In the Letters section of its June 8 issue, Sports Illustrated ran reader responses to the May 18 supplement article, “What You don’t Know Might Kill You.” The letter Nutrition Business Journal submitted, which corrected the NBJ data that was erroneously cited in the article, was not printed—nor were any other letters supporting the industry or calling the magazine on its misleading reporting about supplements and DSHEA. (NBJ confirmed that we weren’t the only ones to respond to the Sports Illustrated article in defense of the industry and to correct misinformation published in the article). Instead, the magazine published three anti-supplement letters. Needless to say, it’s disappointing to see such blatant bias on the part of a popular mainstream publication.
For what it’s worth, following is the letter NBJ submitted to Sports Illustrated:
In a May 18 Sports Illustrated cover feature titled “What You Don’t Know Might Kill You,” David Epstein and George Dohrmann incorrectly cite Nutrition Business Journal research to create a picture of a sports supplement industry that appears much larger than it actually is. In reading the article, the average reader would come away with the idea that, according to Nutrition Business Journal, the sports supplement industry has grown to become a $20 billion business—which is simply not true. In 2007, U.S. sales of sports supplement products—the type which this Sports Illustrated article focused on—totaled $2.5 billion, while the entire U.S. sports nutrition and weight-loss market—which includes sports supplements, weight-loss pills, meal-replacement supplements, low-carb foods, nutrition bars, and sports and energy drinks—generated just under $20 billion in sales in 2007, according to Nutrition Business Journal estimates. Yes, sales of sports supplements have been growing, but they still constitute a small piece of the overall sports nutrition and weight-loss market—and this certainly was not made clear in the way Sports Illustrated cited Nutrition Business Journal’s research.
Along with getting this important fact wrong, Sports Illustrated also did its readers a disservice by publishing a story that focuses on only a small minority of products within the U.S. dietary supplement market—products that, in the words of Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), “are not representative of the mainstream companies that manufacture products that consumers choose to include in their cadre of personal healthcare options.” Furthermore, by blaming the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) for creating what Epstein and Dohrmann call a “Pandora’s Box of false claims, untested products and bogus science,” your magazine demonstrated a lack of understanding of DSHEA and the regulations it put in place for the dietary supplement industry. As Mister noted in the five-page response CRN wrote to your article, “The extreme examples the article describes appear to be a product of DSHEA, when in fact, they more likely result from FDA’s lack of enforcement of that law over the past 16 years.”
At a minimum, Sports Illustrated should run a correction regarding the Nutrition Business Journal data it incorrectly cited in its article, but also deserving is a follow-up piece that, instead of relying on sensational examples that scare readers into believing that the majority of supplements are unsafe, actually paints a true picture of dietary supplement regulation and its enforcement and maybe even helps readers understand how to identify the many safe and effective supplement products that are available to them today.
The Foundation for Child Development issued a scary report last week arguing that the recession could result in children—particularly poor and very young kids—eating even more cheap, low-quality, unhealthy food than they currently do, as cash-strapped parents are forced to substitute fast food and junk food for more nutritious fare in the current economy. “There is a concern with ‘recession obesity’ apart from the general trend toward an increasing number of obese American children,” said Kenneth Land, project director of the foundation’s Youth Well-Being Index Project, which issues an annual composite assessment of how U.S. kids are faring in terms of education and health.
In issuing the report, the foundation and child advocates called for the creation of policies that help families during tough economic times and strengthen early childhood education. “We should be doing a lot more to invest in children and youth, and it’s pretty clear we’re not doing that,” Ruby Takanishi, president of the Foundation for Child Development, said June 3 during a presentation of the foundation’s report.
The idea of the recession erasing the progress that has already been made on the childhood nutrition front is pretty frightening. And, although the nation’s poorest children are likely to suffer the most nutritionally (and in many other ways) from the economic crisis, not everyone believes the economy will have parents turning toward the cheapest food possible in an effort to weather the economic storm.
In fact, some people argue that the economy is driving parents to expect more value from the products they purchase, and this could present a competitive advantage for those companies selling products that truly pack a healthy punch. “In this poor economic time, parents are a lot more conscious of how they spend their food money,” Denise Devine, president and CEO of Froose, which makes a patented children’s beverage that combines organic whole fruit and whole grains, told Nutrition Business Journal. “The value proposition is so much more important these days. Why would you pay more for a 50% watered down juice? Half the time [those products] don’t give your child any nutritional value. My product is not just a juice with isolated vitamins. It is a whole food that has all of these wonderful things, including gluten-free brown rice.”
As a mother who is more focused than ever on keeping her kids healthy by feeding them nutritious foods, I tend to agree with Devine on this one. But I also think that much more needs to be done to make healthier foods available, accessible and affordable to all children, especially in the current economic environment, and I’m hoping President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture live up to their stated promise of making improved children’s nutrition a top priority. In addition, I urge more companies to invest in helping make healthy food and nutrients available to children in need, such as Revolution Foods is doing by supporting bringing healthy school lunches to inner-city schools and Vitamin Angels is doing through its many programs here in the United States and abroad.
NBJ’s newest report—Healthy Kids’ Market Report: Breaking the Entry Barrier—was created to help companies operating in, working to move in to or simply evaluating the U.S. healthy kids’ product market better understand this market and its opportunities and challenges. Order your copy of the report via the NBJ Website.
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Cognis, one of the largest raw material and ingredient supply companies serving the nutrition industry, saw its sales volume decline 18% during the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year, as falling consumer demand and a subsequent customer destocking effect negatively impacted company performance, Cognis reported May 27. When excluding the impact of foreign currency and company acquisitions, net sales were down 13.9% for the quarter on a year-over-year basis.
The company’s three main divisions all turned in poor results for the quarter, with the largest decline coming from the functional products division, which was down 16.9% and which services a number of industries, including the automotive, housing and engineering sectors. The company’s nutrition & health division saw its sales decrease 8.3% to 84 million euros for the quarter, as poor consumer demand contributed to weaker sales. The care chemicals division reported a sales decline of 13.8% to 370 million euros.
As rough as the first quarter was for Cognis, total sales volume for the quarter increased 5% over the fourth quarter of 2008—a period which may prove to be the trough in the consumer spending recession. The nutrition & health division was up 4% compared to Q4 of 2008. “We are starting to see a few positive signs, with the rate of volume decline slowing appreciably in March,” Cognis CEO Antonio Trius said in a prepared statement. “Our goal is to further strengthen the leading position we enjoy in growth markets driven by the wellness and sustainability trends.” Trius said Cognis remains cautiously optimistic that performance will improve in 2009. “We expect our cost-saving measures to counteract lower sales. Most of the initiatives will materialize from April onwards,” he said. “Together with our efforts on optimizing our costs, we will also stay focused on maintaining our healthy cash position.” The company also expressed hope that its strategy of investing in global wellness and sustainability trends will help the company better withstand the recession.
Cognis recorded sales of about 3 billion euros in 2008. The company is owned by private equity funds advised by Permira, GS Capital Partners and SV Life Sciences. Cognis appears to be well positioned for success within the nutrition industry as the company has made a number of strategic acquisitions in recent years, including the purchase of WILD Flavors Inc. and InterMed Discovery GmbH. However, only about 10%-15% of Cognis’s total business is devoted to the nutrition & health division, thus, the company is reliant on other sectors to improve total business performance. NBJ expects the nutrition & health division to turn in progressively more favorable results as the year progresses and the company’s cost savings measures have had a chance to take hold.
Related Links:
Cognis Achieves NSF International GMP Registration for Natural Vitamin E, Phytosterols and CLA – Complies with New FDA Regulations
Cognis Nutrition & Health Increases North America Prices
2007 Proved Lucrative for Ingredient Suppliers. Will 2008 and 2009 Offer More of the Same?
Dietary supplements are taking a beating in the mainstream press these days, but a new study funded by the Natural Products Foundation provides more positive fodder about the economic benefits provided by the supplements industry. According to the study, the dietary supplements industry contributes about $61 billion annually to the U.S. economy, supports more than 450,000 jobs and paid more than $10 billion in taxes in 2006.
“Most industry assessments primarily focus on sales, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg,” said Tracy Taylor, executive director of the Natural Products Foundation. “The labor, materials and technology necessary to move each product from a raw material to the final sale cause a whole spectrum of economic consequences.” Preliminary Nutrition Business Journal estimates peg 2008 U.S. consumer sales of dietary supplements at about $25 billion.
The Economic Impact Report, completed by Dobson | DaVanzo, a Washington D.C.-based economic research firm, is the first to quantify the dietary supplement industry’s overall financial impact on the national economy by considering such contributing factors as supply, production, research, direct employment, manufacturing, taxes, and the extended financial effects these factors produce.
NBJ’s upcoming U.S. Nutrition Industry Overview double issue, which will publish in July, will offer more details about the Natural Products Foundation’s Economic Impact Report, as well as 2008 sales and growth estimates by product segment and channel for dietary supplements and other nutrition industry product categories. To order your copy of the issue, subscribe to NBJ or download a free 32-page sample issue of the journal, go to www.nutritionbusinessjournal.com.
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Sports Illustrated Slams Supplements and DSHEA
U.S. Nutrition Industry Prospers in 2007, Despite Economic Slump
Special Feature: Supplement Industry Makes its Case for Healthcare Cost Saving
In a May 18 Sports Illustrated cover feature titled “Supplements: The Dangerous Obsession with Improved Performance,” David Epstein and George Dohrmann do their best to deliver a knock-out punch to the sports supplement industry and the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which the writers say is the basic reason the sports supplement industry has become “a Pandora’s Box of false claims, untested products and bogus science.”
The piece brings up numerous examples of professional players being punished for using supplements spiked with banned substances, delves into the recent Hydroxycut recall and rehashes the dark days of ephedra. It also features several sports supplement retailers and product developers who reap riches from selling and concocting stimulant-filled products that can be sold “with no proof of effectiveness or safety, and without approval from the FDA.” The story goes on to talk about about how GNC salespeople are paid commission by sports supplement manufacturers to push their products on “unsuspecting customers” who “are sometimes steered to a supplement that is inappropriate for their needs.” It ends with discussion of sports supplement companies manipulating the findings from clinical research or rigging the studies altogether. Taken as a whole, the articles paints a grim portrait of a rogue sports supplement industry that the writers say Nutrition Business Journal research estimates generated nearly $20 billion in U.S. sales in 2007.
The trouble is, the writers use carefully chosen examples to tell only one side of the story—and they misleadingly cite NBJ research to create a picture of an industry that appears much larger than it actually is. In 2007, U.S. sales of sports supplement products totaled $2.5 billion, while the entire U.S. sports nutrition & weight-loss (SNWL) sector—which includes sports supplements, weight-loss pills, meal-replacement supplements, low-carb foods, nutrition bars, and sports & energy drinks—generated just under $20 billion in sales in 2007. Yes, sales of sports supplements have been growing but they still constitute a relatively small piece of the overall SNWL market—and this certainly was not made clear in the way Sports Illustrated cited our research.
Exposés such as the Sports Illustrated article are, unfortunately, not new for the dietary supplement industry, and they will continue as long as there are examples of products containing banned substances, of researching being manipulated, of false or misleading claims, or of people becoming sick after using a supplement—even if these instances do not reflect the overall nature of the supplement industry at large.
The good news is that now the supplement industry has good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and the serious adverse event reporting (SAER) system to ensure supplement product quality and demonstrate the safety of dietary supplements. We also have organizations such as the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the Natural Products Association and NSF International to ably communicate the positive, responsible side of the supplement industry and help ensure the safety and quality of supplement products. But, in this day and age, the industry is likely to need more than that if it wants to protect its reputation and current regulatory structure. To weather the current media storm, all supplement companies are going to need to help defend the industry by strictly adhering to GMPs and DSHEA, by speaking out against potentially damaging products and companies, and by only doing business with those companies whose practices and ideals they support.
Related links:
How Worrisome is the Hydroxycut Recall for the Dietary Supplement Industry?
Industry Making Strides in Improving Tarnished Image of Weight-Loss Supplements
New Supplement Regulations Most Important for Industry Since Passage of DSHEA
