Sumner Redstone is high on “a little-known superjuice called MonaVie,” and he’s now saying he’s going to live another 50 years, reports Tim Arango in Fortune (9/3/07). Sumner is 84. “MonaVie is an oxidant-rich concoction whose main ingredient is the Brazilian acai berry (pronounced ah-sigh-ee), long touted among health nuts for its anti-aging ingredients.” Sumner says “it’s a miracle drug,” adding, “I feel great.”He can afford to: “MonaVie costs $40 a bottle, and you can’t get it in stores; it’s marketed only through the company’s network of thousands of individuals who sell it out of their homes.” Sumner’s friend, Bill Roedy, turned him onto the “dark-purple elixir” and Sumner has since given bottles to friend including Bill Clinton and Wolfgang Puck. “Just about every friend I have is on it,” says Sumner, who reports that since he started drinking MonaVie, he has stopped taking sleeping pills.
Hm, well. So, is acai some kind of drug? MonaVia CEO Dallin Larsen says it isn’t. He says the juice simply increases one’s energy level, naturally while also alleviating “the everyday aches and pains from inflammation.” Stephen Talcott, a researcher at the University of Florida, found that acai’s “antioxidants destroyed leukemia cells in a laboratory,” but distances “himself from MonaVie and its junkies.” Speaking of whom, Sumner says he couldn’t be happier. “I feel like I’m 40 years old,” he says.
It was a sunny and bright day (weather forecast was not accurate, thank goodness!) We have had a go
