Moving on to the Xocai chocolate people: they have a great sales pitch!

They show the ORAC score of cacao (chocolate), and it’s way impressive.   Right up there with goji berries.   I like to use a little raw cacao for that very reason, in my recipes.   But, my friends . . . that network-marketed chocolate is $60 A POUND!   Do the math–I kid you not.

And eating chocolate bars isn’t the answer, anyway.   If you want to eat a little, go to your health food store and look at the ORGANIC, naturally sweetened, high-cacao chocolate bars there.   At most, I’ve seen Green & Black’s chocolate at $10/lb.–and usually it’s on sale for less.   (The network-marketed Xocai stuff is NOT organic, NOT raw, NOT fair-trade, and not as high in cacao content as most varieties of Green & Black’s.)    Be smart and plow your food dollars into logical choices.   Eating a $1 bite of Xocai’s chocolate daily will save you from nothing.   Feed one bite of that (sugar sweetened) chocolate, three times a day, to a family of six, and you’ll spend $600/mo.   That’s my whole grocery budget.

At the presentation I attended, a woman who sells the product said, “I’m so excited about this, because I could NEVER get my daughter to eat a fruit or vegetable, but I can mix this chocolate powder into the frosting on her cupcake and feel really good about her nutrition for the day.”   In the world of nutrition, there is  no quick fix that can be mixed into frosting.  

Here’s the thing about network marketing.    The products are  going to cost 800 percent of COGS (cost of goods), minimum.   I know this because I consulted to a company taking its product into that channel, and I attended the annual conference with all the compensation plan writers, lawyers, and many other consultants.

They all put on their best show to all the would-be multi-level-marketers, and they all said the same thing:  “Don’t even bother taking your company into network marketing unless you can mark your product up 800 percent.”   That’s a necessity when 8 people get paid commissions on every sale, AND the company needs its profit.   It’s simple math, even though network marketers will write me saying “you get what you pay for” and all that.

Please don’t be offended if your career is in multi-level marketing: it’s a valid job done by hard-working people.   I give my readers this opinion only because your food dollars are better spent elsewhere.   And of course, other products marketed using other methods can be a big waste of money, too.  But today’s topic focuses on MLM because people really fall for these products.   That’s because the salespeople are so zealous and known to the customer.

My readers are always writing me saying they can’t afford good food–and then I find out they’re spending $100/mo. on massively overpriced supplements.   Remember, my opinion hasn’t been bought and paid for by anybody.   Take it or leave it, but the GreenSmoothieGirl agenda is this and always will be: helping families get great nutrition and sift through confusion in the nutrition world.