Shawn Phillips on the current state of the supplement industry.

[Todd Lincoln]

You're doomed.


Seriously. The odds of you not wasting more of your hard earned money
on some worthless supplement are so slim as to be nonexistent.

Not so long as you are committed to improvement, to seeking yourself
stronger, leaner, faster, better even healthier.

Why? Because the truth is much harder to find than a needle in a
haystack.

The forces of profit and cash flow are much more coveted and
important and these are the what drives the very messages you rely on.

For the BIG $$ money in fitness, and more so in supplements, is in promoting
the product's "possibility"-however slim, unproven, mythical or ludicrous.

Thus, you-the consumer-is subject to endless bias where any shred of
positive story is amplified and expanded over and over until it becomes
accepted "truth."

Consider the chain of commerce from the manufacturer, to the distributor,
to the retailer or the "affiliate partner." Whom in this chain of cash flow
benefits from news that a product or supplement doesn't work?

If you're GNC, sitting on $10 million inventory in; for example, CLA,
and the news continues to flow that CLA is a failure in humans.

Do you want to repeat that? Endorse that? Share it? Hell no!

Imagine you're making $100,000 month in effortless, residual income simply
allowing a "partner" to sell your customers and clients their supplements. And
every time they come up with another supplement you make more money.

Never mind that the latest, greatest, is often old news and by now
proven worthless. In that scenario are you going to tell your clients or
readers, "Hey, this is crap!"

Nope.

Now, imagine 3,000 - 5,000 other authors, bloggers, writers, experts
doing the same thing. And now consider the odds of you finding an ounce of truth.

Where are YOU the customer going to get a fair shake?

Where are YOU going to get YOUR information?

How about Dr. Oz? Yeah, right. I think not. He's more promotional
than a Scientology session.

Maybe you turn to Mercola, for he shares a lot of raw, negative truth. Right?
Well, except for the fact that he's really a "fear monger" who is usually
selling you something with his fear angle. And yes, often the very
supplement or protein he's scaring you with-or foil to wear on your
head to stop the radio waves.

LOL! Yeah, crazy stuff.

Maybe one of these upstanding, main-stream magazines. Think? Well, consider for
a moment who's paying for those magazines. Nope. Not you. That company with the
three page ad spread in the front that is the same company featured in the GNC
window, being sold by the chain you just concluded was all on the same take.

Imagine for a moment that you are the editor and chief of one of these big mags
and you want to run a story on the most money wasting supplements out
there-knowing it will blow up the relationship with 60% of your advertising dollars.

How's that going to work? No chance.

(Before you go to Consumer Reports, consider they have
a price and a bias and both have showed through glaringly
when they venture into supplement area. They seem to favor
big-pharma's desire to control supplements.)

Ahhh... so maybe it's your friend or neighbor. The one who's so into P90x, or
maybe doing that Body by Vi thing-or anyone one of the other 1,000 multilevel
marketing brands like Isagenix or Advocare.

What is their motive? Where did they get their information? Yep... money and
the ones making the most money.

As you can imagine, I could go on. We could talk about the pressures in
other industries and categories. Supplements are not alone but in some
ways perhaps more willingly biased.

Now, let me be very clear. I am PRO-supplements. I use them, recommend
them and believe many of them to work-and real science affirms so. I want to
see people enjoy their many benefits of health and vitality.

But I don't want to be involved in deceiving people nor promoting crap that
doesn't work. Yes, I can be bullish and like to be excited about new things. But
over and over I come back to the same reliable, proven things.

Yes, it's easier for me to say it "like it is," for I don't have a million bucks in
inventory of a crap supplement to eat.

I empathize with the challenges faced in this business and feel the pressures.

For example, one supplement I've talked about and struggled with over the
years is CLA. CLA made for a great story with the early mice studies. The
photos of belly-fat in mice are still burned in my mind.

But over the years, and the increasing body of science along with my own
growing experience, I've come to believe CLA is way more myth and hype
than any reality.

I used to love to reach for it as a hopeful fat-loss agent that was not a
stimulant but I stopped years ago.

Yet, CLA persists as a top-seller out there. Regardless of the many researchers
and writers whom share my more realistic view ( See in depth summary on Suppversity
and read the point, not the satirical headline the branded companies, the
distributors, the GNC's and Whole Foods, etc are all complicit in the myth...

And as long as you, the consumer, move it off the shelves the myth perpetuates-and
the forces of money flows.

As a company, or say I had a group of investors who-like all investors-want
their money back. And CLA is a TOP 5 seller. How do I justify NOT selling it too?

Justifying selling it is easy: It sells and people believe it. So who am I to stop it?
They are doing it. So why not me?

Selling it, once again, is easy. Not selling it hard.

What can you do?

1. You can become familiar with science from some source you can trust.
Science is tricky though for companies use "pseudo science" to impress and
confuse but that's not science. Look to experts like Will Brink or Adel at Suppversity.com
for some rational, unbiased direction.


2. Find someone, some source you can align with, know and trust.
No, not a "guru" but a human being who you can come to know through
the blogging, writing, speaking, etc... whom has your best interests at
heart. Think of this like dating for it's not easy and you will make
mistakes. Hell, we want to believe and we want to belong but not everyone
is thinking about YOU. Most are thinking only about how YOU can help them.

3. Beware of fear!
Yes. That's a funny play on words but very intentional. Fear is the easiest,
laziest, most abusive way to get into your head and pocket. Do be some body's
stooge... victim. I'm talking about absolute fear about food ingredients that creates
alarm. Even headlines like, "The ONE food you should never, ever eat over your
dead body!"

Crap like that is emotional abuse. Just run away and find someone less abusive to follow.

Where I Come In

Me, right now I sell one (okay, two) things. And it's an easy, morally aligned, choice.

I sell my Full Strength premium nutrition shake-which is sold as a "performance food,"
not a supplement.

Not only is it relatively easy to understand its promise but it is backed by a
Gold standard published scientific study (see rules above). This is not some borrowed
or basement science. Full Strength is what we say it is and does what we
promise and much more.

I also, off and on, provide creatine monohydrate. The sexiest non-sexy
supplement on the planet. The stuff flat works for just about everything you
can imagine and then some.

I sell only the proven effective CreaPure brand. No fillers, No sugar. No
window dressing. It's not sexy. It's not pricey but it's also not profitable.

Once again. The money is in the myth.

The damned thing is that it's YOUR money that you're buying the myth with.

What will you do?

To Your Life, All of It, at Full Strength,

Shawn

[Granite-Dawg]

Good read!! Very true


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[D_T]

Pre-workout, post-workout, intra-workout, protein, BCAAs, daytime protein, nighttime protein, etc. Just because you can create a market for a supplement doesn't mean there's a NEED for that supplement.

[davidcua]

The guy is right ! Don't waste your money and health on supplements !

IMO the only "OK to use" if wants to chase overall health and effectiveness. Are :

1: A Good multivitamin and mineral. (Where the M&M are chelated. You want to absorb the quality stuff, not to let the bad quality vitamins ending in the gutter.) For instance the V-Mineralize from species nutrition. (You can find other great multivitamin and minerals, if you go to pharmacy, and read comprehensively the labels.)

2: Omega 3 (Good quality of omega 3 from wild fish.) or from plants maybe.

3: NOTHING more. Just a great balanced diet. (Organic is a must)
Including :
- quality lean protein => turkey, chicken, Bison, grass fed beef, wild fish (be careful with the fish though, you don't want your fish to be treated in a saline solution, with lots of chemical shit in there), seafood (clams, oyster, crab, lobster etc)
- quality greens : Kale, broccoli, baby spinach leaves, green salad, green beans, asparagus. (the greenest , the freshest )
-Other veggies => carrots, oignons (not too much), zucchini, tomatoes. Beet roots if you digest it well.
-Clean source of carbs => White/brown/wild rice, potatoes, yams, oatmeal, cream of rice. (pasta i'm not a fan of, and for those who don't digest it well and retain water with that don't bother), fruits like banana, kiwi, strawberries, raspberry, blueberries (my fav), pear, apple (the not to sugary ones), watermelon, melon, pineapple, grapefruit etc. (litchi)

- clean fat : avocados, olive oil, all natural peanut/almond butter, nuts in general (even if i'm not a fan of fats. If find it cool to use them in really moderate ways. because there is already fat in the meat you eat. ).


Other than that I don't think we need supplements .

Maybe a little treat here and there with Dave new pudding protein. You will feel like cheating, without cheating shah