Herbalife Review – Products Worth Buying?

One of the most well known health companies in the world is Herbalife, who sells a variety of skin, body, and health supplements. While Herbalife might catch a bad reputation for its’ business model, its’ supplement quality is actually above average compared to other popular brands like NOW or Puritan.

What is Herbalife?

Herbalife is described as a ‘nutrition and weight management company’ that ‘supports health and active lives’.

But what does that really mean?

In reality, Herbalife is a company that produce, market, and distribute their own line of ‘health’ supplements. These supplements include protein shakes, snack bars, vitamin formulas, and sports and energy products.

Popular Herbalife Products

The bulk of Herbalife products include meal replacement shakes, protein supplementation, and vitamin formulas.

While these products can be purchased separately, the expectation is that they are purchased together. This is based on the suggestion that each product plays a synergistic role with the next, maximising its potential to promote weight loss. These are marketed as ‘program’s’, and are considered the optimal way to help promote weight loss and improve health.

Some of the most popular supplements sold by Herbalife include:

Formula 1

Of their products, the most popular is the meal replacement shake, Formula 1.

Formula 1 appears in a number of their ‘programs’, and is considered their most viable option for weight loss.

Formula 1 is a weight management protein shake that has been around since the start of Herbalife. In fact, Mark Hughes (founder of Herbalife) started selling Formula 1 after seeing his mom struggle with her weight for years.

Formula 1 is described as a ‘delicious healthy meal that provides an excellent balance of high quality protein from milk and soy, essential micro-nutrients and added botanical s and herbs’, and is the key Herbalife supplement we are going to be taking a closer look at today.

While the description of Formula-1 may sound impressive, we need to take an in depth look at the many ingredients included in its formula to gain an understanding of what it actually includes, and what effects it may actually have on the body.

Herbalife Formula 1 Ingredients

So, to make an educated and unbiased review of Herbalife, we need to take an in depth look at the ingredients of Formula 1, their most popular supplement.

The first thing that really stands out is the extremely low protein content of the supplement. The supplement claims to contain ‘an excellent balance of high quality protein from milk and soy’, yet contains a mere 6 grams of protein per serving. To put that into perspective, a single egg typically contains 7 grams of protein. Additionally, the supplement states that it contains high quality protein from both milk and soy, yet when we take closer look at the ingredients list, it only contains soy protein isolate. Soy protein is actually more poorly absorbed than other protein supplements such as whey, and as such wouldn’t typically be described as high quality.

The second key point that I found somewhat disturbing, is the relatively high carbohydrate content. The supplement contains 14 grams of carbohydrates, with only 1 gram of this coming from fibre. When looking at the ingredient list, we can see that majority of this carbohydrate content comes from fructose and the highly processed maltodextrin. Neither of these would be components considered in a ‘Healthy meal’.

While there are two key negatives, the positive associated with this supplement is its broad array of vitamins and minerals. It contains a number of vitamins and minerals that do promote the healthy function of the human body. When trying to lose weight (particularly when using a meal replacement shake), we can often limit our intake of these vitamins and minerals, which can have negative health implications. By including these (in relatively high amounts) formula 1 ensures we can maintain healthy bodily function.

In saying that, similar dosages of the same vitamins and minerals are likely to be found in a simple multivitamin at a much lower price point.

Why Herbalife Formula Might Promote Weight Loss.

Despite the products relatively basic formula, thousands of people across the globe swear by its effectiveness, claiming that it does help with weight loss.

And there is one key reason for this.

It has an EXTREMELY low energy content.

A serve of Formula 1 contains a mere 102 calories.

Herbalife Suggest you replace 1 or 2 of your daily meals with a Formula 1 shake.

This would mean that for two of your three daily meals, you are only consuming a combined total of 204 calories. This number is very low, and easily explains the weight loss that some individuals will experience when using this supplement.

By substituting one or two of their daily meals with Herbalife Formula 1, they are significantly reducing their daily energy intake, which will result in weight loss.

It is important to note that rapid weight loss stimulated by extremely low energy diets (such as those suggested by Herbalife) can have negative implications to health, and often result in rapid weight regain once we return to normal eating habits.

 Taste

While advertised as a delicious tasting alternative, a simple google search shows that Herbalife shakes and snacks have been heavily reviewed by a number of individual customers in a negative manner.

And one of the most common complaints?

Taste!

While not universal, the flavor of the products appear to be terribly hit and miss, with some claiming the product is ‘undrinkable’ due to taste, while others suggest it is ‘the best tasting weight loss shake they have ever had’.

With this large disparity in how the flavor is received, you run the risk of absolutely hating the flavor of the product, which when substituting up to 2 of your daily meals with, can make Herbalife a fairly un-enjoyable experience.

Herbalife Skin

Herbalife SKIN is a collection of a few dozen skin products that can alleviate just about any skin issue. Taking Herbalife SKIN products will nourish and heal your skin for a glowing, younger look.

Herbalife24

One of the newer Herbalife products is the Herbalife24 product line. Herbalife describes the Herbalife24 product line as “The first comprehensive performance nutrition line empowering athletes 24-hours a day.” Essentially, Herbalife24 consists of seven products meant to help athletes build muscle, train harder, and increase their overall performance.

Of all the Herbalife products, Herbalife24 is one of the best reviewed and is widely regarded to be the most beneficial product lines offered by Herbalife. If there’s a product you’ll want to get from Herbalife – it’s probably from the Herbalife24 line.

Do Herbalife Products Work?

One of the big issues surrounding Herbalife is that people assume that Herbalife products don’t work because of the legal issues surrounding Herbalife’s business model. However, if you look at the supplements on their own, then you’ll see that Herbalife actually sells high quality supplements that can actually benefit your health.

As we said above, Herbalife24 is highly rated by athletes and it’s one of the few complete athletic performance supplement lines on the market. Then there’s also Formula 1, which is one of the oldest and longest-selling products on the market. Not many products can claim to be on the market for over 25 years but Formula 1 can.

In reality, Herbalife products are of exceptional quality and can really do what they claim to do. Herbalife has an unfair reputation due to problems in the past but their products today are of a higher quality than many other popular brands.

Herbalife Products Are Safe Too

Herbalife products did have safety issues in the past but these issues are no longer present in products sold by Herbalife.

Herbalife has changed manufacturers and checks their products for quality and purity to make sure that customers get the safest, most effective supplements.

Price

Herbalife programs typically cost around 90-100 dollars per month at the lowest level. While not outrageous, this becomes more expensive with the inclusion of meal replacement shakes.

In comparison to some other weight loss supplementation programs, this is actually quite reasonable, although whether the product is actually worth the money is quite debatable.

Herbalife Final Thoughts

Herbalife has a huge selection of products and compared to other leading supplement companies. So, is Herbalife worth the money?

In short, no.

Herbalife shakes are merely a sugary drink with added vitamins and minerals, and a small amount of relatively low quality protein thrown in.

For a much cheaper monthly cost, one could buy a good quality multivitamin and a good quality protein powder, which would have the same (if not better) effect.

Herbalife supplementation also promote weight loss through extreme energy restriction, which is a method that has shown to fail in the long term time and time again.