We are very often asked by customers if we can help them create a product using food state vitamins. This is never a straight forward question to answer. While food state products are possible, there are various ins and outs that can make new food state supplements complex to launch.
Synthetic ingredients
Vitamins and minerals are normally manufactured synthetically either by chemical reaction or fermentation. Then manufacturers add the resulting highly purified powder in controlled amounts to supplement products. It is also testable and predictable. We know that if we buy a pure vitamin B1 powder, it will contain 100% B1 whenever we buy it, and that we can reliably let customers list that B1 on their label, in a way which is honest and tells the final customer exactly what they are buying.
Vitamins and minerals occur naturally in food. If you were to eat a stem of broccoli, you would no doubt benefit from various vitamins and minerals. The issue for label designers, is not every stem of broccoli contains the same amount of vitamins. A batch of broccoli picked in Britain in August may not contain the same vitamin content as a batch picked in New Zealand in January. This makes it very hard to list vitamins on the label for the customer. Even if you could test the levels in every batch, the changing label would make it impossible for the end user to stick with your product, as some batches may not meet their vitamin needs.
Consumers hear the marketing message that food state vitamins are absorbed more easily. This may or may not be accurate. Food state vitamins certainly present a new way in which brand owners can make their products stand out. A few standout brands really got an early lead in this space, and now others are playing catch up.
Effect on supplement manufacture
The issue from a manufacturing stand point, is the ingredients to make food state vitamins suffer from a range of issues that make them very awkward to supply to customers.
The most commonly used whole food source vitamins are proprietary, or contracted to a single brand in given territories. These ingredients are not available to just anybody who wants to start their own range. Instead, they are only available to the licenced user, or creator of the ingredient.
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The next issue is low content levels. Where ingredients do exist, for example “B vitamins from curry leaves”, the amount of actual B vitamin in the ingredient is tiny. This is fine where just a few mcg of the product is required, but where the dose is high often the amount of powder required is too high to fit in the capsule. This is why food state vitamins tend to have low dosages, or decline to promote the dosage at all.
Issues that can arise
Buying uncommon powders often involves minimum order quantities which can be an issue. When a manufacturer buys powder, we would normally do it in bulk, at least 25kg for most ingredients. We can then use this to supply multiple customers. Where a powder is unusual and only one customer wants to make use of it, it can lead to wastage where the customers order is not big enough to use up the minimum order of power. This wastage can often be costly enough to make the product no longer viable to make at all.
Conclusion
Luckily it is not all bad news. There are readily available whole food forms of some vitamins and minerals. Vitamin A comes at Beta Carotene. Vitamin C can come from cherries. While vitamin D in its vegan form comes from lichen, and vitamin K2 comes from a type of soya bean called natto. B vitamins are more difficult to do, especially with smaller orders, but with longer production runs most problems can be solved.
Overcoming the challenges to make your products possible is something G&G specializes in doing. If you do want food state supplements manufactured we would be delighted to hear from you.
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