Herbalife Nutrition is a global corporation that produces dietary supplements, sports nutrition, weight loss, and personal care products that are sold through roughly 8,000 independent multi-level marketers. While its headquarters are located in Los Angeles, California, it is incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
The company’s Formula 1 Healthy Meal Nutritional Shake Mix is the world’s number one meal replacement shake. Customers like the nutrition it provides and the ease with which it can be prepared.
Besides protein and weight loss shakes, Herbalife Nutrition produces and sells protein bars, energy products, sports hydration products, vitamins, aloes, and teas. Herbalife has an entire sports line and also products that benefit the digestive tract and the heart. Consumers can customize the meal replacement products to meet their individual nutritional needs. Herbalife has also developed a skincare line.
Ingredients
Extracted herbs and foods that go into the company’s products include bilberry, broccoli, chamomile, guarana, teas, and other botanicals. Appealing to various market segments, Herbalife offers some products that are halal, vegetarian, kosher, or allergen-free.
Herbalife has processed ingredients in their own extraction facility, located in Changsha, Hunan Province, since 2013. The company acquired more processing plants since then. As of 2015, 58 percent of the company’s products were manufactured in facilities that it owned. Today, the Chinese facilities that Herbalife owns are located in Suzhou, Nanjing. The American manufacturing facilities are located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Lake Forest, California.
In the 2010s, Herbalife Nutrition initiated a tracking program for its nutritional products. Ingredients are identified before going through the manufacturing process. Then they are repeatedly tested during the extraction process. Quality is built into the products in this way.
Additionally, their journeys through the entire supply chain, from farm field to consumer, are tracked and recorded every step of the way. Because of this tracking process, ingredients included in the products that are sold to customers can be traced back to the farms they were grown in, the facilities they were extracted in, the facilities they were packaged in, and so on. Any problems with ingredients can be quickly resolved.
FDA Complaint
The company has endured more than its share of complaints and lawsuits for various reasons throughout its history. Product tampering was never a problem, but ingredient selection was, as some of the ingredients used sometimes raised an eyebrow or directly caused health problems.
For instance, in 1982, the Federal Drug Administration complained about the company’s inclusion of ‘food grade’ linseed oil, poke root, and mandrake in the company’s first product, a weight loss shake. Herbalife altered the ingredients.
In 2004, four Herbalife product users in Israel developed liver problems. Israel’s Health Minister’s investigation discovered the toxic ingredients of kraska, comfrey, and quaqua were included in the products that were only sold to Israeli consumers. Normal liver function returned when the use they discontinued the use of one particular product. Herbalife discontinued marketing the product in question, which they had only sold in Israel. Hepatitis was also linked to a product sold to Israeli customers.
Other lawsuits endured by the company since its foundation in 1980 had to do with making false medical claims, making inadequate compensation amounts to distributors, and offering absurdly low stock share prices to shareholders when trying to buy back the corporation.
