The Illusion of Veracity

Tales from the trail of the comeback kid.

ByAnthony Almada, B.Sc., M.Sc.

This June marks my 33rd anniversary in this industry I inhabit (and fling invectives at). I was baptized into the faith after entering a health food store as a highly impressionable 15 years young high school swimmer, carrying an empty bottle of a vitamin-enriched desiccated liver tablet product—the sales rep from this still-thriving dietary supplement company made an in-person, poolside presentation to our swim team, and I had kept the bottle for four months.

Entering the “vitamin section” of this store I was engulfed by a parking lot of bottles—many in glass—the top shelves at or above eye level. My father at my side—the Marina Nutrition store was a few miles away from our home—we asked to speak to a person about my vitamin product. In that 60-second period of waiting for the “Viceroy of Vitamins” to emerge from the back room—which also served as a prep kitchen—I felt as if I was awaiting a diagnosis by a physician about a condition I was wholly ignorant of. Why was this label wrapped around the bottle I clutched so puzzling and transfixing?

Then the “High Priestess of Potent Vitamins” emerged. Her corpulence did not strike me as much as the mass of makeup upon her face. Distinctively, I did not think “How could she be a vitamin expert and be so physically unfit?” like the obese obesity researcher or overfat dietitian I see at so many biomedical meetings. I presented the bottle to her and humbly asked, “What is in this that made me swim faster?” Rolling the bottle back and forth in her hands, like a safe cracker, she looked up and uttered “It was probably the PABA.” This four-letter word resurrected several times in the years to follow, as a chemical I made in organic chemistry as an undergrad, as the photoprotectant in my sun block used over a decade of surfing, and as the pseudovitamin that I intentionally excluded from numerous multinutrient compositions that I formulated in my various corporate positions in the 1990s.

Marina Nutrition is now a clothing store, and was the spawning ground for my first two years in retail. I was fired by the High Priestess one Sunday afternoon, ostensibly for “running one of my co-workers ragged” at the food counter. The store was then sold to a family that had two other stores, and I approached the new owners and secured a clerk position. I pelted the store manager—who was the son of the owners—with questions ranging from A to zinc. I typically received the reply “I’ll tell you later,” which was likely a sweetened version of “Go sweep the floor, kid, you’re botherin’ me!” Like a religious zealot, I took that inquisitiveness with me, through more years in retail, my undergraduate years, and into each of the dietary supplement companies—spanning the value chain—that I worked for later in my career.

EVERY company—be it an ingredient or finished goods company—asserts they have the “best” and/or “unique” product(s). With religious zeal and the illusion of science, they build a story that is intended to infect with the brand loyalty virus. Asking the faithful for fact is like asking a TV evangelist if he/she speaks the truth. “Of course I am. Look at these that I’ve healed, the size of my congregation and viewing audience, and the outpouring of tears when I preach!” Unsatisfactory and ultimately spurious facts have been showered upon me in response to my queries. “It must have been the PABA…it must have been the PABA…”

Only when I co-owned and co-led a company (EAS) were answers of fact attainable, and illusions of veracity ex­cised. Over a decade of consulting has yielded only a sideline level of contribution—the temporary coach brought in for a new season, and rarely are his game plans embraced, and usually only fractionally. Maybe he had the wrong game plan, or the wrong style of presentation. So it is time to get back in the game, on the pitch or in the race, and wear the uniform. This column will now reflect the perspectives of a preacher who now is actively practicing from the modest pulpit of a leader of a new brand of finished goods. And I can thank the High Priestess for planting the phrase that has fueled my comeback…NW