Balance of Nature sells capsules of dried fruits and vegetables at a premium price, and the company has faced serious legal and regulatory action for making health claims it couldn’t back up. The FDA, a federal court, and a California district attorney have all taken action against the company for marketing its products as treatments for diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease without scientific evidence. Whether the capsules themselves are harmful is a separate question from whether the company has been honest with its customers, and on that second count, the record is not good.
What Balance of Nature Actually Sells
The product line centers on two capsule supplements. The “Fruits” capsule contains 16 freeze-dried ingredients: aloe vera, apple, banana, wild blueberry, cherry, cranberry, grape, grapefruit, lemon, mango, orange, papaya, pineapple, raspberry, strawberry, and tomato. The “Veggies” capsule contains 15 ingredients: broccoli, red cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, cayenne pepper, celery, garlic, kale, red onion, shiitake mushroom, soybean, spinach, sweet potato, wheatgrass, and zucchini.
These are real fruits and vegetables, dried and put into capsule form. The company markets them as a “Whole Health System.” A monthly supply costs $109.99, plus an optional $24.99 annual membership that adds free shipping and a 10% rewards program. That puts the yearly cost north of $1,300 for what amounts to small quantities of produce powder. For comparison, you could buy a wide variety of actual fresh fruits and vegetables for far less, and you’d get the fiber, water content, and chewing satisfaction that capsules can’t replicate.
FDA Warnings and a Federal Court Order
In 2019, the FDA inspected the facilities of Evig LLC (the company behind Balance of Nature) and its manufacturer, Premium Production LLC, both based in St. George, Utah. The inspections uncovered two categories of problems.
First, the FDA found that Balance of Nature’s marketing materials, including its website, YouTube videos, and product pamphlets, claimed the products could cure, treat, or prevent diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, multiple sclerosis, and pneumonia. Under federal law, making disease-treatment claims turns a dietary supplement into an “unapproved new drug,” which is illegal to sell without going through the FDA’s drug approval process. Balance of Nature never sought or received that approval.
Second, both the distributor and manufacturer were violating current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) requirements. The manufacturer had no established specifications for ingredient identity, purity, strength, or composition. The company lacked written procedures for quality control, material review, or investigating product complaints. These aren’t minor paperwork issues. cGMP standards exist to ensure that what’s on the label matches what’s in the bottle and that products aren’t contaminated.
After issuing warning letters in 2019, the FDA followed up with additional inspections and found the companies had failed to fix the problems. A federal judge in Utah’s Central Division eventually entered consent decrees of permanent injunction against both Evig LLC and Premium Production LLC, along with their respective leaders. The court order prohibited both companies from distributing or manufacturing products until they hired cGMP experts, submitted compliance documentation, and received FDA approval to resume operations. The company also had to stop claiming its products could treat COVID-19, which it had added to its list of disease claims during the pandemic.
The $1.1 Million Settlement
Separately, the Sonoma County District Attorney in California filed a civil lawsuit against Balance of Nature. The complaint alleged that the company made effectiveness claims unsupported by competent and reliable scientific evidence, including claims that its products could prevent or treat diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, fibromyalgia, and cancer. The company also used customer testimonials to promote unproven claims about treating lupus, ulcers, gout, congestive heart failure, hepatitis C, and multiple sclerosis.
The lawsuit also targeted the company’s subscription practices. According to the complaint, Balance of Nature enrolled customers in automatically renewing subscriptions and charged them monthly without clearly disclosing the terms, providing adequate acknowledgment of enrollment, or allowing customers to cancel online. All of these practices violated California’s Automatic Renewal Law.
Balance of Nature settled the lawsuit for $1.1 million: $250,000 in customer restitution and $850,000 in civil penalties and investigative costs. The judgment prohibited the company from engaging in any of the unlawful conduct described in the complaint.
Do the Capsules Replace Fruits and Vegetables?
Even setting aside the company’s legal troubles, the core question is whether swallowing capsules of dried produce powder delivers the same benefits as eating actual fruits and vegetables. The short answer is that no credible evidence supports that claim. The health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables come from a complex package: fiber, water, vitamins, minerals, and hundreds of phytochemicals working together in their whole-food form. Drying produce and compressing it into capsules reduces or eliminates fiber content and concentrates the material into tiny doses.
Consider the math. You take six capsules a day (three fruit, three veggie). Each capsule holds a fraction of a gram of powder derived from a blend of 15 or 16 ingredients. The actual amount of any single fruit or vegetable you’re consuming per day is minuscule compared to eating even one serving of that food. There is no published, peer-reviewed clinical trial demonstrating that Balance of Nature capsules produce measurable health improvements in humans.
This doesn’t mean dried fruit and vegetable powders are worthless in all contexts. But paying over $100 a month for them, especially from a company with this regulatory track record, is a different proposition than adding a greens powder to a smoothie as a small dietary boost.
Subscription and Refund Practices
Balance of Nature currently advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee from the date of your last purchase. The company’s pricing model encourages recurring purchases through its Plus Membership ($24.99 per year), which bundles free shipping and rewards with a monthly order. If you do sign up, keep records of your enrollment date and be aware that the company was specifically sued for making cancellation difficult. Whether those practices have fully changed since the settlement is worth verifying before you commit.
The Bottom Line on Legitimacy
Balance of Nature is a real company selling a real product, and the capsules contain real dried produce. In that narrow sense, it’s not a scam. But the company has been caught by federal regulators and state prosecutors making health claims it couldn’t substantiate, manufacturing products without basic quality controls, and handling subscriptions in ways that violated consumer protection law. A federal court had to intervene to stop distribution until manufacturing standards were met. A California court ordered the company to pay $1.1 million and stop its deceptive practices.
If you’re looking for the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, the evidence overwhelmingly favors eating actual produce. It’s cheaper, better studied, and comes with fiber and nutrients in the form your body evolved to use. No capsule has been shown to replicate that.