Utah: the Silicon Valley of supplements.

• Author: Wilhite, Brent
• Position: Focus

NINETEEN-year-old Mike Olson begins his day with a hearty breakfast. He also takes a multivitamin to compensate for the minerals his body may not be receiving from the whole foods he eats. A capsule of green tea and one containing alpha lipoic acid top off his meal. But that's only the beginning.

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By the end of a typical day, Olson, who is also an avid bodybuilder, will have gulped down at least three more protein shakes, a powdered drink of creatine and glutamine, and a shake containing omega-3, -6, and -9 fatty acids. Then he begins the process all over again the next morning.

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Olson's daily regimen filled with shakes, powders and pills is part of his quest for a bigger, stronger and more muscular body. But he's not alone. Walk into any gym or weight room in the country, and you will probably find them: men and women who are turning to nutritional supplements to add bulk, build muscle, or shed fat. Many of those people have Utah companies to thank for the supplements to help them achieve these goals.

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Quite a few Utah-based companies will continue riding the wave of supplement success, not just locally or even nationally, but worldwide. Of Utah's top 20 publicly held companies, 25 percent are in the nutritional supplement industry. All of these companies distribute their products internationally through independent distributors or health and drugstore partners. The list includes Nu Skin Enterprises, Weider Nutrition International, Nature's Sunshine Products Inc., USANA Health Sciences and Nutraceutical Corporation. Add to that list the mass of privately owned supplement providers, and you might say Utah is providing a significant boost to nutritional supplement consumption across the globe.

Americans spent nearly $18 billion on nutritional supplements in 2002, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. And the industry continues to grow. Sales from the nutritional supplement industry have experienced a 9 percent jump from 2000, with analysts forecasting a 3 to 5 percent increase through 2008.

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"In the state of Utah, as far as I'm aware, the supplement industry is the second-largest revenue producer behind tourism," says Dr. Shawn Talbott, a doctor of Nutrition and Supplements in the University of Utah's Department of Nutrition as well as the editor of supplementWatch.com. "The reason we teach courses on supplements at the university is that if our...