Carl F. Rehnborg developed his vitamin products in the 1930s. His time in China between roughly 1917 and 1927 exposed him to experiences in which he realized the role vitamins and nutrients impacted general health. He began selling his vitamins as the California Vitamin company and renamed it in 1939 to Nutrilite. In 1945, he invented the multi-level marketing, door-to-door, selling system to distribute his vitamins. Two men, Lee S. Mytinger and William S. Casselberry became exclusive national distributors in 1945 and operated a company to distribute the vitamins. The founders of Amway, Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos, began as independent distributors selling Nutrilite products in 1949, at a time when the product's previous distributors were involved in a dispute with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which accused them of false advertising. They rose rapidly to being top-selling distributors. Concerned about the FDA dispute, Van Andel and DeVos launched a new company, the American Way,, to use the multi-level marketing system for other household products. The FDA/Mytinger-Cassleberry dispute, which went to the United States Supreme Court, was resolved in favor of the FDA in the 1960s. Amway bought a controlling interest in the company in 1972 and took over complete ownership in 1994. In 2001, five Nutrilite products were the first dietary supplements to be certified by NSF International. In 2007, the Simply Nutrilite line was introduced. The line includes meal replacement bars, anti-oxidant, and vitamin supplements.
Nutrilite Double X was tested by ConsumerLab.com in their Multivitamin and Multimineral Supplements Review of 38 of the leading multivitamin/multimineral products sold in the U.S. and Canada. Double X passed ConsumerLab's test, which included testing of selected index elements, their ability to disintegrate in solution per United States Pharmacopeia guidelines, lead contamination threshold set in California Proposition 65, and meeting FDA labeling requirements.
Regulatory and safety issues
In 1948, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized shipments of Nutrilite, then distributed by a California firm, Mytinger & Casselberry Inc. The FDA claimed that a booklet with the product made false claims that it would cure diseases. The distributor brought suit, claiming the seizures were unconstitutional. In 1950, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the seizure was constitutional. In 2009, Amway voluntarily recalled three kinds of Nutrilite energy bars due to potential contamination with salmonella after the FDA tracked the peanut butter salmonella outbreak to a Peanut Corporation of America plant, a vendor Amway had used on occasion.
