5. Find your community—we can’t and shouldn’t proceed through life’s challenges alone.
Are there problems associated with ingredient sourcing? :
One might think it is understandable that high quality ingredients may cost more. Americans typically may not make this association, or are unwilling to. Let’s take a magnesium supplement—
98% pure it costs $o.52 per gram
99.9% pure it costs $10.20 per gram, a 20 fold increase in cost.
Why? One reason is supply contamination; another is extremely high investment costs in testing equipment. Some equipment can easily cost over $100,000, some come in over $1 million.
HPLC units are very pricey. Shaklee has seven of them, running 24/7.
Why doesn’t Shaklee use USP as a third party certifier, as many other companies do? Because, Shaklee’s testing, about 20% of the time, detects pesticides that USP doesn’t test for, among other reasons.
I (Bruce) am strongly in favor of neutral, but expert and thorough, third party certification. Professionally, I do this for food services of all kinds for safe gluten-free and allergy free dining. I have celiac disease and multiple food allergies and love to go out to eat. It is imperative that I eat safely—a
medical and immune system necessity. I have been specially trained to do these certifications.
In this Symposium it has become exceedingly clear to me that Shaklee’s Third Party Certification is their 130, and counting, peer reviewed journal articles in respected medical journals. This includes some of the toughest to get into. Most companies won’t do this because they can’t control the results. Shaklee was the fifth company approached by the researchers who did the Landmark Study (Block G, et al. Nutrition J, 2007. (6)30: p. 1-11, October 24.) The other companies would not take the risk.
Have you read that article? If not let me get it to you. What a huge affirmation of Shaklee and the quality of their products. Unbeatable. Other supplement companies have cited this article as an affirmation of their own (tisk, tisk, shame on them) but they do not have any testing, or very little testing, of their own products.
Shaklee goes over the top to prevent recalls. They have even stopped production when pure ingredients were not available, and delayed product launches when there were quality difficulties. Shaklee knows that it takes a long time to build a good reputation (how about 100 years and counting) but only an instant to lose it!!!
Why Shaklee? Here is more evidence:
In letters to the FDA, 55 nutrition products by 37 manufacturers were tested. Active pharmaceuticals
were found in their supplements. These were unlabeled ingredients.
More examples were given in the Symposium.
Manufacturers are not required to test. They can test nothing or everything. There is no requirement to prove safety or efficacy.
Herbal products—only 2 of 12 companies had authentic herbs in their bottles.
–30 of 44 products were adulterated.
