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One of the latest crazes in the health and nutrition category this year has been “healthy chocolate.” Companies large and small are jumping on the bandwagon to provide healthy, nutritious chocolate to calm the cravings of the chocoholics out there who despite their need to change to a healthier lifestyle, don’t want to give up their chocolate fix. Youngevity, the direct selling health and Wellness Company, best known for its nutritional supplements, has announced that they too will jump in the ring and enter into the nutritional chocolate market.

Youngevity, the 12 year old California based company, has just introduced Chocogevity to the market. The new division will sell Tru Chocolate products. The Tru Chocolate products are all natural and healthy, and even come in sugar free variety. The healthy chocolates are infused with beneficial herbs and the company claims they can help support healthy weight loss by calming craving for sweets.

According to the company’s website, Tru Chocolate may be the healthiest and tastiest chocolate ever created. This is a great treat for after the holidays when you’ve overindulged and need to take off a few pounds without giving up everything you love. You can check out the chocolate as well as learn more about the product as well as how you can benefit from eating and selling it at www.truchocolate.com

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While the summer has been settling down a bit since the Weekenders carnage, there still seem to be some hot topics that just seem to re-shape themselves. USANA started off the summer with a push by its Chairman and then CEO, Dr. Myron Wentz and his holdings Co, Gull Holdings, to the company private. After two and half attempts a “low-ball bids”, Wentz and Co appeared to put their tail between their legs and move on. Not so fast. As we reported this week, USANA’s stock (USNA) had a truly amazing run up 38% giving Wentz and Co a $160m gain on paper. The strategy of low-balling an offer only to have an independent counsel say it was way too low was brilliant. It also helped that USANA settled its difference with Barry Minkow who seems to have agreed to just disappear and leave USANA alone - although terms of the “settlement” were never released.

We had the chance to sit down with legendary network marketer, Dwayne Dyer of XanGo. His story of success is truly one of mythical proportions having a network of over 1 million people around the world! He gave us some pretty good insight into how he built his organization and the power of XanGo which has put Mangosteen on the map.

There were also some interesting deals announced this week. Nu Skin announced a research partnership with Toyo Bio-Pharma. On paper, this is a very strong deal for both companies given Nu Skin’s distribution breadth and Toyo’s global dominance of the process of fermentation and culturing all natural ingredients into cosmetics products.

Another deal was announced which partnered EcoQuest with the American Lung Association. The new relationship stems from Eqcoquest’s unveiling of its new air purification system called “Gemini” - which is the company’s first indoor filtration product that has gotten some pretty rave reviews. If you have any issues with allergies in your home, this is one product yous hould seriously consider.

In keeping with this weeks deals, Pureworks merged with Youngevity which while it was a bit of a surprise to us, does seem to make sense. The value to Pureworks is the expansion of their health and wellness products to now include a complete line of hand, body and home sanitizers. The deal definitely makes sense and can only be good news for the distributors of both companies which now have more products to sell with a larger number of people selling them.

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Pureworks - a company that makes a complete line of hand, body and home sanitizer products - has just announced that they will complete a merger with Youngevity which will go into effect sometime in August. Youngevity has a complete line of health and wellness products, offering over 250 products through a network of independent distributors.

Pureworks president Mark Franks made the announcement last week. Youngevity has been around for 5 years, and while they have over 250 health care products available, they do not currently have a hand sanitizer. That is, until now.

Pureworks, which was founded in 2002, will be a great addition to the Youngevity family. Pureworks currently holds a patent for their specially formulated hand sanitizer. The hand sanitizer contains Benzethonium Chloride which is a positively charged formula that does not get absorbed into the skin. Instead, it covers the skin and forms a sort of barrier that can provide protection for hours. Pureworks says that their product is 100% percent effective against a large variety of bacteria, and Benzethonium Chloride has even been shown to be extremely effective in killing viral germs.

Along with hand sanitizer, Pureworks will also bring several other products into the partnership including anti-bacterial lotions, sprays and foams, body soaps, and hard surface sanitizers.

This will be a great opportunity for both sides. For Pureworks, it will increase the distribution potential of their products by utilizing the independent consultants already working for Youngevity, and for Youngevity, it is a great addition to their already impressive line of products.

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Zanco, a Network Marketing company that was created to sell products backed by Suzanne Somers, has decided to lay off its ten employees and transfer all of its assets to Youngevity, a health and wellness company based in California.

The Grand Rapids based Zanco was founded in 2006 by a former Amway executive and although they had high hopes about the products and their alliance with Suzanne, the company never really took off. At their peak of operations, they had 20 employees, although for the last month or so, they’ve bee operating with only 10 as they have been winding down operations. The remaining employees will be let go in the next week.

Sales reps for Zanco will automatically be transferred to distributors for Youngevity. The strategic alliance between the Zanco and Youngevity will allow for the continuation of sales of Suzanne Somers products.

Robin Crossman, former president and chief operating officer of Zanco LLC, said, “We had great hopes that we’d grow faster than we did, and we didn’t grow as fast as we wanted,” Crossman added that Somers herself contributed to the decision to end the Grand Rapids operations and pursue a partnership with Youngevity.

Although it was not discussed, word on the street is that Somers never actually visited the Grand Rapids based Zanco and had no active participation in the company. Perhaps that is part of the reason that the company did not take off the way Zanco or Somers had thought that it would. The company rested primarily on the Suzanne Somers name and if she did not participate and have an active presence, then it is no wonder that the company didn’t survive.

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