One issue that often arises regarding Amway and Quixtar products is pricing. Critics will occasionally publicize price comparisons that ostensibly show that Amway and Quixtar products are over-priced. The problem with these comparisons is that they rarely incorporate any judgment on value or quality. For example, Artistry was ranked a top 5 “prestige brand” by Euromonitor International. What does “prestige brand” mean? Well, by virtue of it’s quality and packaging, Artistry was deemed to be in the same category as brands such as Lancôme, Estée Lauder, Clinique and Chanel. This means that if you are going to do price comparisons, it should be done with those brands – not with the cheapest cosmetics you can find at the local supermarket.
Artistry is Amway and Quixtar’s #2 best selling product range, with sales of around a billion dollars a year. The top selling products though are the Nutrilite range, with sales in the order of two billion dollars a year, making Nutrilite the best selling nutritional brand in the world. However, if you do a “price comparison” you may be in for a shock. You’ll find Nutrilite Bio-C Plus (Acerola-C in some markets), for example, much more expensive than the average Vitamin C tablet at the local store. There’s a reason for this. The majority of nutritional supplements are produced synthetically in factories. When you buy Vitamin C, what you are usually getting is Ascorbic Acid made in a laboratory. Vitamin C was first isolated from food in 1928 and in 1932 it was discovered that a diet deficient in Ascorbic Acid could lead to scurvy. Vitamin C is also a very strong antioxidant – helping prevent oxidative damage to cells in the body.
{mosimage}Once Vitamin C had been isolated from food, it could be chemically synthesized in the laboratory and put into tablets. This is essentially what you are getting when you buy most Vitamin C preparations. Nutrilite however does things a little differently. Dr Carl Rehnborg, who founded Nutrilite, always believed that there was more to food and optimal health than simply the compounds we have managed to identify and isolate. He called these other substances “phytonutrients”. It’s taken some decades, but science has caught up with Dr Rehnborg and is discovering new and important phytonutrients regularly. Substances such as lycopene, lutein, and quercetin. Many of these phytonutrients are found to be more powerful antioxidants than the substances we had previously know about and isolated. They are essential to good health. When Rehnborg started Nutrilite, rather than isolating and synthesizing known substances, he instead developed methods for removing the fiber and water from plants and turning them in to a powder. This powder could then be put in tablet form. The advantage, when done properly, is that the original substances in the plant remain. So in Nutrilite products you don’t just get Vitamin C, you get all the other healthy phytonutrients found in Acerola Cherries – one of nature’s best sources of Vitamin C. Recent research is not only indicating the benefits of these additional substances – but that they also aid the body in utilising the Vitamin C – so the whole package is far more effective.
As science finds and names more and more vital phytonutrients, other companies must develop ways to isolate, extract, and synthesize them to put them in tablet form. In contrast, Nutrilite has found that if it tests its older tablets – the nutrient was already there! Nutrilite never took them out. A case in point is the Tocopherol family – otherwise known as Vitamin E. Vitamin E is a powerful fat-soluble antioxidant, and research indicates that it plays a role in preventing numerous cancers, as well as protecting against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other diseases. Vitamin E was first discovered in 1922, but it’s chemical structure was not established until 1938. Until that point synthesis was impossible. Eventually, one of the eight known natural forms of Vitamin E was synthesized, alpha-tocopherol (and the synthetic form of this is not identical to the natural form) and that synthetic form is what you get if you buy standard Vitamin E supplements. More recent research though is finding that natural forms of tocopherols, such as d-alpha-tocopherol and gamma-tocopherol are far far more potent and important for the health than the synthesized alpha-tocopherol. Indeed, some research is showing that in contrast to the natural forms, synthetic Vitamin E may even be bad for the health.
The fascinating thing? A good source of tocopherols is alfalfa. Alfalfa concentrate has been one of the basic ingredients of Nutrilite supplements since the 1930s. If you’ve been taking Nutrilite, you’ve always been getting d-alpha-tocopherol and gamma-tocopherol, even before science even knew what they were. Other companies can’t put a substance in to their tablets until it’s been discovered, isolated, and synthesized. Nutrilite takes a different approach – it just never takes them out. That’s the Nutrilite difference.
It’s your health. Do you want the cheapest … or the best?
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