Foodform Vitamin Brands with synthetics:

New Chaptertm, MegaFood tm, and Garden of Lifetm, and YES, even Standard Process Labstm. These major "foodform" or "food grown" or "whole food vitamin" Brands all start out feeding growing yeast cells with some synthetic B vitamins and some isolated natural vitamins. Their marketing stories are not telling the "whole" truth. Not all of the vitamins are made by nature. In fact, they won't reveal which ones start out as natural and which as synthetic. The vitamins they produce are simply a combination of some natural isolated vitamins and some synthetic vitamins combined into complexes in the yeast cells during the growing cycle similar to how nature builds complexes in foods.

SIDEBAR: Because they all usually use yeast as a growing medium and add vitamins to it, there might be yeast left in the final product that could give rise to allergies. Watch for any reactions in the first week. Yeast may or may not be in the finished product depending upon the completeness of the extraction and wash out process. Often enzymes are used to digest the yeast which should also help prevent allergies. 

This reference ref is from the European FDA called EFSA evaluation of a yeast grown folic acid. No conclusions could be reached because the company requesting the ruling did not supply adequate bio-availability or safety studies. Interesting! Standard Process uses a slightly different pathway for some of their vitamins, mainly animal glandulars with added (spiked) synthetics even though they are at very low doses.

For New Chapter's company Q&A.  One question in their presentation about contamination needs some clarification. This factor is even more significant when using greater quantities of "whole" foods, since heavy metals are often found in foods, especially "green" foods. And don't count on "organic" for protection as using natural source fertilizers may actually increase certain possibilities for heavy metal contamination. ref 

The MYKIND ORGANICS Difference

Garden of life's MyKind Organics represents a novel method of vitamin extraction from foods. While they claim no synthetics, there is still a concern about the source of the vitamins they use to "standardize" the dosages. Natural plants vary dramatically in nutrient content between different plants grown side by side and between plants form different locations, even within the same grove. So, the finished product from each extraction process could have drastically different mixes between the nutrients they expect to extract. The processors would not know this ratio before hand. It is an after the process is completed fact. Maybe there are ways to lower a nutrient that is in higher amounts than the formula needs. But this is not spelled out in the patent procedures.

This represents a challenge to make consistent dosage formulas without a "standardization" method. This means they have to add a vitamin or two to correct the ratios in the finished product. The question? Where does this vitamin material come from and what is it's form. Remember that the patent spells out that 4-5 nutrients could be extracted at one time from a few different plants. Thus the "from food blend" on label.

The main element of the extraction patent is the use of certain plants to provide acids for the acidification of the vitamins in the other plants so greater amounts of these plant vitamins will precipitate out during extraction over many hours. Steam is used to heat the plant mixture to increase this action during the extraction.  

THE ANALYTICAL TRUTH