Herbalife is a multi-level marketing program company which was started by Mark Hughes in 1980, which proposes a diet program called the
Herbalife Diet, consisting of supplements and a daily well-balanced meal, and with the ideal aim of a healthy weight loss. While the costs of signing up for a Hebalife Diet program are pretty costly, there are positive reports as to its effectiveness on health. All of the company’s products are not available in store chains, but rather distributed by participants to the program themselves.
Currently, there are over a million such active distributors in operation worldwide. The diet prescription varies with the individual, as it is custom-fitted to his or her particular health needs. Herbalife has recently expanded its product lineup, to include health categories such as skin care, gel products, perfumes, soap products, hair care, color cosmetics, and body lotions, in addition to a more diversified food and diet supplement variety.
The Herbalife Diet: how this weight loss program works
Although the diet programs vary, the Herbalife Diet is maintained by its proponents as effective in weight loss by giving the user a controlled calorie and carbohydrate intake. The daily diet program includes two shakes every day to take the place of normal square meals, and complemented by a regular square meal. A recent development concerning Herbalife’s diet program is the introduction of Shapeworks, which is a personalized way of losing weight. The first step of the program involves an administration of an electronic scan on the body, the non-invasive Shapescan Body Analysis. This supposedly shows a person’s lean-body mass, his ideal weight, and the amount of calories which they burn when at rest. The scan is followed by a detailed result, including a recommendation of the person’s individual protein requirements in order to build and maintain a lean muscle mass, thereby affording them the option of personalizing their intake of protein. In addition, the Shapeworks smoothie is also a crucial part of Herbalife’s diet program, containing a mixture of protein obtained from soy and whey. The Herbalife Shapeworks diet program is maintained by the company as a well-rounded plan supplemented by pills containing multivitamin complexes: Herbalifeline, which is a source of healthy Omeg-3 beneficial fatty acids; and pills of Garden 7, an exclusive dietary supplement of the Shapeworks program which provides the phytonutrients needed in the typical daily diet.
The Herbalife Multi-Level Marketing Program
Since the Herbalife Diet is practically a do-it-yourself approach, its products are available only through a multi-level market distribution system consisting of an established network of product suppliers and distributors, working on either a full-time or a part-time basis. Such distributors have the opportunity to earn from the arrangement by being afforded wholesale prices on the products they acquire. These profits become even more significant as the distributors resell the products to further distributors who are not qualified to have the same discount rate which they themselves enjoy. Distributors who provide sponsorship to others, leading to the establishment of a separate distributing organization, gain profit from such a result through royalty benefits and product bonuses on the income generated by the distributors within the recently established organization.
Customer Feedback
Testimonies on most sites which carry the Herbalife program for sign up are generally positive; this is understandable, since most of the accounts come from distributors who purchase the products at a discounted rate, and are aiming to attract next-level distributors under their wing. This seems like a very profit-oriented approach to the promise of weight loss, and when it becomes clear that the distribution system of Herbalife depends on a chain of customers who benefit from each other by multi-level profits, the program is very appealing indeed, more to the finances rather than on the health.
The Real Deal on the Herbalife Diet
The basic meal plan for the Herbalife Diet is as follows: 1) for breakfast and lunch, a Herbalife smoothie, supplemented by two activator capsules, and a capsule of multivitamin; 2) for dinner, a regular, well-balanced meal, two activator capsules, and a capsule of multivitamins. The instruction for taking the Herbalife Diet are relatively detailed and easy to follow, and the supplement shakes and dietary replacements are easy to prepare. However, the cost of the program is very expensive, especially for those who do not enjoy any form of discount from the acquisition of the supplements. The loss in excess weight may also be a consequence of the loss of calories, without any consequent buildup of muscle mass which keeps the flab off, once the user gets off of the supplement program. The alleged inclusion of ephedrine in some of the supplements has also been proven to result in adverse side effects, and has even lead to death in isolated cases. Ephedrine is also a substance with addictive properties, enabling the user to acquire a progressing tolerance with the drug. Most importantly, and contrary to the Herbalife claim, there is insufficient calorie-content incorporated within the diet for a significant increase in the immune system’s strength, or to build up enough muscle mass.
The Real Score with Herbalife
The fact is that Herbalife has been experiencing legal troubles since it was first introduced as a supposed healthy weight loss program. Any product or company which has a run-in with regulating agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration is bound to have credibility issues at the onset. In 1982, the U.S. FDA filed a lawsuit against Herbalife for its false marketing claims that the supplements which it distributes have the ability to diffuse or remove tumors, promote blood circulation, and deal with a host of other diseases. A 1984 report from the same agency showed that certain Herbalife products appeared to have resulting side effects, which went away as soon as the supplement intake was discontinued. Although the information supplied by Herbalife to its distributors admit that side effects are indeed possible, it occurs only to a mere twenty-five percent of the users, and these adverse effects were just the natural way for the body to show that an improvement was taking place, and that it in fact is purging out the impurities from its system. The company eventually was served numerous individual lawsuits; some cases were closed through out-of-court settlements, with the settlement fees at an undisclosed ‘significant’ amount.
The uneventful death of its founder in 2000 due to an overdose of prescription drugs is also telling, as the accounts surrounding his demise are conflicting, and that most of Herbalife’s success as a company depended on Mark Hughes’ charismatic aura, as observed in his evangelical sales functions. This gives the company a shady guise, and the additional controversy involving ephedrine content in its products makes the picture bleaker for Herbalife. Ephedrine is a substance which is a staple of current weight loss product supplements, and is linked to an abnormal increase in heartbeat rate and the blood pressure, notwithstanding the testimonial accounts of hundreds of other adverse side effects, and in numerous cases, death.
Although the supplements of Herbalife are generally beneficial, the steep price at which the products are acquirable is not worth the money. The same nutrients which the supplements offer can be found in normal food sources. But if the interest is geared toward making a profit out of a purchase, the situation changes altogether. Herbalife is essentially a company which depends on an ideally infinite income return, where customers (‘distributors’) get to enjoy the benefits of perk discounts at higher levels of the chain, and gain profit by reselling the product at an ‘upgraded’ cost down the line. As an efficient weight loss supplement, Herbalife is dud, when the potency of the supplements it offers is compared with the cost of availing them.
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