like fermented foods).
AmareEDGE+: Nootropics and Mental Performance
AmareEDGE+ is a complementary product that has many claims surrounding mental health and motivation through its inclusion of plant derived “nootropics.” This product is offered in a variety of flavors and one of the three flavors is a caffeine source as well.
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The ingredients include:
- Mango leaf extract
- Lychee fruit extract
- Palm fruit bioactive complex
- "Mind and Body" proprietary blend with lion's mane, citicholine, and a natural caffeine source (in the mango flavor)
While nootropics are gaining traction in research, more human studies are needed. The benefits of lychee fruit, mango leaf extract, and palm fruit extract in this context are not definitively proven, the benefits are more likely to come from eating more plants in general. Lions mane, a medicinal mushroom, shows promise in some studies for being neuroprotective and acting as an antioxidant, but optimal dosage is still being studied. Previously written reviews had access to the cited studies. Where did the research go? I, for one, cannot find it. If you stumble upon it, please send me way and I would be happy to review.
Energy+: Boosting Energy Levels
Energy+ comes in two flavors: Matcha Pomegranate Lime (caffeinated) and Dragon Fruit (caffeine-free).
- Matcha pomegranate lime: pomegranate extract, guayusa, matcha extract, a caffeine extract and the proprietary digestive blend.
- Dragon fruit: chicory root inulin, glycine, pomegranate juice extract, and rooibos tea extract as well as the proprietary digestive blend.
The caffeinated version provides a temporary energy boost, similar to coffee or tea. The dragon fruit flavor claims to increase energy levels without caffeine. Antioxidants are linked with a variety of health benefits including reduced risk for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and protection against cognitive decline… but increase concentration? That I did not see.
The Gut-Brain Axis: A Complex Connection
The gut-brain axis refers to the communication between different systems in your body and it’s a communication that researchers are focusing in on. The brain impacts your gut and everything that stems from your gut while your gut feeds back to your brain and impacts mood, signals, and more. Optimizing the gut microbiota (the bacteria in your gut) is essential for healthy gut activity.
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However, the best way to optimize this connection is still being studied, and the process is highly individual.
One thing we do know is that optimizing the gut microbiotia (or the bacteria that live in your gut) is essential for healthy gut activity from better digestion to stronger immunity. So, do we even know what that means to optimize the gut-brain axis? At this point, no we don’t and the process to get to “optimized” would be highly individual. This will continue to evolve in research, we just aren’t there yet so I wouldn’t spend my money on products that claim to be.
While products like Mentabiotics contain gut-health-supporting nutrients, more information is needed to determine effective doses and safety of probiotic use. The Happy Juice gut health and gut-health axis claims would fall into this concern identified by researchers. The reality is that gut health is incredibly individual and varies with age, sex, health factors, and even down to the type of bacteria that live in the gut. One product may not fit all.
Amare and Weight Management
The Amare weight management tab is labelled ‘confidence and weight’…because somehow those things need to go together? That’s funny.
Out of all the Amare B3 products, I’ve failed to understand how any of them can actually produce weight loss. Protein and seed fibre causing people to feel full?? Cortisol and weight may be one angle. Some of the Amare products are marketed as stress-reducing, which in turn may reduce cortisol levels. However, cortisol levels are not directly related to weight (I know, I used to think they were, too). Turns out, chronically elevated cortisol may increase appetite, which in turn may increase weight.
Amare Reboot+ allegedly ‘reboots’ the gut-brain axis in three days by making you sh*t, although physiologically, I’m not sure how subjecting your colon to a laxative can POSITIVELY impact the microbiome.
This 2018 study, however, didn’t find any effect on weight loss from Oligonal.
NOTHING causes effortless weight loss. And if someone tell you this, the last thing you should be doing is giving them your money.
Concerns and Red Flags
Several concerns surround Amare Happy Juice:
- Lack of readily available research: While Amare provides a list of studies, these studies are not always readily accessible or directly related to the specific product.
- Proprietary blends: The use of proprietary blends makes it difficult to determine the dosage of active ingredients.
- Overstated claims: The health claims associated with Happy Juice may exceed the available research.
Pros and Cons of Amare Happy Juice
Pros:
- Convenient: Easy to blend into water and comes in a variety of flavors.
- Potential for missing nutrients: May offer health-promoting nutrients like probiotics, prebiotics, and phytonutrients.
- Emerging research: The area of gut-brain axis research is growing.
Cons:
- Proprietary blend: Exact ingredient amounts are not disclosed.
- Limited research on the product itself: Studies are primarily on individual ingredients, not the combined Happy Juice formula.
- MLM structure: Potential for biased marketing and sales tactics.