Essentials

Product Review

Essentials from Usana

General:

“USANA Health Sciences has become one of America's leading companies in the field of health and nutrition.” I took that straight from their website but I believe it’s true.

Just like Pharmanex, Usana has grown into a huge, science-based company that has a true commitment to making a difference rather than just churning out cheap mass market supplements for easy profit. Usana invests a lot into product research and development. They are based in the US.

Usana also uses a MLM marketing structure, have a wide organizational structure and are a listed company, and as such they are bound by the same profit and cost pressures as Pharmanex.

With respect to the formulation of their supplements, Usana heavily promotes the following message: the right ingredients - in the correct amounts, in the right balance, and in the correct forms. That of course is exactly how it should be so let’s take a look at Essentials and see how it shapes up.

Strengths:

The first obvious strength that pops to mind is Usana’s manufacturing standards. They manufacture their own products - very few supplement companies do this.

This is proof of a total commitment to quality and to producing one of the best vitamin supplements you’ll find. I especially like the opening sentence on the manufacturing page of their website –

“Poor manufacturing can destroy great science.”

This is so true and is a real concern when companies contract out their manufacturing.

Secondly, they manufacture to pharmaceutical level and this puts them as one of just a handful of supplement companies who reach this highest level for manufacturing.

Both Usana and Xtend-Life deserve prominent recognition for their pharmaceutical level manufacturing.

Usana even has a streaming video on their website which outlines their manufacturing standards and processes. I really liked this and found it very comforting to actually see the reality and state of the art machinery behind the claims.

Like all four vitamin supplements in these comparisons, Essentials is a nutritionally complete product because its choice of ingredients targets every organ and system in the body.

The question of course is ‘how comprehensively does Essentials do that and how much value for money does it offer?’

See the weaknesses section below for the answer.

It contains vitamins, minerals, one enzyme for digestion, 2 amino acids, phytonutrients, standardized herbal extracts, trace minerals and one important nutrient needed as we age (L –Glutathione, but in a cheap form with poor bioavailability).

Essentials does well in the ‘Bone Support’ category with 6 of the 8 most potent nutrients.

Raw ingredient quality is a real strength – this is to be expected since they manufacture to pharmaceutical GMP. Their testing protocols are top-notch and every test that should be there is there.

Raw materials are quarantined on arrival and comprehensively tested for contaminants and compliance with their certificates of analysis.

Then, more tests during manufacture and again prior to packaging.

I could write a lot more on this topic but you get the picture - right!

There are no contaminants in Essentials!

And with regard to the ingredients that are in the formula, they are pure, in the best form for optimal absorption (except L-Glutathione) and are true to label claims.

Each of the two tablets which make up Essentials contains 7 all natural excipients (inactives) which is within the optimal range of 4 – 10. This is definitely a strength compared to most multi ingredient vitamin supplements in the market (e.g. ‘Centrum’ has 62 excipients!). However LifePak, Life Force and Total Balance had only 4 or 5 so I wonder why Essentials needs 7.

The less of the (right) excipients the better. You only need what is necessary to assist the stability of the tablet and to help the manufacturing process. Additional excipients take up room in the tablet that is better filled with active ingredients.

Having said that – Essentials has the highest total of active ingredients of the 4 supplements. If you consider this fact by itself and dig no deeper it looks like a clear strength. But of course you know I’m going to dig deeper. (See ‘weaknesses’ below)

Customer service was quite good although the responses where considerable slower than Xtend-Life and Pharmanex.

They ignored my email regarding manufacturing questions and refused to reveal quite a lot of other requested information. In respect of their excellent manufacturing standards I was quite ‘ticked-off’ over this.

They got rather stroppy with a couple of questions I asked because the answers were already in their database of frequently asked questions. I must have missed those but no-one could accuse me of not scouring the websites and databases of these companies thoroughly before contacting them for information I wanted!

I didn’t like the somewhat unfriendly tone in their response on that occasion.

If you believe in high doses of vitamins and minerals on the premise that the RDIs are well short of what is needed for good health and your diet is providing next to none, then you will consider the dose rates of these ingredients in Essentials as a strength – I don’t.

Weaknesses:

Essentials is similar to LifePak in that a large percentage of a tablet is comprised of vitamin and minerals - particularly cheap ones.

79% in fact - this is the second highest proportion of all 4 supplements.

Vitamin C – one of the absolutely cheapest ingredients – makes up 41% of Essentials. Wow!

They have included what I consider reasonably high doses of vitamin E and magnesium and to a lesser extent calcium.

The combined total of these 3 nutrients along with vitamin C accounts for 71% of a tablet.

Once again - if these are the ingredients you believe you need, in those amounts, then save yourself some money and get a quality multi vitamin and mineral supplement with similar dose rates for considerably less than the price of Essentials.

The vitamin and mineral content leaves very little room for other important ingredients like phytonutrients and herbal extracts. There are some but not many - Essentials has the second lowest ‘Total Ingredients’ score at 43.

Essentials contains a total of 219 mg of phytonutrients in a full daily serving – the second lowest score of the 4 supplements.

It has 193 mg of flavonoids compared with 390 mg for Total Balance – i.e. 50% less.

Essentials fares better with carotenoids – a total of 10.6 mg compared with 17 mg for Total Balance.

6 mg is the minimum standard for total carotenoids, based on the standards listed in my article ‘The formulas of the best vitamin supplements’. This standard was adopted from the LifePak challenge criteria. (See that article for a list of scientific references supporting the creation of this standard).

Essentials contains N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine (amino acid); alpha lipoic acid (potent vitamin-like nutrient); and L - Glutathione – all excellent choices for ingredients. So what’s wrong with that?

All three have been scientifically proven to be susceptible to destruction/damage by stomach acid!

Since Essentials does not employ enteric coating to protect these vulnerable nutrients, there is a big question mark as to how much (if any) are absorbed into the body.

Furthermore they have skimped and used the normal form of L – Glutathione, which has poor bioavailability to begin with. This is a lot cheaper than the ‘reduced’ form which has much higher bioavailability.

There is a reasonable amount of antioxidants in Essentials. It came third in the total number of most potent antioxidants category of my research.

Essentials has put all its flavonoids into one “complex” with a grand total amount – they will not reveal the individual dose amounts for each of these ingredients. Why? This is important information when comparing Essentials with its competitors. This must be seen as a weakness! The best vitamin supplements must be totally transparent with product information!

Additionally, Usana will not reveal the potencies of its 4 standardized herbal extracts (Billberry, Green Tea, Olive Leaf and Turmeric) as well as two other ingredients (Inositol and Lycopene). Once again why? You be the judge.

Essentials has only 1 male support nutrient - a tiny 1mg of lycopene (with an unspecified potency) and no female support nutrients.

Essentials contains the ingredient ‘choline’ in the bitartrate form – this is a cheaper form than the ‘phosphatidyl choline’ used in Total Balance. Both forms have memory boosting properties but phosphatidyl choline has some additional benefits in that it helps in the metabolism of fats, regulates blood cholesterol, and nourishes the fat-like sheathes of nerve fibers.

There are no tocotrienols in the formula meaning the full spectrum of the vitamin E family is not there. This is poor for a vitamin supplement of this stature.

Usana offers no money back guarantee for Essentials. Why?

A company of this statue should stand by its product – especially since it promotes it as the best vitamin supplement available. Many lesser supplements now offer unconditional money back guarantees – its quickly becoming an industry standard. Come on Usana!

My final take on Essentials is the same as LifePak:-

Usana is a company dedicated to quality and certainly knows how to formulate a state of the art multi ingredient supplement for good general health and preventative health care. They are one of the best in the business!

However the cost structure of their operations – MLM, along with a wide company structure and shareholder pressures means they too are restricted in what they can afford to include in Essentials. If these pressures were not there then Essentials would be significantly better.

NOTE: My comments to any unhappy Essentials users who want to contact me are these. Please do but let’s not get into a never ending commentary on vitamin and mineral amounts to which there will be no conclusive answer.

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