Sales Surges & Supply Shortages: Supplement Brands Navigate Choppy Post-COVID Seas

Dietary supplement sales soared to unprecedented heights this year, owing to the coronavirus pandemic. But as consumer interest spiked, major disruptions to the ingredient supply chain limited the accessibility of many botanical and nutraceutical raw materials, excipients, and packaging materials, creating major sourcing challenges for supplement companies. Peak, Then Plateau A Nutrition Business Journal analysis […]

Liposomes, Micelles & Nanoparticles: Major Advance or Marketing Hype?

With their promises of better absorption and increased bioavailability, liposomal and “nanoparticle” formulas are popular. But it is a challenge to distinguish the real promise from the marketing hype.

Words of Warning: Fed Reprimands Clinicians on COVID Communications

Any public health crisis creates a ripe situation for marketers promising quick cures and phony protections. With COVID-19, the huckstering began almost immediately. So did federal regulatory actions.  By the second week of March, the FDA had issued cease-and-desist warning letters to seven companies for selling COVID-19 remedies, including teas, essential oils, tinctures, and colloidal […]

Encapsulating Quality: How Ingredient and Capsule Choices Impact Supplement Performance

One of the many challenges for supplement manufacturers is consistently ensuring that the products they bring to market are safe, innovative, and aligned with practitioner and consumer preferences, while optimizing production efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

That’s no easy feat. From the choice of bioactive ingredients, through the encapsulation or tableting process, and ultimately to the packaging and shipping, there are dozens of decisions to be made. Each choice has a potential impact on overall product quality, stability, and efficacy.

Validation Testing: Insights from Inside the Analytical Lab

From the outside looking in, the dietary supplement world can seem like a bewildering place. Many people wonder, “How are all these formulas blended and manufactured? How are the quality and potency being verified?” Sarah Gannon, an analytical chemist at Designs for Health pulls back the curtain.

How Practitioners Define Dietary Supplement Quality

Product quality is a high priority for dietary supplement users, and manufacturers are well aware of that fact. Supplement makers have their own ideas about what constitutes “high quality.” But as more healthcare professionals bring supplements into clinical practice, the question of how practitioners define quality becomes increasingly important. Holistic Primary Care’s 2019 practitioner survey gave us some insight.

Quality Assurance for Hemp CBD: Key Questions to Ask

Quality assurance is a challenge for all herbal companies. For those making hemp extracts, the challenges are compounded by a confusing regulatory landscape, the inherent complexity of the plant, the surging consumer demand for CBD, and the entrance of dozens of upstart brands with no prior herbal experience and little understanding of basic QA methods.

Regulatory Confusion Reigns As FDA Grapples With CBD

On July 30, former FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, published an op/ed in the Washington Post saying that the agency needs to get a grip on the “out of hand” CBD craze. But it’s a tall order. In many ways, CBD epitomizes all the conflicting motives and scientific ambiguities with which the FDA must constantly contend.

Envisioning the Future of Dietary Supplement Regulation

In the 25 years since Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the supplement industry has grown from cottage industry to multi-billion dollar global business. Rapid growth, the introduction of new ingredients, the globalization of the raw materials supply chain, the widespread use of genetically-modified ingredients, and the growing threat of economically-motivated product adulteration are  challenging DSHEA in ways its original framers could not have envisioned.

The Roots of Supplement Quality Are in the Soil

For dietary supplements containing plant-derived ingredients, product quality has its roots in the soil in which those plants are grown. Recent developments in soil science and sustainable agriculture are helping conscientious companies to safeguard product quality in an era of widespread environmental degradation.