“I’m proud of being a leader of a poop cult,” Jillian Mai Thi Epperly once joked to fans of her signature recipe: a fermented slurry of salted cabbage that produces “waterfalls” of diarrhea. Here’s the wild story of how she convinced thousands to believe her dangerous science, and how a grassroots movement shut her down when Facebook wouldn’t.
Source: Here’s How A Cabbage Juice “Cult” With 58,000 Followers Set Off A Facebook War
On Facebook, Cabbage Juice Is The New Snake Oil
“I’m proud of being a leader of a poop cult,” Jillian Mai Thi Epperly once joked to fans of her signature recipe: a fermented slurry of salted cabbage that produces “waterfalls” of diarrhea. Here’s the wild story of how she convinced thousands to believe her dangerous science, and how a grassroots movement shut her down when Facebook wouldn’t.
When Bruce Wilmot decided to go on “Jilly Juice” last summer, he’d just learned that his pancreatic cancer was back, and it was bad. He’d been through the hell of chemo before, and the last thing he wanted was more treatment.
“My dad was really desperate,” Taylor Wilmot, his daughter, told BuzzFeed News. “He was very sad, and he didn’t want to die.”
Then 55 and living alone in Columbus, Georgia, he stumbled across the Facebook group of Jillian Mai Thi Epperly, a woman from Canton, Ohio, whose tens of thousands of followers swore by her bizarre, dangerous, and entirely made-up science theory: that all diseases — including cancer — are caused by a fungus called candida that lives in the gut.
As Epperly claimed on the group — called Exposing the Lies Candida: Weaponized Fungus Mainstreaming Mutancy — candida attracts parasites, and the only way to health is a severely restricted diet accompanied by large quantities of her signature fermented cabbage juice. Her potion was a purgative, and she said that “healing symptoms” included nausea, headaches, dizziness, and explosive blasts of diarrhea. These “waterfalls” supposedly brought out the parasites, which were visible in the toilet bowl.
For Wilmot, things moved swiftly downhill after his diagnosis. The doctor had given him a few weeks, maybe a few months, according to his rabbi, Brian Hawkins, who told BuzzFeed News he was with Wilmot when he was diagnosed. But within just days, Wilmot found it hard to get around, and a hospice facility sent a bed to his duplex.
“I’ve been juicing like crazy, Cancer bad juice good,” he wrote in a Facebook post on June 13. “Ime [sic] brewing up some of Jillian Mai Thi’s protocol and plan on switching completely over to her diet, ferment etc. as soon as that is ready.” Friends wrote comments of encouragement and said they were praying for him.
Epperly, whom Wilmot had tagged, also replied: “You are amazing If you need a short chat later let me know You will pull through.”
“I might take you up on that,” Wilmot said.
A few days later, friends visited his condo to help make a huge batch of the juice. They followed the recipe described in documents posted on Epperly’s Facebook group: Add a tablespoon of pink Himalayan salt to two cups of water and two cups of cabbage or kale. Puree in a blender, pour into a glass jar, cover, and leave at room temperature to ferment for three days. Drink a few cups nightly — up to a gallon a day.