run, rest, eat, bitch, buy things, cross-train, blog, repeat.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Product Review: Maximum Greens

Let’s talk a little about vitamins…I go through phases. Sometimes I’ll take a multi-vitamin everyday for like a month… and then I’ll go off them for like 3 months. In general, I think they’re just a bunch of hoo-hah that you just wind up peeing out.

A few weeks ago… my brother (whom I work with) called me into his office. He handed me a plastic bag.

“What’s this?”

“Check it out.”

I opened the bag and pulled out a box of vitamins.

“Vitamins?”

"Not just vitamins, life changing vitamins."

So, my brother heard about these whole foods vitamins on the radio awhile back and went to GNC and bought them. And, apparently they’ve changed his life or some shit. He’s got more energy, is losing weight, is more alert during the day, sleeping better, has a twinkle in his eye, a skip in his step and all that jazz… But… I was skeptical. I mean, it could just be the placebo effect, right?

Enter my real-life Debbie Downer: Jeff.

Jeff is one of my best friends. We met in college and he is the one friend that I talk to everyday. And when I say “talk to,” I mean “argue with”. He is the yin to my yang. We never agree on anything and anytime I’m excited about something… he brings me down and vice versa. It sounds terrible, I realize… but it works. He’s a science dude and in general is skeptical of all the “crazy health/fitness/weight loss ideas” I come up with. But, he’s also self-diagnosed himself with certain vitamin deficiencies and talks about multi-vitamins on occasion. These things… in my eyes, makes him a vitamin/medical expert. So, I sent him the link to the vitamins.

His response was to send me a link to the nutritional information on the same webpage with this note: "Holy SHIT, if the daily value of something is 100%, is it really necessary to have 4000% of something?" (They have over 4000% of your suggested daily intake of B12 among insane amounts of lots of other stuff).

Wah-Wah.

I knew he’d come through with something negative about it.

A couple of days later though… the idea had gotten the best of him and he’d bought the stuff and just like my brother, he was on the maximum greens love wagon.

"Ohhhh... I get up in the morning so much easier... ohhhh... I have so much energy. You should really check these out dude, you're so active that I'm sure they'd work for you."

So, I finally took an excursion to GNC and picked some up. They were 20 bucks for a month's supply. Two enormous horse pills a day.

I haven’t been taking it for very long, so, I hope to be able to update you about how freaking awesome I'm feeling next week... but as of right now, I've only noticed one thing: fluorescent yellow urine. Seriously... it's like I'm peeing lemon-lime Gatorade. (Hopefully that’s not just proving my point of the vitamins actually going down the drain instead of being absorbed into my body).

*** Strangely enough... even though these vitamins have like a bazillion percents of everything you can possibly imagine... it doesn't have 100% of your calcium intake, so if you're a chick like me who has osteoporosis in your family, you need to keep that in mind...

4 comments:

Joe said...

in summer of 2007, i worked on a proposal at work. one of the other proposal development teams had these energy drinks that they stocked their fridge with. they had no caffeine and no sugar, so apparently to make up for the fact that without sugar or caffeine, the only way to make sure your body gets enough of the B vitamins without you just peeing it out next time you go to the bathroom is to include 42,000% of the daily recommended dose in each bottle.

it was hysterical. i wish i could remember what they were called or took a pic of the label.

Spike said...

I won't go buy them yet, but if you give them the thumbs up, I'll give them a shot. I mean, a twinkle in my eye...that is worth neon pee.

Rhoni said...

neon pee means your flushing your B-vitamins...it's okay though, you just can't absorb the quantities they put in vitamins these days...same with calcium...you should take a calcium supplement several times throughout the day, to get the maximum benefits/absorption! I'm taking a physiology class right now, we're learning all of this and it's super fascinating!

Anonymous said...

My husband just bought some of these Maximum Greens.....any update? I too could use a twinkle in my eye and more energy :)