Mary Jessen: Wellness Makes Cents

You are looking at a graph of who has the most control over nutritional supplements and which country? Shaklee is not listed as it has sole proprietorship of its company. Shaklee Corporation only owns Shaklee. Can you find yours?

I tried to investigate who owns which. I found it quite interesting and in some cases, GNC in particular, quite hard to find who owns it.

Nature’s Bounty, Emer-C, and Osteo Bi-flex. are owned by the Carlyle Group, an investment group. What are their controlling interests? Making money.

Nature’s Maid is owned by Osluke, a Czech company. Out of the USA. What are their standards for health supplementation? I know they must meet USA standards? But USA does not have a supplement standard? Only marketing?

Amway is now part of a holding company, Alticor. Founded in 1959. Alticor Corporate Enterprises is a subsidiary holding corporation of Alticor’s non-direct selling companies. These companies include Amway Hotel Corporation, Gurwitch Products, Interleukin Genetics, Metagenics, and Fulton Innovation.^[9] Where is Amway’s health products? They now sell clothing too! Amway was not founded on “Living in Harmony with Nature” and lost their way.

GNC is listed as a retail company. GNC Holdings, LLC is an American multinational retail and nutritional manufacturing company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It specializes in health and nutrition related products, including vitamins, supplements, minerals, herbs, sports nutrition, diet, and energy products. It is owned by Nutra Manufacturing; or is it International Vitamin Corporation. It all gets lost on line. I could not find any science backing their products.

Shaklee Corporation is an American manufacturer with an American owner. It is also a multi-level marketing distributor of natural nutrition supplements, weight-management products, beauty products, and household products. (However it diverges from the normal MLM. Distributors can out-rank, and out-earn their sponsor. Thus not a true MLM.) Shaklee is based in California, with global operations in Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Shaklee has always been about health, and Living in Harmony with Nature.

Founded in 1956, Shaklee is the First Company in the World to obtain climate neutral certification. The company has totally offset CO2 emissions from company operated facilities. This has resulted in a net zero impact on the environment. And Shaklee is still focused on that today by leading the charge with Eco friendly products and support.

At Shaklee, the obsession is over the quality of every one of their products:

• Shaklee has an in-house team of PhDs and other scientists. They set the specifications for our ingredients and finished products. Their Quality Assurance Department helps to ensure those specifications are followed.
• Shaklee screens all new botanical ingredients for more than 350 contaminants. This is well beyond what is required by the United States Pharmacopeia.
• Shaklee performs over 100,000 quality tests each year to ensure purity and potency of our products.
• Shaklee’s longstanding support for nutritional research involves collaborations with leading academic labs. The academics control publication of the results, not Shaklee.
• Shaklee has have published over 135 scientific papers and presentations. Ninety of these are clinical studies. They are published in peer-reviewed publications, who are tough judges to allow publication. (I have yet to find any nutrition company with so many peer-reviewed studies. Peer-reviewed studies do lead to development of better products.)
• The Landmark Study demonstrated the powerful effects of long-term use of multiple Shaklee dietary supplements. People who took Shaklee supplements for 20 years or more had healthier levels of many chronic disease-related biomarkers. These biomarkers include HDL cholesterol, homocysteine, and C-reactive protein.
• Shaklee’s list of clinical research: https://healthresource.shaklee.com/clinical-research-study-archive/

I’m sticking with a company whose focus is my health. That focus is the health for me and for me and my family’s the future. I don’t want my health guided by a holding company for financial gain. Nor a company that is not in the USA. Shaklee spreads the word world wide. Its products are treasured and used world wide. Many of Shaklee products cannot be found anywhere else. Many of Shaklee products have results that cannot be found anywhere else.

Isn’t it time you switched to someone who has your health front and center!