Why We Joined Vital Proteins Affiliate Program

Websites make money off of advertising. In fact, there’s a term “click bait” for an ad that grabs your attention by being outrageous, off the wall, or just a bit weird so that people will click on them to find out what’s going on.

My favorite are the outright lies, such as “Hollywood Says Goodbye to Sylvester Stalone.”

You’d think he’s quit making movies or died or something, but the ad is for body building supplements, and they’re saying goodbye to the “old” Stalone who’s now building a “new” Stalone.

It’s all bullshit.

• Ten Dirty Secrets of Cheaters
• Pictures That Will Make You Shiver
• 8 Diet Secrets

All of these are designed to bring you in so you can see 8, 10, 12, who knows? how many pages filled with advertising. And like everyone else, you’re bound to accidentally click on one.

For dieters there are these:

• 1 Weird Trick to Drop 10 Pounds
• 3 Health Foods That Can Ruin Your Diet
• If You Want to Lose Weight Eat This One Fruit

These types of ads draw you in to watch a “short” video. Then after 35 minutes you wonder how the hell did this happen?

One of our affiliate programs with Dr Al Sears has “short” videos, but right at the bottom is a link to read the transcript (which I use to jump to the important stuff).

One final advertising method that might be against FTC guidelines is the free book giveaway.

First you give them your email address, supposedly so they can send you a link to the free book. Why can’t they just give you the link? Because you are now on their mailing list. This is where they’re crossing a line, because “best practices” requires a double confirmation, confirming that you actually do want the newsletter.

Best practices for newsletter sign-up: First you sign up for it, and then you get an email asking you to confirm, so you confirm, and you’ve completed the “newsletter two-step.”

There’s another method that we’ve tried and that’s to send a newsletter to someone telling them if they don’t like it, please use the link at the bottom to opt out/unsubscribe.

This method is a fence sitter. Good? Bad? We’re not sure. I’ve sent them to people who are interested in our subject matter but might not have known we had a newsletter. Interestingly enough, only ONE person in about, oh I’d say 50 who I’ve sent these to, has opted out. Though this isn’t too surprising since in our particular industry, health and wellness, newsletters are opened, on average, by 16.7% of your audience. I say not surprising because the odds are they won’t open it.

However, our average is around 30%, so we must be doing something right.

Since I make and recommend smoothies, we went looking for a company whose reputation rested solely on the quality of their product, and we found:

Vital Proteins

Here is a comparison of their Whey Protein to another company’s (that claims to have the best products on earth) that we’ll call Product A.

Product A	Vital Proteins
Servings per container: 14	16
Cost per serving: $3.50	$ 3.06
Calories per gram of protein: 6.25	4.81

Product A advertises that their whey comes from grass fed cows. Vital Proteins’s Whey comes from Organic Pasture (grass fed) Raised Cows.

When you visit Vital Proteins’ web site, you’ll find their products each have their own individual pages, with nutritional information listed right along with the amino acid profile of that particular product. It’s all very straight forward.

On the pages at Vital Proteins, at the bottom are short videos. Now there are really short videos. I’m quite serious. Some last no more than eight seconds.

And here is why I love the products at Vital Proteins beyond the fact that no one is trying to pull a fast one on me: they are just plain better products for all of us, no matter what your age.

Many of their products have collagen, and their number one seller is their blue bottle of Collagen Peptides.

These are absolutely necessary today for all of us because our bodies cannot synthesize enough from our diets, and we’re sure enough not getting the amounts of collagen our ancient ancestors got, because they did not waste any part of their kills. They even broke open bones to eat the marrow.

Collagen is needed for hair, skin, nails, and (for you people getting up there besides me), joints; not to mention tendons and ligaments. But even teens need collagen; not just us oldsters. They’ll be old enough soon enough, but while they’re growing and exercising, they need collagen so they won’t grow old too fast. By fifty, having gone a long time without resupplying the collagen you’ve needed can really slow you down with aches and pains. Everyone sooner or later gets a touch of arthritis. Getting enough collagen is just one way to slow that process and keep your joints flexible.

We get collagen, as meat eaters, from the bones. Gelatin is collagen, but the body must first break down that collagen into collagen peptides. This is why I love their Collagen Peptides. They’re already broken down and usable by the body. They get to your hair, skin, nails, and joints right away.

Before We Go On, Let’s Take A Look at Collagen From WebMD’s Point of View

First off, they hit you with one of their usual tropes [a common but overused theme]: Collagen: ‘Fountain of Youth’ or Edible Hoax?

WebMD being what WebMD has to be, they’re always going to “slight” those things that don’t come from their materia medica [drugs]. Because I, on the other hand, am not a fan of the AMA, the pharmaceutical cartels, or physicians who earn a million dollars a year selling chemotherapy, were I to use WebMD’s tactics, I would entitle a paper about a booster shot of penicillin, Penicillin: “Pain in the Ass” or an Expensive Way to Kill Your Good Bacteria?

Sure, it’s good to be skeptical, but don’t wear it on your wrist and flash it around like a Rolex. We get it.

The article points out that, yes, collagen is needed, because it’s a protein source “packing in more protein per calorie than other sources . . . . ” They go on to say that studies show it may “improve composition, joint, health, and healing rates.” Note the “may,” because nobody at WebMD is really sure of anything, even if the studies are overwhelmingly positive.

They also admit that collagen is a protein that “binds tissues — is often called the body’s scaffolding.”

A dermatologist in the article notes that collagen “makes up about 75% of the dry weight of your skin, providing volume that keeps skin looking plump and keeps lines at bay. It’s also rich in in the amino acids proline and glycine, which you need to maintain and repair your tendons, bones, and joints.” And adds, “As we get older, we break it down faster than we can replace it.” [WebMD]

The one thing everyone in this article agreed upon is quality. There are no standards in the industry, although the FDA has clamped down on using certain “cow parts” to protect us from mad cow disease.

Everything the article recommended we’ve found at Vital Proteins. Free range, grass fed, organic, etc etc etc.

And the collagen at Vital Proteins is very bioavailable. It is already broken down and is immediately usable by the body.

You’re darn tootin; I did my homework. You see, you have collagen and you have collagen peptides. A peptide is just a collection of amino acids. Collagen is a protein. Collagen peptides have been broken down from collagen using enzymes. They’re smaller and more easily absorbed by the body.

Actual Studies

We recently found a page that attacked all collagen products as being worthless because there were no double blind studies that showed any benefits to taking oral collagen. That’s not true, not true at all. One just has to look a little harder and they will find this study:  Oral Supplementation of Specific Collagen Peptides Has Beneficial Effects on Human Skin Physiology: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study. We have archived this study on our computers, so if it is one day missing from the web, we will post it here.

But Does Collagen Help Osteoarthritis?

From our friends at Consumer Labs, we get this: “Collagen appears to modestly reduce wrinkles and slightly improve the appearance of cellulite. It may also modestly improve joint pain and flexibility in osteoarthritis. These effects can require two to six months of daily use.”

In 2005 a study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry showed that some peptides actually stay together (are not broken down into amino acids) and can accumulate in skin and cartilage.

In one of the largest studies using collagen, published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine in 2012 showed a reduction in pain for over 50% of those taking the collagen compared to 36% of those taking the placebo, but after three months there was no significant difference.

Back to Vital Proteins

Vital Proteins has other versions that are flavored, and contain Hyaluronic Acid and Probiotics. The hyaluronic acid, mixed with collagen, hydrates your skin, reduces wrinkles, helps recover from wounds (and sunburn), lubricates your joints, and helps fight dry eyes.

The probiotics just help to keep your digestive tract healthy, but make sure you feed the probiotics with pre-biotics (like dark chocolate).

Also, the blue bottle of Collagen Peptides has an amino acid that regulates dopamine levels and helps keep you from being depressed. That amino acid is glycine. This blue bottle delivers 3,719 mg of glycine per serving. And the rest of their collagen products contain glycine also. Take their bone broths, whether from free range chickens or grass fed beef, you’re getting over a thousand milligrams of glycine in every serving. I add the collagen broth to my stir-fries.

Finally, we arrive at their whey protein.

They have flavored ones, but my favorite is UNFLAVORED. I love this because I can sweeten it the way I like it. Their flavored whey proteins all have collagen, but their big bottle of organic whey protein is unflavored with no collagen. I add collagen to mine. And I add my own sweetener.

That’s all I’m going to tell you about these people. They advertise ethically. They will send you an email once in a while, but they won’t hound you and promise some secret just to get you to watch a movie video. Oh, and they do have a free booklet that tells you all about collagen and has 50 recipes.

And now, since it’s nearly summer (May 2018) summer, I’m going to give you a link to a page that will build over the summer with help and input from readers. I’m calling it Smoothie Secrets. But they’re not really secrets. They’re just things you might not have tried yet.

So as you’re making your smoothies this summer, don’t forget to write us (or just comment on the secrets’ page) and tell us your smoothie secrets, and tell us how to use your name and PLEASE send us a selfie so we can prove that you’re a real, live human being.

Here’s your link: Smoothie Secrets.