healthy and wise

    Personal health and fitness, health care and health-care products — as well as health-travel insurance and dental and supplementary health insurance — are all good topics for Dudley Does Right.  And doing Citizen Dudleys.

    Big news these days is that multi-nationals are buying up organic and natural health and nutritional lines.  So far, it had been mostly American brands gobbled up, like Burt's Bees and Tom's of Maine — until Nestlé just paid $2.3 billion for Montreal's Atrium Innovations, a good company that makes a lot of the specialty vitamins in health stores.  This looks like a job for a Grand Dudley.

    A quick look at my medicine cabinet, a lesser Dudley, and a visit to local drug stores shows that PharmaPlus-Rexall house-brand vitamins are made in Canada, as are Jamieson and Webber. Rexall mouthwash, however is made in the U.S. — as are all the mouthwashes on its shelves.   (Incidentally, PharmaPlus-Rexall was a Canadian company till recently, when it became a self-described "Canadian company" with American ownership!?!)

    Toothpastes are hard to figure out.  None in Pharma-Plus or Shoppers seem to be Canadian-made, though there are good brands in health stores, many of which are proudly Canadian.

    Though Pharma Plus-Rexall is now owned by an American company, it still operates as essentially a Canada-wide chain, with a strong Canadian union, CFCW, and Canadian sourcing of many items.  Shoppers Drug Mart is Canadian, now owned by Loblaw, but is only marginally unionized.  However, many of its house-brand Life products are manufactured in Canada (sometimes with imported ingredients).   Body wash, for example, Dove and Olay are imported by Lever Bros. but Life body wash is made in Canada.

    Shoppers also features Live Green body wash, made in Canada and at least as eco-friendly as Dove and Olay.  Life mouthwash, alas, comes a long way, from St. Louis, Mo. 

    I was surprised that though Sudafed allergy and sinus products were imported, the Rexall house brand of the same product was three dollars cheaper for the same quantity and identical ingredients — and made in Canada!  

      In Shoppers I saw that Nivea skin creams are made in Mexico and Spain.  The Vaseline line is “imported” by Unilever and Nivea is "imported. " But the corresponding Life brands are made in Toronto.  Marc Anthony shea butter and coconut butter are made in Canada.

    As for the vitamins and supplements, Life products are mostly Canadian-made (by Webber).

    Shoppers is sparsely unionized, Loblaw food stores are highly unionized, currently in the middle of a six-year contract with CFCW.  Something to follow.

    Imagine how much current information we could offer people, with hundreds of shoppers, as well as our researchers and industry sources, keeping us up to date on these things.