What’s that? And why is it in my supplement?
If you’re interested in health, wellness and food supplements, you’ve probably looked at the detailed ingredients list on a food or supplement and found something you don’t recognize. At SuperSelf, we are committed to ensuring the safety of our customers, so we never use any ingredient that hasn’t been shown to be safe. We also have a commitment to natural ingredients, so we work hard to ensure we use as few extras as necessary. However, additional ingredients are necessary in some cases – for example, the shell of a vitamin capsule has to be made of something! So we want to walk through a few of the most common uses and ingredients to help you understand what you’re taking.
Why do we add extra ingredients to our supplements?
While we work hard to keep unnecessary ingredients out of our products, some additional ingredients are a necessary part of the manufacturing. For example, if you consider a familiar product such as a vitamin D3 supplement, it may be delivered in liquid (drops), capsule, soft gel, or gummy form. Each shape will have a few additional ingredients to ensure that the active ingredients don’t deteriorate, so you receive them at peak effectiveness, and also to create the capsule, tablet or other shape.
What effects do these ingredients have on me?
None! At SuperSelf, we are passionate about wellness and the health of our clients. For this reason, we never use untested ingredients or substances that don’t meet legal safety requirements and our own high standards. We use excipients, which are inert or inactive ingredients. They can also be described as ‘not bioavailable’ or ‘no bioavailability’. All of these terms mean that these are substances that are not absorbed or processed by the body – they’re like the cardboard packaging on a delivery of fruit or veg: necessary for transport then thrown away.
Why are excipients used?
There are many reasons why excipients are used in a supplement, and you’ll often see them described as ‘agents’. In SuperSelf products, inert or additional ingredients are used for these main reasons:
1. To create and stabilize the delivery form (capsules need shells, for example)
2. To preserve the active ingredients (prevent fish oil going rancid, for example)
3. To balance strong or unpleasant flavours or odours (sweeten apple cider vinegar, for example)
Where an ingredient plays an active role, for example increasing bioavailability, you will normally find it listed on our packaging as such. For example, vitamin D increases the uptake of calcium, so you’ll see both listed under ‘nutritional information’ as well as ‘ingredients’. The gelatine shell does not (it is inert), so it’s only listed under ‘ingredients’.
Are excipients natural?
Many of the excipients and additional ingredients we use are natural products derived from foods you might already have at home. For example, if we look at the ingredients for our apple cider vinegar gummies, they include:
Thickener (Pectin), Sweeteners (Maltitol Solution, Sugar), Filling Agent (Isomalt), Acidity Regulator (Sodium Citrate), Flavouring (Natural Apple Flavouring), Emulsifier (Sucrose Fatty Acid Ester), Acid (Citric Acid), Glazing Agent (Vegetable Oil (contains Carnauba Wax)), Colorant (Purple Carrot Juice Concentrate).
You’ll probably recognize sugar, vegetable oil, carrot juice and apple as kitchen staples but pectin (a gelling agent found in pears and other fruit), maltitol solution (a sugar substitute made from corn), isomalt (a common baking ingredient make from sugar beet) and citric acid (the natural acid that makes lemons sour) all have natural origins or might be found in your kitchen, even though they sound mysterious.
An A-Z of common excipients and other ingredient types explained
Here you’ll find a few of the most common uses for excipients, each with a clear explanation of the reason for its presence.
- Acid (e.g. citric acid) – typically used as a preservative, to prevent decay.
- Acidity regulator (e.g. sodium citrate) – to neutralise acid where it is naturally present, e.g. in apple cider vinegar. This makes the supplement easier to digest.
- Anti-caking agent (e.g. silicon dioxide) – to prevent clumping or lumps during manufacturing. This is essential to ensure that each dose contains exactly the quantity of the active ingredient indicated.
- Bulking agent (e.g. brown rice flour) – as the correct dose of the active ingredients can be very small, a bulking agent may be used to increase fill up the space and turn a dot of dust into an easy-to-swallow tablet.
- Capsule shell or soft gel shell (e.g. gelatine) – the ingredients making the skin of the capsule and holding the whole thing together. These may be gelatine (a meat derivative, commonly ‘bovine gelatine’ from cows), or… hydroxypropylmethylcellulose, which is a tasteless, vegan material made by extraction from wood pulp.
- Coating – this helps protect the tablet or capsule from normal heat, contact and other issues in transit. It can help ensure the active ingredients remain at the correct concentration and are properly preserved right until the end of the ‘best before’ period. They are also used to create our ‘timed release’ capsules.
- Colouring agent (e.g. purple carrot juice) – these are added to change the colour of a product. We use natural colourants in our gummies to make them look more like sweets.
- Filling agent (e.g. isomalt) – like the bulking agent, this helps us create the volume we need to have an easy-to-swallow capsule.
- Flavouring (e.g. natural apple flavouring) – where a product has a strong, unpleasant, flavour we may mask it with a different one.
- Glazing agent (e.g. vegetable oil) – this is part of the coating of the capsule and prevents evaporation. It helps ensure the active ingredients remain at the correct concentration and are properly preserved right until the end of the ‘best before’ period. They are also used to create our ‘timed release’ capsules.
- Thickener (e.g. pectin) – this changes the texture of a liquid, making it thicker, which can be necessary to form the capsule or as part of the manufacturing process.
Any other questions? Just ask!
Reading a long list of mystery ingredients can be daunting. We hope this article has shed some light on the topic and shown why almost every supplement will have at least one excipient (even if it’s just the capsule shell). At SuperSelf, we believe you have the right to know what’s in your supplements, and that excipients should be natural (where possible) and safe (always) which is why we publish clear, comprehensive ingredient lists online and on our packaging. If we’ve missed an excipient type from our list or you have any questions about one of our products – including wondering what a mystery ingredient is, or whether it’s suitable for a vegan, Halal, Kosher or other diet – please do get in touch. We love hearing from you.
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