Amway forum: the business of health supplements and determining their traceability

It’s a dizzying world of health supplements out there. All kinds of products to lose weight, delay aging, fight diseases or simply for everyday use. All of them have the most convincing advertising copy to entice you to buy because anything concerning one’s health is bound to be a magnet of attraction for people conscious about their longevity.

It is easy to believe claims but it’s hard to verify them, especially if the processes of the ingredients in the supplements are too scientific for our own mind. It is for this reason that a few friends of mine don’t believe in taking supplements at all, they see a danger in ingesting anything that’s unfamiliar to them.

As for me, am a sucker for anything that screams “HEALTH PRODUCT.” I remember when I was a dealer for this multi-level networking company before and I tried their cleansing regimen. Then I had my annual health check-up and I was surprised that the doctor asked me: “anything new that you’ve been taking lately? Because if you’re taking it, it could damage your kidney.” Apparently, what I was taking showed up in my test results and that sort of gave me a wake-up call.

Am still a health product enthusiast, just a bit more careful now. It was with interest that I attended a forum at the Amway Philippines headquarters in Makati City last week and the topic was traceability. This is the process or procedure of tracing the ingredients of the products we ingest, especially if they are in commercial quantities.

Had the chance to visit the second floor showroom of Amway Philippines in the heart of Makati City. Hmmm, mag dealer kaya ako? Lol

In photo: speakers in the Amway forum, from left – Robby Tan, Science Research Specialist at DOST-FNRI; Dr. Mark Mariñas, General Surgeon and Amway Business Owner; Maria Elenita Olmedo, Country Manager of Amway Philippines; Pauline Batan, Assistant Product Category Manager for Wellness at Amway PH)

As consumers, we have the right to know the origins of the products that’s why we should be wary of false claims, or worse their unregulated distribution in the market.If we just buy stuff like turmeric or mangosteen capsules in an ordinary kiosk or stall, there’s a chance that it’s adulterated or tampered. Even if the product looks “healthy,” if it was produced by a small business entity with no state-of-the-art equipment, there’s a probability that the manufacturing process is crude and therefore we can’t be assured of a hundred percent safety and purity.

In the forum, Amway Country Manager Leni Olmedo took the time to explain how traceability is at the core of the Amway business.

“We ensure that all the people involved in producing and manufacturing the ingredients that go into our products are following strict rules for health, safety and quality. It helps us guarantee that we are providing not only the safest products, but also ones that are pure and effective,” she said.

She added that while other companies are only starting to spread awareness and become conscious about the source of their ingredients, traceability has been a fundamental part of Amway’s Nutrilite™ brand for over 80 years.

Amway’s 9-step traceability process show’s a supplement’s journey from farm to seed to extraction to the final package. From the time a plant is grown in any of its organic farms with no use of chemical pesticides, they are then harvested and dried in as fast as 20 minutes to ensure the retention of the highest phytonutrient levels. Parts of the plant such as skin, roots and leaves are then extracted for their optimum nutrients and are then manufactured under strict quality control. Every Nutrilite product is analyzed at least 200 times for safety and quality by a professional in-house team comprised of toxicologists, chemists, microbiologists, chemical engineers and food scientists, among others.

Also in the forum, doctors discussed the role of supplementation to address the growing problem of undernutrition in the Philippines. There’s inadequate intake of fruits and vegetables in all age levels. Likewise, there’s an uptrend in anemia and high fasting blood sugar. All these, along with the fact that about half of the population is physically inactive, could pose significant health risks.