Vitamin C and multi-level marketing

We contracted a young man, actually a family friend, to paint two rooms of our house. He estimated the job would take a week. I was adamant that it would be finished within the time frame because I could not stand the smell of paint. In fact my son and I slept two nights on the living room floor until the paint dried. But the painter could not finish on time because he took a few days off in the middle of his work. One to attend a church function; the other to attend some sort of seminar

It turned out he was attending a seminar which was recruiting salespeople and he told us near the end of his job he would go full time selling vitamin C. He said he'd be earning better than what he gets for painting jobs.

But isn't vitamin c readily available over the counter? Yes, he said, but what he was going to sell was a different kind; one that does not cause tummy trouble because it was alkaline instead of acidic like the common ascorbic acid. He would be selling sodium ascorbate.

Weeks later a group was peddling vitamin C at the office during one noon break. It was sodium ascorbate too under the brand of Vital C. I told them I heard about Fern C from somebody else. One of the salesmen promptly announced that their vitamin c was better. Huh!

There are other vitamin c of the sodium ascorbate type that are marketed in the internet. Ultima C, High C, Bio C, Daily C. Unbranded sodium ascorbate are even sold in drums. So far only Fern C and Vital C appear to be sold via multi-level marketing (MLM) .

This brings the story back to my house painter. And I have two things about what he was about to do.

First is that he was getting enticed by MLM hocus pocus. I have always had some serious reservations about MLM or networking, as it is known in the Philippines. Simply put, I believe only the original organizers of a networking scheme benefit from the business. They suck the profit; the rest are the suckers.

Amway used to be the epitome of MLM. Many people's dreams died with it. Read the story here. Wikipedia has a good article about MLM. This piece is blunt about it. And I say amen to it!

The second thing I have about this is the dubious claims about sodium ascorbate. The list of ailments that sodium ascorbate can cure ranges from cancer to erectile problem. One fact conveniently ignored is that it is not good for people who need to stay away from salt in their diet.

Linus Pauling is the icon for sodium ascorbate peddlers. They trot out the vitamin c megadose that Pauling promoted in his lifetime. There are two things wrong here. Pauling did not use sodium ascorbate. He was megadosing with ascorbic acid. But here's the clincher. Pauling who claimed that vitamin c, which in his case was ascorbic acid, could cure cancer died of prostate cancer.

Well, OK, sodium ascorbate peddlers could always claim that Pauling used the wrong kind of vitamin C. Prostate cancer, you said? Perhaps he was using Frenzy, eh?