Co-founded by certified chemical engineer Kelin Marquet, her incredible supplement brand Why Not Natural is everything you need to begin your journey towards a healthier lifestyle. I recently had the pleasure to chat with Marquet to learn all about her experience in the industry and starting her own line.
Tell us about yourself how you got to where you are today.
I’m a Canadian mother of three and a chemical engineer by background. I had an unconventional career path – I started working as an engineer on oil rigs in the North Sea off the coast of Norway and Scotland. Sometime after my first child was born, I realized that what I wanted more than climbing the corporate ladder in oil and gas was the freedom to be able to be there for my daughter and build something meaningful on my own at the same time. That’s when I started building my first brand, a line of orthopedic and fitness equipment, which eventually led me in a roundabout way to Why Not Natural.
Why did you decide to produce your own supplement line and what was the motivation behind it?
I’ve always been passionate about health and wellness. Even when I was in college studying engineering, I was doing research in the nutrition department, and it bothered me that I couldn’t find a line of supplements that used active ingredients with research behind them AND omitted all the ingredients I didn’t want: fillers, excipients, sugar, etc. I wanted to create my own, and then I founded Why Not Natural. It was two supplements at the time, but I had a vision for what it could become – and the creator of those supplements sold it to me. Now I’ve been expanding upon that good foundation and have around 20 products and counting, and have been educating consumers on what to look for in a supplement!
How do you see Why Not Natural evolving in the future and will you be producing any new products?
We’ve set the ambitious goal of creating one new product per month on average for 2024, and we plan to continue expanding until we’ve made every supplement that we think should exist. We plan to continue expanding our products into Canada (we’ve been releasing them there one at a time) and at some point we’ll move into retail as well.
Working in the field of wellness, what are your top tips to keep us feeling our very best, and how can we strengthen our immune system even further?
The number one thing you can do for your health is focus on sleep. That’s going to improve your immune system and every other area of your health, so do whatever you can do to support a good night’s sleep. For most people who struggle, that means a B complex on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, D3-K2 in the morning, and magnesium and l-theanine later in the day.
Vitamin D is the best supplement for the immune system, and if you do catch something, zinc and vitamin C can help nip it in the bud.
None of this is medical advice, and you should talk to your doctor before you start any new supplement.
Why should we include vitamins in our daily routine?
None of us live a perfect lifestyle, and that’s okay: for some people it’s hard to spend the recommended amount of time in peak sun (around noon) to produce vitamin D due to work schedules keeping us indoors, some people may be under stress which depletes nutrients like B vitamins, and some others may struggle to get enough sleep which can leave them feeling sluggish and vulnerable to sickness, just as a few examples. Even a healthy and balanced diet will often be low in certain things, like magnesium and zinc. So supplementation can help us optimize those areas that are out of our control and keep us healthy for the short run (against things like colds and flu) and the long run (for example, to protect our bones!).
Your line carries a lot of tinctures. Is there a reason for this? Do some liquid herbal supplements work better than taking a capsule?
Not necessarily. There are some things, like our D3-K2 and vitamin A, that are going to be better absorbed in the liquid format because they’re meant to be taken with fat and we sell them dissolved in MCT oil – but for other things, like our liquid collagen, it’s just a matter of it being easier to incorporate liquids into your routine. We know it’s more convenient to take a dropper full of a nice-tasting liquid than to swallow a capsule, so we make as many supplements as we can that way because what we want most is that you actually want to use it.
For some supplements like magnesium, it’s not possible to dissolve the amount you should be taking for good results into a small liquid dropper, which is why we only offer it in capsules. It’s very well absorbed since we don’t include any extra additives – the thing you really want to avoid is compact tablets which may not have time to break down in your system.
Anything else you would like our readers to know?
Yes! They can learn more about our company at whynotnatural.com where we have an extensive blog and they can also check us out on TikTok @whynotnatural_us and Instagram at @whynotnatural_us
Change your health for the better; visit https://whynotnatural.com/
