Quality Differences in Supplements

Consumers Swayed by Marketing

Have you ever noticed how many different dietary supplements can be found on store shelves nowadays?

Perhaps your doctor has advised you to take cod liver oil or a vitamin D supplement to combat the dark season, and on your next trip to the store, you pick up a product from a familiar brand.

Maybe your gym's personal trainer has recommended taking supplements to support your workouts, but you quickly get frustrated when you browse the overwhelming selection at supplement stores or online shops.

Or perhaps you've been using various supplements for years, but you've started to notice that the products don't feel good anymore or the desired results haven't materialized.

We are living in the golden age of the supplement industry. Last year, global supplement sales exceeded 90 billion euros, and growth is predicted to increase even further. Supplements have found their way into several Finnish households, but despite their immense popularity, most Finns do not know how the products they use are manufactured or what they truly contain. This is quite startling, as one might assume that today's food industry would demand full disclosure and transparency.

Vitamins and supplements can be divided into three different quality categories:

1. Pharmaceutical Grade
Pharmaceutical-grade supplements are manufactured such that the ingredients are as pure and natural as possible. Generally, no product is 100% pure, but pharmaceutical grade reaches the highest level, being 99% pure. Products in this quality category do not contain fillers or impurities, which results in an absorption rate of about 90%.

2. Food Grade
Food Grade means quality "suitable for human or animal consumption." Most supplements fall into this quality category and are safe for consumers. They may contain fillers and are not absorbed as well as pharmaceutical-grade supplements. At their lowest, products may only have a 4-7% absorption rate, even if the product itself is acceptable for the body.

3. Feed Grade
Feed Grade quality is suitable only for animals. Feed grade is often made from food remnants and poor-quality ingredients. Feed grade quality is not suitable for humans as it can disrupt your entire digestive system.

It is difficult to monitor the quality of supplements. An uninformed consumer might believe that familiar GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) & HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) stamps ensure that the product is both controlled and of high quality; after all, they are often found on many supplement companies' websites as a guarantee of quality. Various packaging labels naturally create a sense of security for the consumer, as we automatically assume that there is an authority overseeing production. Nevertheless, the surprising fact is that in Finland, there is no authority that monitors quality classifications in supplements.

Evira, for example, only checks the correctness of the packaging label, not its content. In other words, Evira ensures that the product contains the 200mg of vitamin D mentioned on the packaging, but not the manufacturing method of the vitamin. So, if a product is advertised as a top-quality vitamin D, no one but the manufacturer itself knows the truth.

What many consumers also don't know is that GMP is divided into several different parts, and unfortunately, most products sold on the market belong to the Food Grade quality category. This Good Manufacturing Practices does not mandate product testing or regulate what quality products should be. Pharmaceutical GMP requires product testing, but only a fraction of companies worldwide fall into this category.

HACCP assessment is limited solely to food safety factors, not quality aspects, so it also does not test products or require a specific quality level for supplements.

Isn't it interesting that supplements never show a quality label, or for example, the origin of whey in recovery drinks?

Many Finnish supplement companies are also marketing companies. They do not own factories where they produce their own raw materials, but rather ingredients are purchased from elsewhere in the world and marketed to meet consumer needs. Very often, companies' products are not based on science because they cannot influence the production chain. This opens the door to impure nutrients and poor quality.

Here's a slightly more detailed example. When a supplement manufacturer purchases raw materials for their product, they receive a C.O.A. (Certificate of Analysis) for each raw material, which provides an analysis of the product's origin, quality, and purity. Raw material manufacturers naturally have their own price list for different quality ingredients, but since many companies aim to maximize profits, the cheapest options are very often chosen as raw materials. It is clear that high-quality and body-healthy products cannot be sold cheaply if the raw material prices cannot be influenced; that would be economically unprofitable.

We are often asked why manufacturer X's proteins are cheaper than ours until customers test them themselves and notice the difference. The difference between a pure and a lower-quality supplement is significant, and it is usually noticed when one starts to feel more energetic and, most importantly, the whole body feels better.

In the next blog post, we will delve deeper into this topic by discussing the differences and absorption rates of supplements in more detail, as well as what benefits they actually provide.

Stay tuned and stay healthy! :)


Sources:
https://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments/ucm2005190.htm
https://www.organicnewsroom.com/pharmaceutical-grade-supplements/
http://www.healingedge.net/store/article_supplement_facts.html