Herbalife Nutrition Survey Reveals That Majority of Malaysians Want More Nutrition Advice from HCPs

Kuala Lumpur, 7 May 2021 – Premier global nutrition company, Herbalife Nutrition, has released the second part of its Asia Pacific Nutrition Myths Survey 2020*, revealing that 73% of Malaysians are interested in receiving more nutrition information from their healthcare professionals to help them achieve desired health outcomes. In parallel, local HCPs say that only 16% of consumers are well informed on nutrition knowledge, and almost 4 in 5 HCPs call for nutrition companies to play a larger role in sharing proper and accurate nutrition information with the public.

Talking about this initiative, Herbalife Nutrition Malaysia General Manager and Director, Steven Chin said, “As a nutrition company, we actively provide accurate nutrition information to the public. We are pleased to play a bigger role in public nutrition education by collaborating with Nutrition Society of Malaysia (NSM), an esteemed organisation that has been championing nutrition education and awareness for the past 35 years. This way, we can continue to support the HCPs and other nutrition-related initiatives in the community.” He also added, “By way of this survey, we were able to identify and understand the barriers that HCPs face when it comes to providing better nutrition advice to their patients.”

The survey shows that 68% of HCPs in Malaysia would proactively share nutrition advice with their patients most of the time. The main reasons that they are not able to do so all the time is due to the lack of time with patients and lack of interest amongst patients. The HCPs mentioned that only 40 of patients would proactively ask them for nutrition advice.

Nonetheless, the top three most asked nutritional advice by patients are:

  • How to improve ailment/condition through nutrition (74%)
  • Managing weight through nutrition (72%)
  • How to achieve balanced nutrition in daily life (40%)

As for areas of nutrition that patients most keen to ask are:

  • Carbohydrates (36%)
  • Vitamin (28%)
  • Fats (14%)

This is no surprise as there is a rise in trend where Malaysians are more health conscious during these times, with people looking for ways to boost their immune system. According to the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2019, one in two adults in Malaysia were either overweight or obese. Meanwhile diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol are among the main non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that are prevalent amongst Malaysians, which also happen to be major risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) – the current leading causes of death in Malaysia.  It’s been revealed that 1.7 million people in Malaysia live with three major risk factors at present while 3.4 million people live with two of them [1].

In the coming months, Herbalife Nutrition will be intensifying its collaboration initiatives with the HCP community through a series of multi-platform, public nutrition education and healthy lifestyle activities. The company will also be working closely with other key stakeholders and local partners to provide more accurate, timely and relevant nutrition information to communities across the region.

*The survey was conducted across 11 countries – Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and

1 National Health and Morbidity Survey 2019

See Herbalife’s Nutrition Myth Survey HCP infographics below: