Products
USANA products encompass three product lines: USANA Nutritionals (Essentials, Optimizers, and Digestion/Detox nutritional supplements), USANA Diet & Energy (RESET meal replacement shakes, protein bars, and Rev3 energy drinks), and Sensé personal care (skin care, skin treatment, and hair & body care products). USANA manufactures 90% of its products in-house, including all of its tableted nutritional supplements. The Sensé personal care line was reformulated in 2004 with a patented new preserving technology that uses a combination of botanicals, antioxidants and other ingredients without the use of parabens.
Several of USANA's products are certified by NSF International in the Dietary Supplements category (NSF/ANSI 173) as having the identity and quantity of their dietary ingredients accurately described on the product label and containing no undeclared ingredients. In addition, several products are also certified under NSF's Certified for Sport certification program. The tablets that make up the Essentials product are certified by HFL Sport Science's INFORMED-CHOICE Certification Program to be regularly tested for substances considered prohibited in sport and that the products have been manufactured to high quality standards.
In August 2010, USANA announced its ability to manufacture nutritional tablets with two distinct formulas into one bilayered tablet, as well as the release of two new formulas, Proflavanol C100 and Hepasil DTX. According to Jim Brown, vice president of operations at USANA, the new technology (dubbed Nutritional Hybrid Technology) will allow for the creation of new supplements and cut down on consumer pill fatigue, as well as the opportunity for sustain-and-release tablets.
USANA Essentials were tested by ConsumerLab.com in their Multivitamin and Multimineral Supplements Review of 38 of the leading multivitamin/multimineral products sold in the U.S. and Canada. The Essentials passed ConsumerLab's test, which included testing of selected index elements, their ability to disintegrate in solution per United States Pharmacopeia guidelines, lead contamination threshold set in California Proposition 65, and meeting U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) labeling requirements.
USANA states that their products are of high quality, justifying their relatively high cost: but this claim was disputed by Anthony Almada, Chief Scientist of the nutritional supplement industry consulting firm Imaginutrition, who stated in an interview in Forbes that "The economic reality of Usana, and other entities, mandates that their products invariably lack robust distinctiveness and convincing evidence of consumer relevance and superiority—achievable through rigorous clinical trials only—to their retail counterparts." These comments were supported by natural health product specialist Prof. Jean-Louis Brazier of the University of Montreal's Faculty of Pharmacy who examined USANA's products for Radio-Canada's consumer report show La Facture. Brazier found that they cost two to three times the price of equivalent store-bought items, and no evidence that USANA's products were of better quality than their competitors.
John Cloud, senior writer for Time Magazine, conducted an evaluation of nutritional supplements in which he took a regimen of USANA pills, protein bars, powder drinks and psyllium fiber as recommended by the company's online evaluation. Cloud took a blood test prior to taking the products to determine the levels of calcium, protein, sodium, cholesterol, glucose, and other substances, and then was tested again five months after taking the supplement regimen, which included 3,000 pills at a cost of $1,200. The follow-up test revealed a change in only two values; a 75% increase in vitamin D levels (attributed to the vitamin D3 supplement Cloud had been taking) and a 28 mg/dl increase in high-density lipoprotein, which could not be accounted for. Cloud also experienced a placebo response where that act of taking the supplements made him feel more vigorous despite no physiological reasons being present. This response also led to a 10-lb increase in weight, as the belief he was more vigorous led to his making poorer dietary decisions—a phenomena referred to as the "licensing effect".
Read more about this topic: USANA Health Sciences
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