A prominent figure on the UK supplements scene has called for manufacturers to “step up to mark” on the issue of final products testing and research.
Speaking during a special session on nutritional ingredients innovation at last month’s Natural & Organic Products Europe event, Andrew Thomas, founder of BetterYou said that there was “an onus” on manufacturers to be “more illustrative and clearer” about the research that the VMS industry conducted.
Thomas argued that very few consumers properly understood the function of the ingredients listed on a specialist VMS products, and that therefore people needed to “have faith in manufactures”. For that reason, he said “… manufacturers have to step up to the mark and do proper, effective research, not only on the ingredients, isolated ingredients, but also the finished formulations. That product has to be absorption tested. Otherwise, you might know that the ingredients individually have been teste, but do you know what happens when they come together?”
” … manufacturers have to step up to the mark and do proper, effective research, not only on the ingredients, isolated ingredients, but also the finished formulations”
Illustrating his point, Thomas cited the case of when BetterYou was expanding its magnesium range and looked at adding aloe vera to a magnesium product. “It sounded a great idea. But when you absorption test that, transdermal magnesium is effectively inactive – magnesium does not go through the skin win the presence of aloe vera. So that product didn’t go forward. But if we hadn’t absorption tested that, that product would have been out in the market place now.”