Aside from big Pharma being on their anti-nutritional supplement kick, there is another dark side to the supplement business that needs to have a little exposure. How often have we heard the comment “it’s natural so it’s safe?” Well, deadly nightshade and poisonous mushrooms are natural but I wouldn’t eat either so that nonsensical comment about natural being safer should be thrown to the wolves.
There are other issues in the supplement industry that need to be exposed as well. A number of the problems stem from multi-level companies which tout their products as being the best things in the world and that they will answer all of your health needs if you just sign up and buy their products. One such company touts that they have over 90 minerals in their multivitamin/multimineral supplement and that this will bring incredible vitality to all who use it. Well, I’m here to give you the old, “buyer beware” warning. If you think mercury, cadmium, aluminum, and arsenic are essential to health, then by all means buy the gunk. If you know otherwise like most of us do, then you’ll avoid that overpriced toxic soup like the plague.
When I argued with one of the shills from this multilevel company and pointed out the fact that their product contained poisonous heavy metals, he proclaimed loudly that “they were organic heavy metals and therefore safe.” When I pressed further and noted that the claim he made was absolute rubbish and total nonsense because organic heavy metals still posed a health threat he responded with the comment that “God put it on earth so it has to be safe.” He then accused me of being anti-God which took me aback because the last time I heard that kind of reasoning was when I was in elementary school.
The other problem with many of these products is their incredible expense. You’ve got to pay all of those downline distributors so the retail price of the products they hawk have to be exorbitant to start with. Best to go to your local health food store and buy a high quality multivitamin (capsules not tableted) and save yourself a lot of money and aggravating sales pitches from the salesmen.
i was curious to learn if you have had experience with multiple network distributors or just this one unfortunate instance. if this is the only one, would you be willing to share the name of the line of supplements with which this person was associated?
Actually I have had this experience with a number of network distributors. Not to say all of them are bad as I have worked with two whose products at the time I looked into them were pretty darn good, but pretty darned expensive.
One was Pharmanex, which was the brainchild of Dr. Michael Chang, to build a top-of-the-line nutraceutical company. He was acquired later by NuSkin who turned it into a MLM. I met with their science board and business people in Provo, Utah a number of years ago but just didn’t like the business model. The products, at that time (which is about 5 years ago) was excellent. The same cannot be said for many of the other MLM’s.
As for naming bad companies, I prefer to stay out of that as I have been personally threatened and attacked and my family just doesn’t need that again.
My advice is to look at the products and if it makes claims that seem a bit outrageous, they are. Nothing, including pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals, works on everyone for everything. We are all different biochemically and react differently to different products. Rational claims equates to more realistic outcomes. Outrageous claims equates to mixed and often doubtful outcomes