All vitamins and supplements are not the same. There are two major designations. One is pharmaceutical grade and the other is food grade. There are only a few pharmaceutical grade manufacturers in the country. The majority of vitamin and supplement suppliers are food grade which is what you will see in the grocery and vitamin shops and on the drug store shelves.
So what does this actually mean to the consumer? Way back when I was still in chiropractic school, the salesman from Anabolic labs, a pharmaceutical grade vitamin manufacturer, explained that to us. He said that in a given group of food grade vitamins and supplements from different suppliers, the percentage of active ingredient in each tablet in each group would fit a standard bell curve. Now that means some of them will have about 20% of what they say is in each tablet or capsule and some of them will be around 80%. The remainder will be somewhere in between. It’s not that the active ingredient is not pure, the food grade manufacturers don’t spend the extra money to achieve quality control that ensures 100% is in every one of the finished tablets, pills and capsules.
I thought that was nothing more than salesman hype. My classmates and I, in a biochemistry lab, decided to determine if he was correct. We had several brands of vitamin C. We assayed each manufacturer and found that our salesman was 100% correct. The range of active ingredient per manufacturer varied from about 20% to 80% and the average and majority were somewhere in between. His sample assayed out at about 107% of what was printed on the label. He said that was to give the product longer shelf life and still give 100% of what is printed on the label.
What this means to you: buy pharmaceutical grade supplements at a 30 to 50% higher price or double up (pay twice as much) on the food grade supplement in order to get the levels of active ingredient you are looking for.
I ONLY BUY FROM PHARMACEUTICAL GRADE MANUFACTURERS
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