Herbalife:Does it Work as a Product?

July 1, 2008 1:13 AM

Herbalife: Can anyone point me to sites about the efficacy of their products? I been on it for two months (no sniggering in the back, please), have lost some weight but I wonder what I am putting into my body. I know many regard it as MLM cult, etc (promising wealth and prosperity, but almost always meet with failure.) but I am interested in the actual products and whether there is any evidence they actually work.
posted by vac2003 to food & drink (4 comments total)

A cursory glance at their website reveals the usual combination of psuedo-scientific guff "...Promote cellular energy production in support of weight loss..." and legal get-out clauses "...These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease..." - that's a shaky start. There are almost no longitudinal peer-reviewed studies of these types of dietary supplements, so it's impossible to take a firm view on their efficacy.

My advice, for what it's worth - eat a calorie-controlled balanced diet containing plenty of fruit and vegetables, take plenty of regular, vigorous exercise, don't smoke, take alcohol in moderation, and maintain adequate hydration (and not with H³0®, whatever that is) and stop wasting your money. Seroiusly, treat yourself to something worthwhile.
posted by Blacksun at 1:40 AM on July 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Go here to PubMed. Search "herbalife". Seems as if it is VERY effective in giving its users liver toxicity. Is that the efficacy you were looking for, or the effectiveness of their marketing tactics?

Seriously, if you take a carrot, a celery, an onion, some water and puree it, and filter out most of the fiber, you can have the exact same concept as herbalife.

What it is, is a low calorie (compared to a whole meal) liquid with flavoring. If I sold you my carrot, celery, onion "Mirepoix" drink and told you it was a meal replacement program with LOTS of nutrients, and tons of weight loss potential...it would sell. People would lose weight.

Good job losing weight. Its not the herbalife, though, its YOU taking in fewer calories than before. Thats how weight loss occurs. You take in less calories than you use.

Continue on with good fresh, unprocessed foods, and you will continue your weight loss...without the chance of live toxicity.

Good luck.
posted by hal_c_on at 1:45 AM on July 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure which herbalife product you're on, but this distributer lists the ingredients of several. A quick glance shows a few things that may promote weight loss - chromium and cinnamon both have been shown help regulate blood sugar. Caffeine can help weight loss too. Most of the other ingredients look like what you'd get in a basic multivitamin. And chromium, cinnamon & caffeine can certainly be gotten a lot cheaper than in a herbalife pill or shake.

If you're really curious, you could go to google scholar and search on the names of some of the ingredients you've never heard of, and see if anyone's studied them. But looking at these ingredients I don't recognize anything that's been show to be really effective.
posted by selfmedicating at 10:10 AM on July 1, 2008

Thank you all for your thoughtful and informative answers, especially hal_c_on. I think I instinctively knew that the formula for losing weight is petty simple really: expend more energy than the calories you intake with a healthy, "all things in moderation" diet.
posted by vac2003 at 1:37 PM on July 1, 2008