In case you haven’t noticed, supplements are my world. I love researching each ingredient, finding the best dosage, learning about new herbs, and finding new innovative formulae. But it turns out that any supplement is only as good as the company that makes it.
I have a pretty strict vetting process for the brands that I use because quality is of the utmost importance to me. I want to share a bit of this process with you so hopefully you can start to recognize what a good brand looks like.
Let’s start with herbs. Did you know that all plants look pretty similar when they are dried and then crushed? When using an herbal product, there must be extensive testing to prove that it is actually the herb and that it is not adulterated with other plants. It’s pretty easy to imagine a field full of echinacea having some weeds in it. But you don’t want those weeds in with your herb.
The only way to prove this is by testing raw ingredients as they come in. The best companies have a third party analysis performed so that the results are unbiased, but in house testing is good too. Testing should also look for chemical contaminants, like pesticides and heavy metals.
Many herbal products will have what is called a standardized extract. This is helpful because it guarantees a certain amount of what has been determined to be the active component of the plant. This really helps with the consistency of the product since plants have varying amounts of active constituents depending on the conditions on which the plant grew.
Not all herbs have just one main active constituent, and not all herbs have an identified active constituent. For this reason, not all products will have standardized extracts, and so looking at the brand family to see if they utilize standardized extracts at all is helpful. When you know the industry like I do, you start to know which herbs have standardized extracts and which don’t.
For instance, turmeric is very popular, but what many people don’t know about it is that it is very poorly absorbed into the bloodstream. Scientists isolated curcumin as the main active ingredient, and then designed different technologies to make it more bioavailable. (BCM95, Meriva, C3, Theracurmin, etc) Knowing this, never use a product with turmeric in it, and don’t use the brand that supplied that product because they obviously aren’t concerned with giving you the highest quality product possible.
Along the same vein, you can always look at a brand’s multivitamin as a litmus test, because these so often have a compromise on ingredients. This topic has its own post, but the shortcut version is to look at the B-vitamins. If it says “folic acid” or “cyanocobalamin” discard and never use that brand again. These are synthetic vitamins and have been refuted as pretty worthless and any brand still using these ingredients is more worried about its bottom line than its consumers.
The next thing you want to check a company for is added ingredients. Supplement companies want the capsule to be full, so they use a “filler” to fill up the capsule. Magnesium stearate is fine, but you don’t want to see anti-caking agents, corn starch, colors, or other such garbage. In fact, the label should always have a “does not contain” statement so you know it is free from gluten, soy, heavy metals, etc.
A quality brand will have excellent manufacturing facilities. GMP certification is just the beginning. If your company makes probiotics, they need to be humidity and temperature controlled for the viability of the product. The same goes for the warehouse you purchase your supplements from. Amazon does not temperature control their warehouses, so your probiotic from Florida was heated to over 120 degrees, which is not good for the bacteria.
Other things to look for include whether they accept returns, and what their internet sales policies are. A company that accepts returned supplements cannot guarantee the quality of their product because they have no idea what the original buyer did with the supplement. Did they leave it in their car for 2 weeks? Well, that will certainly degrade quality.
Any company that does not regulate internet sales runs the risk of having knock-off products being sold. We’ve all seen it. You’re on Amazon and you have the expensive option, and then you have what appears to be the exact same thing for much cheaper. After reading some reviews, you realize that this LOOKS like a Gucci handbag, but it is actually a copycat. While you might not care if your purse is real Gucci, knockoffs matter when it comes to stuff you ingest, especially when you are expecting certain results from it.
Lastly, the company should be ethical. Some medicinal plants are endangered and should not be wildcrafted, like slippery elm and so the company should have an emphasis on plant sustainability. I always want to see the company doing its best to protect the planet. This could be by reducing plastics, becoming a B-corp, donating a percentage of profit, replanting endangered species, etc.
I also don’t want that company to be a subsidiary of a nasty company. For instance, Nestle is notorious for unethical practices, and they own Garden of Life, Pure Encapsulations, Genestra, and Douglas Laboratories. While each of these supplement companies I’m sure was started in good faith, the trickle down effect means that there is going to be a compromise on values. With so many choices, there is no need to support a company with questionable ethics.
For me, it is not worth the risk to my patients. I need to know that what I’m recommending is exactly what they say it is, at the exact dose the label says, and has the potency it should. But really, I don’t think anyone should accept crappy supplements. We assume that we won’t feel anything from a multivitamin, but you SHOULD notice an improvement if your vitamin is good quality.
Here is a chart I made comparing different brands. To get this information I checked websites and/or I spoke to representatives, and read the labels. So if you’re wondering whether your brand is reputable, now you can check for yourself. Or you could just ask me. Might be faster.
