How to spot a bad supplement from the label

In a recent blog I discussed avoiding wellness fads in favour of prioritising core supplements for optimal health.

But did you know that supplement quality varies hugely, even in core supplements like multivitamins?

It’s why I got into making supplements; to make a range that’s less confusing and has the best active nutrient forms.

If you haven’t studied the more nerdy bits about supplements, it can be hard to tell which supplements are of decent quality and value. But you don’t have to know your methylcobalamin from your cyanocobalamin to assess a brand’s quality!

There’s an easy way to assess whether a manufacturer prioritises cheap ingredients and massive margins over your health:

Read the ingredients list!

Supplement labels have a nutrition table showing the dosage of each active ingredient.

But much like food packets, they also have a full ingredients list - both active and inactive - in descending order.

Just like reading a food packet, you can check whether there’s any junk inside.

Here’s a real example from a UK brand sold widely in supermarkets and pharmacies:

Before you even get to the low quality forms of vitamins, the biggest ingredients are bulking agents.

To make tablets there will necessarily be some inactive ingredients (AKA excipients), to keep the ingredients together.

But in the above example you see many unnecessary excipients such as colours, bulking agents, and Polyvinylpyrrolidone.

Look how tiny tablets or capsules are; I struggle to fit everything I want into our formulations. So to me, a manufacturer’s use of excipients is a waste of space that could be used to give you value and healthy nutrients.

I use capsules for City Survivor formulations as we can fill the cellulose shell with pure active ingredients.

It’s possible because our UK factory uses capsule filling machinery that’s semi automatic - fully manned by a highly trained professional.

It’s slower and more expensive than using excipients which speed up manufacture.

But it means your supplement is as pure as possible, and you’re paying for quality active ingredients only.