The following was written by Rod Larkin, Independent Distributor with Shaklee Corporation.  The text was cleared by Shaklee.

We want to take a few minutes to address some (normal) questions that people have expressed regarding the recently published Landmark Nutrition Study involving Shaklee products. There are some very important points that will be helpful to know when discussing this study with others.

First- Shaklee initiated this study. This is probably the most important point to understand. Any nutrition company could have initiated a study on long term users of their products, but to our knowledge, no company has to date. Why? You need to be in business for a long time, you have to dedicated a lot of money and resources, and you need to have 100% rock solid faith and belief in your philosophy and your products that once the study is completed and published, the results are going to be favorable regarding use of your products. Shaklee has a unique consumer population that included long term users of Shaklee dietary supplements and they were willing to bet the farm that long term Shaklee product users would have better health status and proceeded in initiating this type of study.

Shaklee, or any company that initiates a study like this with the intent to publish in a Peer-Reviewed Scientific Journal, has to pay all costs associated with the study including investigator costs, design costs, study execution, data analysis and manuscript development costs. Upon completion of the study, and after going through the Peer-Review process, the results of the study are published for all to see, for all time, and again– whatever those results are– positive or negative.

The purpose of this study was to study usage patterns, health, and nutritional status of long term users of multiple dietary supplements and where possible, to compare the health and nutritional status to existing national nutrition survey data for two other groups – those who don’t take nutrition supplements at all and those who used just a multi-vitamin supplement. In this study, the long term supplement users were Shaklee family members who joined Shaklee at least 20 years ago. Remember– any company at any point in time could have initiated a study like this, and no one has.

The study results found that the group of long term Shaklee multiple supplement users had markedly better health as measured by blood nutrient levels, blood bio-markers or health, and self reported health status. Furthermore, the Shaklee population was much more likely to report their overall health as very good to excellent compared to the other groups. That’s the bottom line, that’s the results of the study, that’s what we can say, and we have published scientific proof to stand behind us when we tell this story to people.

This study does not compare Shaklee products with other brands that would allow us to say that Shaklee outperforms other brands– because specific brands were not identified in the national nutrition surveys from which data on multivitamin users and non users were obtained. However, it is important to note that this study addresses a key question that interests many scientists… is there benefit to taking a broad array of supplements vs. just a multivitamin? And the study clearly supports that long term users had better markers of health than those who used just a multivitamin or nothing at all in this study. And of course, the long term users studied were Shaklee family members with robust intakes of a wide range of Shaklee nutritional products. To our knowledge, no other company has provided this type of data on users of their products.

The results of this study allow us to say– people who used multiple Shaklee supplements, long-term, were more likely to have better blood nutrient levels, more optimal levels of key bio markers of health, and better health status than users of single multivitamins or no supplements at all — period. No other company can make this type of statement that is backed by a published, Peer-Reviewed scientific study like we have in the Landmark Nutrition Study— it’s truly a one-of-a-kind study.

So— people can and will consider taking other brands, but we can show them the kind of science that supports the Shaklee difference and the health benefits seen in long term users of Shaklee products.