How Nutrients Work

Nutrients from food are absorbed by the body as it passes through the digestive system:

* Nutrients are essential for cell growth, maintenance and repair.
* Nutrients provide energy to enable your body to function efficiently.
* Nutrients, along with fiber and water, are essential to your good health.

Although nutrients can work alone, each depends upon the others to be the most effective. The main nutrients are the macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats – and the micronutrients, vitamins and minerals.
Milkthistle, cranberries, spinach leaves, and acerola cherries
What Macronutrients Do

Macronutrients Are Essential for Good Health:

* They assist in breaking down carbohydrates and fats, which provide energy to the body.
* They assist in the absorption of protein, which provides the building blocks necessary for cell growth and repair.

What Micronutrients Do

Vitamins and minerals do not in themselves provide energy, but macronutrients depend on them to regulate the release of energy from food.

* Vitamins are organic substances.
* They activate enzymes, which are proteins that act as catalysts to speed up biological reactions that take place in your body.
* Your body produces a certain amount of vitamins D and K, but all other vitamins come from your diet or supplementation.

Minerals are inorganic substances that originate from rocks and ores and enter the food chain through the soil.

* We get minerals either by eating plants grown on mineral-rich soil or by eating animals that have fed on these plants.
* Calcium, magnesium and phosphorus are the major constituents of bone.
* Sodium and potassium control your body’s water balance.
* Other minerals (chromium, iron, and magnesium) are needed for various chemical processes to take place in the body.
* Omega Fatty Acids
* Phytonutrients, also referred to as phytochemicals, are compounds that act as a natural defense system in plants, and that also have a beneficial effect on human health.

Prior to 1934, there were no known multivitamin/multimineral supplements. People found it difficult to know if they were getting enough nutrients in their daily diets.

Then, Carl Rehnborg, founder of the NUTRILITE brand, created his first nutrition product and became a pioneer in the history of nutrition.

While living in China in the early 1920s, Carl Rehnborg noticed, amid unforgettable malnutrition and disease, an important connection between the foods people ate and their overall health.
Fruits and vegetables for Nutrilite vitamin mineral supplements

* In farming communities, where fresh fruits and vegetables were plentiful, people were much healthier overall.
* In the cities, where diets included far more sugar, salt, and fat, Carl noted that there were many more instances of critical diseases, such as scurvy and beriberi.

During political unrest in Shanghai, Carl was isolated in a protected enclave. There, he conceived the idea of using nutritional elements missing from the typical diet as a way to improve overall health.

* Carl supplemented his meager diet with soups from what was available: local herbs, grasses, and vegetables, along with rusty nails (for iron), and lime stone and ground-up animal bones (for calcium).
* He shared his broth with a few friends, although the flavor was far from palatable.
* Months later, Carl and his friends who ate the nutrient-rich broth emerged from their enclave much healthier than those who had eaten only army rations.

Returning to the United States, Carl set up a small laboratory on California’s Balboa Island, where, over the next six years, he conducted experiments using different plant varieties.

* He developed a way to dry these plants while still preserving their important nutrients.
* He created a formulation of alfalfa, watercress, and parsley, which became the basis of his first product.

Farmers in the field, milkthistle growing, alfalfa growing

Ultimately, Carl Rehnborg created the first multivitamin/multimineral supplement sold in North America.
Our Legacy

Since 1934, when the first NUTRILITE product was introduced, the company has become a leader in nutrition research, development, and innovation.

Today, under the leadership of Carl’s son, Dr. Sam Rehnborg, the next generation of scientists, researchers, and technicians is preserving the rich Nutrilite heritage by continuing to produce high quality, innovative supplements.

Because they are made from whole plant concentrates, many NUTRILITE supplements contain a wide array of phytonutrients.

Manufacturing operations in Buena Park, California, and Guangzhou, China, produce up to 10 billion NUTRILITE tablets, capsules and softgel capsules annually.

Carl began selling his new supplement person to person, friend to friend, through word-of-mouth referrals.

When some of these early customers began referring new customers to Carl, he suggested they sell the product themselves, rewarding them with discounts on their purchases.

Just as Carl had created the first multivitamin/multimineral supplement sold in North America, he also pioneered an early multi-level marketing system and a business model still in use today.
MLM has spawned, Affiliate Marketing, Network Marketing,Joint Venture Marketing and a slew of other business models.

The two people who guided the NUTRILITE brand to its present-day business success story were Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel. Rich and Jay had been distributing NUTRILITE products for 10 years before they founded Amway in 1959. Amways cash flow allowed them to buy up the NUTRILITE brand and make it an exclusive to Amway Distributors.

By 2007 with little or no advertising and no marketing outside of MLM – Nutrilite did over $2 billion dollars.Making it the largest Multivitamin brand in the world.

NUTRILITE of course is not the only multivitamin nowadays – but the quality of its farming and cultivation techniques make it the brand to compare against when shopping for vitamins.