Mangosteen: Fruit vs Juice/Product

One of the basic rules you should always remember about nutritional supplements is this: a good ingredient doesn't make a good product. In other words, you could buy a product made from a good ingredient, but the product might not be researched and made correctly, and could be completely inert, or useless.

So, how does this apply to mangosteen? Simple - you could buy a 100% mangosteen juice product that was completely worthless. Many nutrients are fragile - if not processed correctly, they can be destroyed, leaving the product worthless.

So, if you have decided that you want to try mangosteen, you need to do your very best to choose a product that will deliver you all the nutritional content of the mangosteen fruit. Here are a few tips for evaluating a mangosteen product:

Whole fruit - is your mangosteen product made from the whole fruit? Many of the nutrients in the angosteen are found in the pericarp, or rind of the fruit, so it's important that the product contain the whole fruit.

Standardized - is your mangosteen product standardized for xanthone content? Can the manufacturer tell you how many/much xanthones are in each serving from batch to batch?

Xanthones - What is the xanthone content of the product? How many of the 40+ xanthones are in the product?

Percent - how much mangosteen is in the product? It doesn't have to be 100% mangosteen, but you probably don't want a product that is just 25% mangosteen.

Research - what research and tests has this manufacturer done on this mangosteen product?

Shelf life - has the product been rigorously tested for shelf life? Can you be sure that the xanthones and nutrients are still in the product when you take it? (anti-oxidants can "oxidize" over time and become inert).