The ugly truth about Herbalife

We all know of someone who's using or selling Herbalife. You need to watch this and share with them. This video covers:

• The simple truth about weight loss
• Herbalife's inferior, overpriced ingredients
• Herbalife's business model & psychology

Full transcript:

Hi guys. Focus Foods being a Malaysian brand and obviously starting off from Malaysia, it's a meal replacement but then alot of people don't quite know what a liquid meal or meal replacement is because it's not exactly a household term.

So I do get this question alot about Herbalife. Is it very similar to Herbalife or not? So, yup, Herbalife is very popular here. It's sold through a, I think it's a network marketing scheme, it's a pyramid scheme, I really don't know what you call it but, MLM, you get the idea. So it's very popular and I get this question alot: how does it compare?

In this video, I would really just want to get into what is Herbalife, rather than comparing it all the time to Focus Foods, because this video isn't really about selling, it's really to educate you and maybe the people you know but aren't watching this video about what Herbalife really is, ok.

In this video, I'm gonna split it into 3 sections: #1 is how it claims to be able to help you lose weight, you'd be surprised it's actually alot easier than you think. #2, the ingredients that go into Herbalife and #3 let's save the best for the last: it's something that I'm really passionate about. It's about their business model and like I mentioned, it's a MLM so you really need to know how it works, the psychology behind it and why there's so many people using even though, chances are, you're paying a stupid price for a very average product. Let's get into it.

First things first, I'm gonna talk about how Herbalife claims you can lose weight with this product, of course combined with a healthy lifestyle and what not. Losing weight or gaining weight really depends on how much calorie you need everyday and how much you eat relative to that. Let's give you a very round example: you need a 1,500 calories everyday. If you consistently eat 100 calories less, e.g. 1,400 calories a day, consistently, then you're gonna lose weight. If you eat a 100 calories, or more than 1,500 calories everyday, consistently, then of course you're gonna gain weight. Very simple math right?

Let's look at an example: traditional meals, I mean solid meals that you normally prepare or find outside. They're usually 300 to 500, maybe 200 to 500 calories. On the top end, if you're in a fast food restaurant, probably even up to 700 or 800 calories. If you compare and just replace that with Herbalife, each serving being 95 calories, compared to your usual 300 to 500 calories, of course you're gonna lose weight.

Like I said, if you eat less calories consistently, then of course you're gonna lose weight. 

Let's look at other numbers. Each serving is only 25 grams. I think traditional meals are usually in the range of 300-500 grams. But most traditional meals, most solid meals mainly consist of water, so it really depends on what you're looking at and what exactly you're eating. Cucumber, for example, go up to about 92% water. Beef steak itself can be about 70-72% water. So let's take an average of 75% water in your meal. 

If have a 300-500 gram of of solid meal, and 75% of that is water, that comes down to about 75-125 grams of dehydrated nutrients, dehydrated food. So 75-125 grams for a regular meal, compared to 25 grams. If you're only eating so little, of course you're going to lose weight, right?

And last but not least in this section, of course not all calories are created equal. Which is what I'm gonna cover in the next section, but very simply, this is how you look at it: if you're consuming 500 calories, it's very different from, say if you were to have french fries and burgers versus a very clean meal, like steamed sweet potatoes for example, combined with green salads, and then also combined with say steak or steamed/boiled chicken breast.

It's very different, so in the next section I'm gonna talk about the quality of the ingredients in Herbalife and what you should really know. 

2nd section: the ingredients of Herbalife. Before I start, what I really wanna point out is, when you're reading the nutrition fact label, you should really look at the ingredient list. What alot of people didn't know is the 1st item that you see is the item with the most content in terms of weight, followed by 2nd, by the 3rd. The 1st item is the highest content in terms of weight, and moving on to the last, with the least. 

Let's look at the first ingredient of this Formula 1 Herbalife: soy protein isolate. In recent years, perhaps in the 5-10 years, soy protein isolate has actually gone out of favour because increasingly people find that most soy is genetically modified. Genetically modified or not, what I want to point out here is: Soy by itself is fine. But when you denature soy, when you take something out soy, away from the whole bean, in this case soy protein isolate, it's actually pretty harmful.

There's been alot of studies done. Yes, there are benefits but the harms actually outweight the benefits. Example: a very big finding is that it confuses your thyroid. When it confuses your thyroid, it throws your hormone balance out of whack. That means, if you're a guy, your body will be producing more estrogen. If you're a lady, you probably end up producing more testoterone.

What are the side effects? There are 3 parts to side effects: how you feel, how you look, and what goes on inside your body. 

How you feel: hormonal imbalances, as we all know it can cause depression. Very true. I think I'm just gonna move on to the 2nd side effect because depression, that's enough said. 

2nd one: how you look. You might get rounder face, you might develop humps, and for guys, you develop tits. Gynecomastia is the scientific name. People call it mans tits, etc.

And most importantly, what's goes on inside. Again, as we all know, hormonal imbalances can cause alot of complications: your thyroid gets confused, your liver can be damaged as well from processing soy and heart diseases, blood sugar levels and all that does get out of whack. 

Looking at the 2nd ingredient, oat fibre, I don't have a problem with oat fibre. But ingredient #3, that is just... wow. Fructose! Do you know what fructose is? Fructose is one of the simplest forms of sugar, simplest form of carbs. What does that mean? That means if you get a very simple form of sugar into your body, you better make sure you use that as energy, as soon as possible. Whether you're going out for a run, or you're lifting heavy weights or something like that. A physically vigorous activity. Because if not, your body is gonna break that down first and you're not gonna use it, it will be stored as fat. So fat is only one thing. Maybe you look fat, your sugar levels get up and all that.

But here's the thing: there's alot more going on when you consume such high amount of simple sugars. What's gonna happen? For example: you will have this insulin spike. What does insulin spike mean? Insulin spike means your pancrease might suddenly have to secrete so much insulin just to break down sugars. But insulin does stay in your body for a while, so what's gonna happen? Your body will kind of get used to alot of insulin going around. That means, even when there's insulin coming in, it's not telling the body: "Hey, I wanna metabolise sugar". That's also called prediabetes. Your body just gets decreasingly efficient at metabolising sugar. That's one.

And when there's a sugar spike, there's also a sugar crash. We are all familiar with sugar crash: we have food coma, after lunch coma. You feel fatigue, you get brain fog, and guess what guys? You're gonna be hungry again when there's that sugar crash. And guess what you're gonna be craving for when you're hungry? Sugar. Sugar begets sugar, and that's how it happens. 

Moving on to ingredient #4, after fructose: again, you have soy lecithin. Soy lecithin, fine, it's an emulsifier - it makes things a bit more gummy, gives it a bit more texture. But again, soy has recently been very genetically modified. If it's non-GMO they'll usually state it there, but I don't think this is the case because it's not stated. Sometimes it's marketed as brain food, because soy lecithin does have some benefits for the brain, but if it's [not] non-GMO I wouldn't use it to supplement my brain.

Ok so you're saying you've been consuming Herbalife but you've not felt any the side effects? Well that's because you are only using 25 grams of it. In which case, if you're not feeling any of the side effects that I've been talking about, you might as well not use it because 25 grams of whatever that's going on in here is not only negligible but probably not good for you as I've stated throughout this video. I think it's definitely a stupid price that you're paying. I think you deserve better. 

I'm done with the ingredients, I've covered the first 4 biggest ingredients that you have in here. As for the rest, please go read about it yourself because I don't wanna make this video too long. I know nowadays we really have very short attention spans.

Before we move on, I want you guys to look at the nutrition facts table. What you'll see is you'll see alot vitamins & minerals. For the average people, who this product is mostly sold to anyway, you'll be looking at this and you'll be like "Holy shit! That's alot of wholesome vitamins & minerals". But wait until you look at the numbers. These numbers probably don't really make sense to you unless you really know what's the suggested daily intake. 

So let's take one vitamin that we all know, I assume: Vitamin C. As an adult, if you were to walk into a pharmacy, you look for adult-dosage vitamin pills, you'll realize that each pill has at least, usually, 500 milligrams of vitamin C. Redoxon has 1,000 milligrams. Kids ones maybe 100-250. I repeat: adult pills, 1 [each] is usually 500 milligrams. 

How much do you get in 1 serving of Herbalife? 14.4 compared to pharmacy['s] 500. That's what I need you to realize. It looks impressive, there's this whole list of vitamins & minerals but do your homework guys! Again, the rest of it, please have a look at it yourself. I'm only covering vitamin C because that's what most of us know. 

As promised, I wanted to keep the last for the best, which is the Herbalife business model. As you all might or might not know, Herbalife's is maybe a multilevel marketing (MLM), maybe network marketing, maybe it's direct selling, maybe it's even called a pyramid scheme. Whatever you call it, I'm just gonna stick to the term MLM.

There are alot of problems with MLM especially when it comes to Herbalife. 

Problem #1: It's probably sold by a friend of friend, or a friend, or a relative, or even someone from the immediate family. So you will naturally think, oh, I trust this person so I'm just gonna buy whatever he sells. Of course there is some thinking involved, but because there is that trust there, you will probably not question too much. 

Problem #2: Being MLM, usually for a distributor to maintain his cost, i.e. a lower cost, he/she probably also have a certain minimum amount that he/she to commit to. I'll just say she from now on. So, what is her target then? Her target is just to sell your products every single month, to have you use it very regularly, so that she can maintain her volume and she'll get the desired discounts. Because they make money out of it, that's probably their livelihood. Maybe some people do it part time but even part time, you of course want to maintain a fatter margin. You don't just get fatter margins, you probably get other perks from being in this club like platinum clubs, etc. I'm really not familiar with agency and MLM models but you get the idea.

They have all these targets that they need to maintain and they're just selling you products that they might or might not know what's going on inside but what I'm trying to say is they've pretty much lost the reason and the purpose why they're selling in the first place. It's probably not so that you can maintain a healthy lifestlye because whether it's healthy or not (the ingredients in there or the applications thereof) they're just selling it to you so that they can meet their targets. That's problem #2.

Problem #3: Again, specific to this. Herbalife - you see Malaysian athletes endorsing it. In the world stage, you actually see Cristiano Ronaldo endorsing it. I think back then also Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. So you'll be thinking, "Holy shit, these guys endorse it, this company must have made it and really big and Cristiano Ronaldo really trusts it!". But what I do know for sure is: I do not know if Cristiano Ronaldo consumes it regularly but of course he is made to be seen consuming it. But I know for sure is he's paid millions to endorse it. So think about it. It's not that hard to get endorsement.

Problem #4: In MLM you have your up-lines and down-lines. Your up-lines are all very rich. So when this product reaches your hand for about RM100, it's not worth even close to RM100, not even close to RM50 I would suppose. Because you have all these people that you are helping make rich and maintain rich. All this money is going to people who do not know you, and you don't even know who they are. And you're just contributing to their income just like that! Because that's the business model of MLM: you recruit as many people as possible, and distributors just buy as many as possible, as often as possible. That's the business model.

Let's compare the cost. I'm assuming equal ingredients just to compare the cost: this is about RM100 for 550 grams. For the same weightage, Focus Foods 550 grams, Herbalife 550 grams, this (Herbalife) is about RM100, this (Focus Foods) is about RM65. But of course they're not of equal ingredients. I would dare say Focus Foods is alot more natural, I think the ingredients are alot more superior and it's really based on alot of research, alot of studies. What we put in there is safe for most people.

Guys, if you find this video helpful, if you enjoy this video, I really appreciate it if you can share this as soon as possible because Herbalife is a very big company and I'm not sure if I would be sued, I'm not sure if I would get death threats because alot of distributors, their livelihood depend on this. But you all should really know what I'm trying to say here: it's all facts, I have nothing to hide, I've done my research.

And if you think this video should be made into other languages, please [comment] in the comment[s] section below, because [in Bahasa] I'm a Malaysian citizen, I have no issue speaking in Bahasa if you want me to, [in Cantonese] if you want me to speak in Cantonese, that's not an issue too, [in Mandarin] but if you want me to speak in Mandarin, it would be challenging but no issue either, I may just find someone else to do it.

[in English] Again guys, thank you for your time. All the best!

So you're probably asking: if I were to stop Herbalife right now, can we sell Focus Foods? I think based on all the problems that I've just specified, problems with MLM and particularly Herbalife, I think at the moment no, we only sell through our website at the moment.

We might be getting resellers but MLM, probably not. Besides the problems that I've just stated, here's why: it's because we really wanna make an impact in alot of people's lifestyle, to make it really convenient for them to [adopt] this healthy lifestyle because we know this problem that in order for people to change to healthier eating habits, healthier physical lifestyle, it's really hard because there's this change and people don't like changes.

So we're making it really simple for people to adapt into this lifestyle and we really wanna make this impact to as many people as possible. If we were to do MLM, there's so many people to feed in your down-line and up-line, this is not gonna be very cost efficient. 

This one is currently selling for RM11.50. If we were to do MLM who knows this thing could be RM20-25 - we really don't want that to happen. Again, our mission is to impact people's lives, and as many lives as possible.