Balance of Nature Review: A 10-Calorie Dose Once Labeled 5 Servings

Balance of Nature sells one idea: real fruits and vegetables, dried and put in a capsule, for people who do not eat enough of them. A federal judge noted it has been marketed since at least 1997, and its site says it has served more than a million customers.

We read the labels it has filed with the NIH, the federal case that stopped its sales in 2023, and every federal docket that names its parent company. Here is what they show.

What is in the capsules

The product most people buy is Fruits & Veggies: one bottle of fruit capsules and one of vegetable capsules, three of each a day. The current labels in the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database list:

Daily dose	Powder	Calories	Carbohydrate
Fruits, 3 capsules	731 + 719 + 561 mg = 2,011 mg	10	2 g
Veggies, 3 capsules	856 + 653 + 501 mg = 2,010 mg	5	1 g

The blends are proprietary: the label names the fruits and vegetables in each but not how much of each. No vitamin or mineral amounts are listed, so the label cannot tell you how much vitamin C, folate or potassium you get.

The “5 servings” line

Two labels from 2022, now marked off market in the NIH database, carried a line the current ones do not: “Nutritional equivalent of over 5 servings of fruits per dose”, and the same for vegetables. Each of those doses was 2.4 g of powder. The same labels said “Proven results” and called the product “The natural multi-vitamin alternative”.

Freeze-drying removes water, not calories, so calories are a fair way to compare. USDA lists one medium apple at 182 g and 95 calories. A day of the current Fruits capsules lists 10 calories, about a tenth of that one apple. By dry weight the result is similar: an apple is about 86% water, so 2 g of dried fruit is roughly what is left of 14 g of fresh apple.

Whatever the 2022 label meant by “nutritional equivalent of over 5 servings”, a single apple alone is about nine times the calories of a day’s Fruits capsules.

The FDA case

On 11 October 2023 the Justice Department, acting for the FDA, sued Evig LLC, the St. George, Utah, company that sells Balance of Nature, and its CEO Douglas Lex Howard. The complaint made two main charges.

Disease claims. The FDA said the products were being sold as treatments, which made them unapproved drugs. The complaint quotes the company’s own website listing “A study conducted by Pavlov State Medical University (St. Petersburg, Russia) on the anticarcinogenic [cancer] effects of Balance of Nature”, a Facebook post saying “My mom’s diabetes is under control”, and company replies thanking reviewers who said the capsules helped with COVID-19 and asthma. The FDA’s announcement listed “cancer, heart disease, cirrhosis, diabetes, asthma, and COVID-19”.

Manufacturing failures. At a May 2022 inspection, the FDA found that Evig had not set up written procedures for investigating consumer complaints. The complaint says that “To date, Evig has not demonstrated that it has conducted any complaint investigations.”

None of this was new. The complaint says the FDA sent Evig a warning letter about drug claims in April 2019, cited the same problems at inspections in 2021 and 2022, and found every one of the company’s written responses inadequate. It also says the company began promoting the products against COVID-19 after the 2019 warning letter.

The company did not fight it. On 15 November 2023 Judge David Nuffer signed a consent decree that barred Evig from distributing any dietary supplement “unless and until” it hired an independent manufacturing expert and an independent labeling expert, and both certified to the FDA that its complaint handling and labeling complied. Later violations carry liquidated damages of $2,000 a day. The manufacturer, Premium Production LLC, was under a second decree.

Six days later, according to the company’s attorney, the FDA gave written notice that it could resume. The FDA declined to confirm that to the trade journal that reported it. Balance of Nature has been on sale since.

Is there any research on this product?

The 2022 label said Balance of Nature had “dedicated over a decade to scientific research in hospitals and universities with proven results”. We searched PubMed for Balance of Nature and found no trial of the product.

There is research on other fruit and vegetable concentrates, most of it on Juice Plus+. A 2011 systematic review of 22 reports found that these products raised blood levels of beta-carotene, vitamins C and E and folate, and called for “further research on additional retail preparations”. A 2019 review found effects on cholesterol, homocysteine and blood pressure; one of its authors is listed at the Juice Plus+ Science Institute. Neither tested Balance of Nature, and neither can tell you whether 4 g a day of this powder does the same.

The lawsuits

We searched CourtListener’s federal dockets for Balance of Nature and Evig on 22 October 2026 and read each docket.

Case	Court, number	Filed	What it is about	Status
United States v. Evig	D. Utah, 4:23-cv-00089	11 Oct 2023	FDA: disease claims, complaint handling	Consent decree, 15 Nov 2023
Lukas v. Evig	E.D.N.Y., 2:23-cv-08678	22 Nov 2023	Class action over disease claims, New York consumer law	Open; last entry Sept 2024
Arpaia v. Evig	S.D. Fla., 9:23-cv-81576	22 Dec 2023	Class action for breach of contract, citing the FDA decree	Closed May 2024
Spivey v. Evig	N.D. Ill., 1:24-cv-00781	30 Jan 2024	Class action, Illinois consumer fraud law	Dismissed June 2025, reopened Sept 2025, stayed
Kopels v. Evig	C.D. Cal., 5:25-cv-01065	1 May 2025	Complaint not readable on CourtListener	Closed July 2025

In Spivey, the court dismissed the second amended complaint with prejudice in June 2025, then let the plaintiff file a third. That case is now on hold for a settlement in Missouri state court. According to a joint report the parties filed on 3 June 2026, the Circuit Court of Phelps County gave final approval to a nationwide class settlement in Morris v. Evig, LLC on 13 March 2026, “over the objections of certain class members”, and the objectors have appealed. We have not read that settlement agreement and do not repeat the payment figures circulating on claims websites.

Two earlier matters fall outside our three-year window but are on the record: a 2021 case brought in Napa County by the People of the State of California, which a federal court sent back to state court, and several trademark suits Evig itself filed against other sellers. The remaining class complaints are allegations; none had been decided on its merits in the dockets we read.

Price

On 22 October 2026 a 28-day set of Fruits & Veggies cost $89.99, or $69.99 on subscription, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That is $2.50 to $3.21 a day for about 4 g of dried produce.

Who it might suit

If you eat almost no fruit or vegetables and want something, this is real dried produce. But 15 calories of dried fruit and vegetables a day is a small fraction of one serving, not five, and the label gives no vitamin amounts to judge it by. If your goal is the nutrients in a multivitamin, our multivitamin guide covers what the large trials found.

We do not link to Balance of Nature. Our AG1 review looks at another greens product sold on the same promise.

The bottom line

Balance of Nature Fruits & Veggies is about 4 g of freeze-dried fruit and vegetable powder a day, listed at 15 calories in total. A 2022 label called each half of that the equivalent of over 5 servings. The FDA stopped its sales in 2023 over disease claims and complaint handling, after a 2019 warning, and it resumed within weeks under a consent decree. We found no published trial of the product, and a class settlement approved in Missouri in March 2026 is under appeal.