07-11-2013, 08:18
From my day job professional experience, those results are very representative of reality.
Its gotten better in the USA the past 5yrs when the FDA made it mandatory for manufacturers to be held liable for what label they put on a product so iits cleaned up a lot.
However, the big issue .. And its a hard one to deal with for each natural ingredient is identity testing. Its expensive, and for plants sometimes a challenge to do technically.
So for manufacturers, proving what you buy is what you wanted can be difficult - especially in powder from unless its a Standarized ingredient with hplc or gc etc..
There is nIR fingerprint but for plant based system where each crop can very hugely year to year in the same field grown in the same way.. Add the complexity of multiple varities (think tomotaoes - there's hundred but yet for lycopene its just listed as tomatoes) and its a very daunting task if not impossible if you want to keep costs reasonable.
Then add ingredient suppliers from india and china that purposefully provide certificates of analysis stating xyz is in the barrel and many many companies just say ok.. But if you test it, its just talc, some other cheap herb or its cut 50%... That's more likely the reason why the result demonstrated off labelling.
There are good companies that qualify suppliers and don't play around but they are far and few.. And its not necessarily the bigger the company the better.. Sometimes, its the smaller one that can be higher quality.
As for GMP - anyone can put it on label, means nothing. The certification is good but how can you know its really made in a gmp facility. You can't. I've been to pharmaceutical plants and nutraceutical ones and GMP means very different things to each but least the Nutra industry is trying to get better.
Its gotten better in the USA the past 5yrs when the FDA made it mandatory for manufacturers to be held liable for what label they put on a product so iits cleaned up a lot.
However, the big issue .. And its a hard one to deal with for each natural ingredient is identity testing. Its expensive, and for plants sometimes a challenge to do technically.
So for manufacturers, proving what you buy is what you wanted can be difficult - especially in powder from unless its a Standarized ingredient with hplc or gc etc..
There is nIR fingerprint but for plant based system where each crop can very hugely year to year in the same field grown in the same way.. Add the complexity of multiple varities (think tomotaoes - there's hundred but yet for lycopene its just listed as tomatoes) and its a very daunting task if not impossible if you want to keep costs reasonable.
Then add ingredient suppliers from india and china that purposefully provide certificates of analysis stating xyz is in the barrel and many many companies just say ok.. But if you test it, its just talc, some other cheap herb or its cut 50%... That's more likely the reason why the result demonstrated off labelling.
There are good companies that qualify suppliers and don't play around but they are far and few.. And its not necessarily the bigger the company the better.. Sometimes, its the smaller one that can be higher quality.
As for GMP - anyone can put it on label, means nothing. The certification is good but how can you know its really made in a gmp facility. You can't. I've been to pharmaceutical plants and nutraceutical ones and GMP means very different things to each but least the Nutra industry is trying to get better.