How to Read Supplement
/ Nutrition Labels

If you were comparing supplement brands and saw these 2 nutrition labels, which would you choose? - A or B?

Before I share the answer with you, I would like you to ask yourself this question:

“Deep down, which do I have the most faith in, the natural healing power of nature, or man made chemicals?”

“Do you see the logic in the information I will reveal to you over the next few minutes?”

As you read this sequence of pages dealing with nutrition labels, you will begin to appreciate some of the subtle ways companies fool you into buying cheap supplements that have little or no effect on your health. I am not against looking for a bargain but I can appreciate that you don’t want to throw your money away either. Who was it that said, “If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is”?

In the final analysis, you want to buy a supplement that does what you want it to do. What good is saving a few bucks if you don’t get any results?

Okay, you’re probably feeling a little overwhelmed after looking at those two labels. I know you’re thinking how will I ever make any sense out of this technical jargon. If you’re anything like me you want some down to earth explanations that make sense and are easy to understand. In the coming pages I am going to provide you with exactly what you want, so that you will be able to look at nutrition labels with new understanding. You are going to have enough knowledge that you will be able to select the good from the bad.

If after reading what I have provided, you are interested in obtaining a bit more technical information, please download this “pdf” document

As for the question I asked you earlier, the answer is “A” and you are about to learn why:

When you are looking at Supplement / Nutrition Labels:

• Avoid synthetic Vitamins (e.g. beta-carotene, pyridoxine hydrochloride, retinol, palmitate, pteroylglutamic acid, thiamin mononitrate, thiamin hydrochloride, ascorbic acid). Whole food natural vitamin supplements are more easily recognized by your body and therefore more likely to be used.

  ASIDE: The opposite of synthetic is "whole food." Although this is covered under "How to Choose" on this site, you may want to check it out now.

  
  
• Look for amino acid chelated minerals (e.g. chromium chelavite, magnesium chelazome) that are easily identifiable by their suffix of chelavite, chelate or chelazome.

• Many herbal supplements have begun to use “standardized extracts”. A standardized extract simply means that the manufacturer has extracted the portion of the herb that is believed to be the active ingredient. For thousands of years we have been using whole herbs for medicine but lately, science has been messing with our formulas

• Look for plant enzyme supplements and avoid pancreatic or animal enzymes. Be sure that the supplement label uses FCC units, such as LU, DU, CU rather than milligrams on the label.

• Probiotic supplements should include several different types of bacteria (at least eight different strains), and should list each of the individual microflora found in the supplement by their Latin name with a count of how many of these live cultures are found in each capsule or serving.

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