• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, January 18, 2024

I’m not sure how I missed Kathie Lee Gifford’s earlier work, circa 2021-2, for Balance of Nature vitamin supplements. But back then, she admitted that she missed her “vavavoom” (seemingly short of one “va”), but got it back. 

“I started to take Balance of Nature about a year and a half ago, and I noticed the results immediately!“ she said in her exaggerated way.

In another, she said, “I’m writing, I’m directing, I never said I was retiring. I’m REFIRING!”

Gifford brings her signature high-energy performance gusto and a straight face to these proceedings, except for when she turns sidewards and winks awkwardly for the camera.

“When you take it, your whole world will change!” she also said, as a clear convert.

Not shockingly, such claims are clinically impossible, and they’re even harder to swallow knowing that the company has already been taken to task by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In 2020, the FDA cracked down, issuing a strong warning letter to Balance of Nature: “Your products are not generally recognized as safe and effective...” the letter stated for starters.

Particularly troubling were citations from Balance of Nature’s YouTube channel and radio testimonials suggesting that their products could cure MS and that “cancer is preventable.” The FDA also mentioned “failure of quality control.”

That’s a serious warning for any enterprise in the health business, you’d think.

Did the company, founded by chiropractor Douglas Howard, clean up in response?

A look at its website doesn’t show it.

“See how Kathie Lee Gifford stays healthy and maintains amazing energy levels without using all the inauthentic phony products,” a pull quote in large type says.

 “Inauthentic phony products?”  Now they’re doubling down, projecting on the competition in addition to lying about their own results.

By the way, these Balance of Nature products are costly -- almost $90 for a month’s worth in a bottle.

And you must take six pills a day, three “fruits” and three “veggies.”

Of course, in the Balance of Nature vernacular, you don’t choke down these six large capsules, you take the Balance of Nature “journey.”

As recently as last summer, the company (also one of the biggest advertisers on AM radio) settled a case with the state of California for fraudulent consumer health claims. The parent company had to pay $1.1.million, along with  $250,000 in customer restitution.

Yet, in the face of FDA smackdowns and other consumer protection settlements, a high-performance Kathie Lee is back on the air, undeterred.

In her new commercial promoting B of N’s “Fiber and Spice” supplements, part of the company’s health triad, she uses the word “false” out of the gate.

It opens on her in a country kitchen, her cast iron pans hanging behind her. Cue zippy music. “We are often falsely taught that nutrition is complicated,” she says. “It’s not complicated!” she counters, screwing up her face like that’s the craziest thing she’s ever heard. “Mother Nature has done the hard part for us!”  

In a later cut to what would seem to be her mansion grounds in Nashville, she’s seen in her garden with her hat, plucking a lime from a bush, a substitute Eve. Talk about snake oil!

In another gauzy spot showing her around her beautiful grounds, she tells us how she deals with the world and her life. “First, I pray,” she says.

Or maybe that’s wordplay for “prey”?

People want to believe that by taking dehydrated, ground fruit and vegetable pills (when the real thing is far healthier and cheaper), they can transform themselves and get back their own “vavavoom.”  

But there’s no magical sacrament, despite Kathie Lee mentioning prayer.

To use a word from another faith, Balance of Nature’s continued advertising blitz is sheer chutzpah.