Life is short, don't waste it!: My opinion on shakeology vs. competitors

The following is my response to the question "What makes Shakeology better than Herbalife and Whey Protein shakes....." that I received on facebook. I didn't intend for it to be so long but since it was, I decided to put it in as a blog post and add a few graphics and whatnot...Anyways, here it is:

I am not going to try and prove anything to you. I just want to share my experience. I don't like talking down other products either. There are a lot of companies with a lot of good products and you'll find die-hard fans of just about every product there is. Plus, products like herbalife have helped a lot of people so why would I try to talk bad about it? I do believe that right now shakeology is the best product in the shake market and I'll explain why.
So what I'll do, is I'll show you the facts and I'll give you my opinion of the facts and leave it to you to decide for yourself, based on what you know.
I think Carl Deikeler pretty much says it all in this video but I'll put some of the facts up here anyways because he didn't really go into the specifics. I'm attaching a side by side comparison of the two product labels so you can see the ingredients.

Here is a side by side comparison. You may have to zoom in to be able to read it

You'll see that both of them have a lot of good ingredients. The difference: shakeology has more "super food" ingredients and zero artificial ingredients. All of the vitamins and minerals are naturally occurring as a result of the incredible ingredients. No added vitamins. No added nutrients. Just super healthy whole food ingredients condensed into a shake. Herbalife has good ingredients, but they also have added vitamins that aren't naturally occurring (makes it harder for the body to absorb if it's not naturally occurring) and what appears to me (I could be wrong) to be some artificial ingredients on the last half of the list. You can see in the nutritional facts that shakeology clearly beats herbalife in most of the vitamins and nutrients but the biggest difference isn't in those numbers, it's in the amount of those vitamins and nutrients that are absorbed by your body. Besides being all naturally occurring, shakeology has a lot of phytonutrients that help the body absorb the nutrition even better than it would have otherwise. But like I said, herbalife has helped a lot of people and I'm happy for them! My goal isn't to sell this product to everyone I know. My goal is to help people get healthy and if they want to use herbalife, well that's awesome! I just use shakeology and share it because I know how much it has helped me!
As far as comparing it to a whey protein, well that's like comparing oranges to apples. There is protein in shakeology but it's not designed to just be a protein shake. They call it "a dense daily dose of nutrition" for a very good reason. Whey proteins serve their purpose. In fact, I use an extra whey protein at night to give my body extra protein in addition to my diet and shakeology to build muscle since that is my goal right now. I don't need it for nutrients...I just use it because I'm training super hard and need more protein than an average person to try and rebuild the muscle damage at night while I sleep. I don't take shakeology for that purpose though.
When I started taking shakeology, I was overweight. I took it to replace a meal to help me lose weight...and it definitely helped. I don't have any more weight to lose now though. I'm at about 10% body fat and that's where I want to be. I don't use it for building muscle (even though it does help) because it's not the highest protein content shake that you'll find. Now, I use it everday because it is full of so much nutrition that I feel a huge difference if I don't drink it vs when I do. I eat REALLY healthy most of the time but my body still can feel a difference. There is really no way I could EAT that much nutrition in one meal otherwise. My stomach isn't big enough to contain that many vegetables and fruits. So I just use it to help me have more energy and for my overall sense of well-being. If I had the time and resources to make all of my own meals and grow all of my own food and never eat anything but superior healthy food at every meal, then I probably wouldn't take shakeology. As it is, I eat as healthy as my life permits and I use shakeology to pick up the slack since realistically, I'm going to eat at restaurants sometimes and sometimes, I will be eating processed food that isn't the best thing I could ingest. These are the reasons that I PERSONALLY believe that shakeology is the best and worth the money. It's up to you to decide what is best for you though.