MyKIND Organics from Garden of Life

Friday, June 20, 2014 at 10:36AM
Team RightWay

  ***See Notice near bottom of article, a critically important message***

About every two years, Garden of Lifetm comes out with a new concept supplement: Such as Brown Seaweed, Raw Protein, Living Multiple, Raw Fit, Perfect Food, Raw Code Vitamins, and now the MyKind Organics Multiple Vitamins. Garden of life has over it's history turned out to be quite a successful marketing company and second, a vitamin product company. As a marketing company, their effectiveness is represented by their products rapidly becoming the number one selling Brand in health food stores. But unfortunately, as a product company, they occasionally suffer from low quality issues, like a recent salmonella contamination outbreak. While this is an unfortunate event that could happen to any company, the relatively new FDA regulations for Good Manufacturing Practices, GMP, spelling out Quality Control procedures, should catch contaminated ingredients and products before they are released to the public. QC article

Roll out of the KIND ORGANICS (label changed later to MyKind Organics)

The new product line from Garden of Life is an all Organic Multiple called MyKIND Organics Multiple Vitamins. "The First Whole Food Multivitamin Made from Real, Honest, Nutritious Foods." Their literature expresses that this is the first multivitamin that is all from organic natural food sources, such as Folate from Organic Lemon peels, without any synthetics. Realfood Organics from Country Life and a few others have been available for some time, but they were just mostly from natural foods with a few isolates. 

With this product line, Garden of Life rolls out their Clean Tablet Technology which potentially represents a large positive step. (Not all attempts in the past to clean up questionable ingredients resulted in positive effects. Example: Removing "starches" delayed tablet breakdown with less nutrient absorption.) And the dosages in these multiples also continue a Garden of Life positive trend with most nutrients at nutritionally significant and active amounts and not at the outrageously higher amounts potentially disruptive to body processes like so many other Brands using synthetics and natural isolates. With vitamin consumption, both too little and too much can be detrimental to health. Organic sources plus NON-GMO are welcome additions for the foods included as well. Organic article  GMO article

The MyKIND products are to the vitamin industry what the 747 airplane was to the airline industry. A quantum leap forward, years ahead of it's time, or about time. With all good natural sounding things, there always seems to be a "BUT" or an "IF" that creeps into the narrative.

The stumbling block in the past to producing all from food vitamins is that nature is rather stingy and doesn't put significant quantities of vitamins together in any one food. Instead, Nature spreads them out so that a variety of foods in extremely large quantities is needed to be able to concentrate out significant amounts to make natural vitamin supplements. Up to now, the vitamins and minerals from all natural food sources exhibited very low dosages and did not sell as well since the public has become accustomed to the higher synthetic and isolated natural vitamin dosages. Unfortunately, the "If a little is good, more must be better" mentality is not true for vitamins and minerals, but has been largely accepted by the consuming Public from marketing influences.  As part of the MyKIND Organics marketing roll out, The next statement out of Garden of Life is most revealing about their past whole food type vitamin lines, like Living Multiple and The Vitamin Code.

For the Vitamin Code line, see, here is part of the original marketing story GOL used: "RAW means these food vitamins are uncooked and unadulterated, delivered with probiotics and enzymes and absolutely no synthetic vitamins! Our audited RAW standard means Vitamin Code ingredients are always kept below 115 degrees F, and we do not use incredibly harsh compression and heat typically used to create vitamin tablets." This description will get significant clarification in a moment. 

No Synthetics, fact or fiction?

To generate a greater impact for this new MyKind Organics line, Garden of Life first set out to rather boldly reveal that in the past, their supplement manufacturing process, "rather than starting with real food and working all the way down to a tablet, scientists reverse engineered nature--starting with synthetic vitamins (and isolated naturals) and finding a way to make them more like real food..."  "...By combining a synthesized vitamin with a plant in which it could grow (yeast)........"  Does this mean the Living Multiples and Vitamin Code Multiples start with some synthetic vitamins as well as some isolated natural vitamins? Yes!

"All of today's leading Whole Food vitamin companies-including Garden of Life--use cultured or grown whole food nutrients. Whether it's grown, cultured or complexed, all whole food vitamins begin with an isolated nutrient. Finally, after years of progress, Garden of Life introduces MyKind Organics--a multivitamin from real, nutritious, organic food." These are their own words from their literature. They start with real food, extract out the vitamins, and package them into a tablet. All natural, all organic. Non-GMO. This is a major departure from their past methods and represents a major new step for natural whole food vitamins. Read on for real story!

Notice, the first labels and website for the new (My)Kind Organics were changed after only a few months. The link to them was erased, but the following commentary and description was left here to illustrate a point. (see comments) The first website for the (My)Kind Organices listed the plant sources for each vitamin. Some of these food sources were questionable since they contained low levels of vitamins and a false Vitamin B12 source. Those label errors prompted the writing of this article. The labels were rather quickly changed to indicate more of the real nature of vitamin sources as mentioned by their new source supplier, Orgenetics, that produces some of the natural vitamins in MyKIND Organics multiples. It took the GOL staff member to explain in comments below this article that the B12 source was not yeast, but a German produced non-engineered bacteria that supplies the vitamin B12 as methylcobalamin, a preferred form. The B12 is then cultured into yeast. Yeast does not naturally make vitamin B12.

Here is GOL explanation of the concentration process used to make these multi nutrients from foods and herbs:  

•  Produce is tree-ripened, hand-picked, and delivered to the extraction facility within 30 minutes.
• A patented FRESH EXTRACTION process super-concentrates the nutrients in 3 steps.
  • Water extraction - no solvents or alcohol are used. (see patent details below)
  • Concentration
  • Separation and super-concentration (removing the sugars and other macronutrients as well as water)
• Following the multi-patented Fresh Extraction process, the organic produce is turned into a highly concentrated powder, standardized for vitamin and mineral content, within 24 hours of harvest!

One of the processing elements not covered in the above explanation is that the plant ingredients are heated by steam up to 160 degrees for many hours. This level of heat does compromise certain vitamins, and may be why there is a standardized method of adding extra vitamins back into the finished product. The source for these extra vitamins is not mentioned. (Steam is generated from water at 212 degrees. It is then sent into tubes surrounding the vessel containing the foods. Under pressure in tubes, steam can increase in temperature. The patent says the mixture is maintained at 160 degrees for many hours.) 

ORGENETICS, Company behind Organic ingredients

Check out this study.  It is used as a reference by the companies under Orgen Family, most likely making these food extracts for Garden of Life and a few other Brands. "Antioxidant and micronutrient potential of common fruits available in the Indian subcontinent" 

Here is website for Orgenetics. They partnered with Greenchem in India. Greenchem has their own organic farms. One quickly sees that Orgenetics offers groups of related vitamins together rather than separately. Only a few individual vitamins and minerals are extracted separately. Garden of Life's first labels were in error. They quickly changed labels to reflect the "from food blend" aspect of the vitamin groups extracted together. 

On the Orgenetics website, they list the foods making up the blend supplying the vitamin and mineral groups they produce. For vitamin C, they use Alma fruit. This extract also includes bioflavonoids, but GOL unfortunately fails to include this valuable nutrient listed on their MyKIND labels. For B complex, the food blend items at the time included; Holy Basil leaves, Guava fruit, and Lemon peel extract, all organic. Since these foods are all rather low in B vitamin content, this raised a red flag as to the logistics of concentrating such low dose vitamin foods to get the vitamin quantities needed for a bottle of 60 servings. Next are some examples of the amount of food that would be necessary if the vitamins and minerals only were concentrated out of the listed foods (for a 60 serving bottle), before any standardization.

OF INTEREST: The patent process for these vitamins states that the food material in containers is heated by steam to about 160 degrees for up to 6 hours during the vitamin extraction. Some esterified vitamin forms do naturally occur. This form is similar to what happens in the production of many synthetic vitamins. Esterified vitamin forms are more stable but must be de-esterified by a hydrolyzed process in the gut back to natural free form. This process does reduce vitamin assimilation to some degree for certain vitamins as measured by blood testing. Question: How does the heat impact vitamin vitality?

The patent details explain that Guava Fruit (295 kg) is the most predominate item by weight. It supplies B1, B2, Pantothenic acid, and B6. From Holy Basil leaves (2.5 kg dried leaves), B3 or niacin, and from lemon peels (dried 2.5 kg about 13 lbs fresh), folate. 

Folate: For 500 mcg. The 10% from lemon peels needs 5 pounds per bottle. The 90% or 450 mcg. from Sesbania flowers needs 58.3 pounds. (Sesbania is not listed in this patent, but the patent mentions the process would work for any plant material that contains the desired vitamin. (The letter from a staffer at Garden of Life supplied the Sesbania source information.)

Vitamin B6: 60 servings of 13 mg. from Guava, Holy Basil, Lemon blend, (patent says B6 supplied by guava (.11mg/100g), but lemon peel also has some (.172mg/ 100 gm raw. 82% water) needs at least 26 pounds of guava and lemon peel per bottle. BUT, the leaves of Guava could also be used and data here is difficult to find.  

Selenium: 60 servings of 90 mcg (5400 mcg) Guava fruit has .6 mcg per 100 gm. needs 33 pounds of guava fruit (leaves 0). Again, leaves might also be used. guava data

Zinc: 60 servings of 7 mg. Guava fruit has .23 mg per 100 grams of fruit. To get 7 mg, would need 3043 grams, only about 7 pounds. This of course assumes 100% extraction.

UPDATE: New info now has zinc coming from guava leaves. A 53 page scientific resource on everything about guava leaves mentions minerals and vitamins and amounts, but no mention of zinc. Where is the zinc? THIS COULD BE IT. A zinc sulfate solution is sprayed on leaves as the plant grows and this increases zinc content up to .016%. ref Then this amount is increased by standardization to 4% zinc to get to 6 mg. This might only need about 5 pounds of leaves for a 100 capsule bottle. Interesting! Guava leaves do have lots of other benefits. ref

Vitamin E: For this nutrient, one only has to look at the source to spot an error. Vitamin E is only alpha tocopherol. The MyKind multiple says that annatto is the source for vitamin E. But, annatto contains very little if any vitamin E in the tocopherol form. The majority of vitamin E family content is on the tocotrienol side of the E family. That is the value of annatto. It is a great source for tocotrienols with almost zero tocopherols. ref 

All natural Vitamins and minerals from only FOOD sources Present a Challenge

Does GreenChem have an unlimited supply of plants on their farm so quantities are not a cost or logistics factor? Is the new water extraction method so powerful that much greater quantities of vitamins can be concentrated out of these low density vitamin foods. Perhaps, the most important piece of the puzzle missing is what is the method of standardization. They add extra vitamins and minerals to arrive at a certain percentage level? What is the source of the added vitamins? Are the viamins from the new water extraction method and simply added to a smaller concentrated amount of the same foods used for the extraction? Plausible. This would mean that some of the other nutrients might be quite a bit over the label amounts. This could present problems. Orgenetics could run 3-4 batches and then after analyzing each, use the best ones to combine to arrive at the closest label amounts.

Orgenetics offers a vitamin B complex material that yields, from just 1000 mg (fills about one average size capsule) of plant extracts Guava, Holy Basil, and Lemon, 100% of the RDA for these B complex factors: B1, B2, B3 niacin, B5 pantothenic acid, B6, & B9 folate. That represents quite a feat for extraction just out of food.  No vitamin B12 or biotin. Biotin offered separately. Orgenetics extracts vitamins and minerals out of over a 100 pounds of food and fits them into two very tiny tablets. How do they do it?

New Patented WATER EXTRACTION METHOD gets Natural Vitamins out of Food

The new patented water extraction method is evidently a significant part of the MyKind Organics story. ref This new all water extraction process utilizes a unique application of fruit acids (from Lemon and holy basil for B complex factors) to help break open plant cells and also increase nutrient availability due to processes called acidification and esterification. Only this esterification process does not use added alcohols, but alcohol may naturally be produced in the food material during the 6 hour extraction process and this could participate in the esterification effect since ester vitamin compounds are found in the finished product. These processes increase the vitamin yield without apparently having to add other chemical solvents, except water.

Reading the patent, it does leave open the door to use any and all other traditional methods as well, including chemicals. This new remarkable water extraction method even gets out non-water soluble factors like fat soluble vitamins. Good information on general extraction methods here. Next is the abstract for this new water method patent for vitamin E from annatto. The inventors mention continually that any other materials could be substituted for annatto in this process and other nutrients could also be extracted out.

Here are the details and amounts to explain this extraction method for vitamin E: An annatto seed mesh of 1089 pounds is mixed with alma fruit at 11 pounds (supplies the acids) and begins a 6 hour processing with many steps passing steam up through a jacket surrounding the Stainless Steel vessel. This heats the water containing the food mixture to 150 degrees. Many separations occur and are used to concentrate the vitamins by some method, perhaps evaporation or lighter elements flowing to top, until it gets down to 110 pounds. 15.8% of this weight is vitamin E, 17.38 pounds. This is quite a lot of vitamin E.

QUESTION: Since annatto is naturally low in vitamin E as tocopherols and high in the E family form tocotrienols, a lot of this vitamin E content may be tocotrienols, but tocotrienols cannot be labeled as vitamin E. ref ref THIS REPRESENTS AN ENGIMA THAT NEEDS TO BE CLARIFIED. This one fact just may be the thorn in the side for Orgenetics credibility. ref  If the vitamin E content includes both tocopherols and tocotrienols, that would be a plus. But it would make the bottle label incorrect.

More from the patent: "Preferably, said liquid medium is water, the solvent adopted in the process of the invention. Adoption of heating, stirring, agitating, cooking and other such operations to increase the yield and reduce the processing time are within the scope of the invention. Use of pressure in the cooking operation is within the scope of the invention."

High temperatures and or pressure can be used so GOL will not be talking about vitamins being RAW for the MYKIND line. In fact, this is rather counter to the whole RAW image GOL has built up. Large amounts of steam are used around the vessel to heat the food pulp inside during the process as part of the vitamin extraction method. Steam is another form of water but it does not come into contact with the food material, it just surrounds and heats the vessel. So, the water in the vessel is the only solvent used. But the patent has opened the door to use other solvents if needed.

Here is the patent for the extraction of B vitamin group out of Lemon, Holy Basil, and Guava. From the patent details: Within the scope of the invention, other operations may be carried on the extract product of the invention such as topping-up of constituents, adding of additional nutrients, converting into a food, pharmaceutical or nutraceutical compositions, admixing additives such as for colour, taste, texture, bulk, flavour, odour and others. This last part may be more for use in foods, but the first part "topping-up of constituents" and "adding of additional nutrients" might present questionable areas of concern.  

This brings up another point needing an explanation. Heat destroys a number of vitamins; B1, B2, B5, Folate, and C. Do they all survive the 6 hours of heat at 50 to 65 degree C (150* F) used by this water extraction method? The water extraction method can be varied in time and temperature, etc. for different foods supplying different vitamins. Plus, temperatures reach 170 to 180 degree C during the spray drying process for a very short period of time.

DOSE OF Reality 

Let's follow this up with a dose of reality, science, and a touch of common sense. One important factor is that nature varies the amount of nutrients from plant to plant. Sometimes this variation is over 10 fold. This would simply only change the yield during the extraction process. So the 2 important issues here are: First, How much extra vitamin content does the water extraction method yield over the amounts from other traditional chemical solvent methods of extraction? How are the logistics of needing such large volumes of chosen foods to supply vitamins justified? What if any separation methods are employed? How clean is the finished product? Does the heat influence the nutrients? Does the acidification and esterification process change vitamin forms? The patent indicates it does. And what is meant by the last part of the process, "standardization" of vitamins and minerals? The patent says they top-off the finished product with vitamins from a previous batch processing. At least this is what the President of the company mentioned. This would simply further increase the quantities of food needed for this extraction process to arrive at the nutrient label amounts.

Second part of the story for this new vitamin form emphasizes that the food material also contains natural vitamin co-factors. These are said to increase absorption and make the vitamins more effective. The vitamin co-factors are never really spelled out or amounts listed. This is a very intangible aspect and may only be determined by blood work comparing what happens inside the body after these food extracted vitamins are compared to the forms of vitamins in other supplements. These are all the possible different vitamin forms: 1.Synthetics 2.Isolated natural 3. Foodform (synthetics or isolated natural grown in yeast) 4. actual real natural vitamins extracted out of food (the MyKind process) 5. non-processed natural food concentrates containing vitamins, and 6. naturally in regular nonconcentrated food. Then there are also the effects from acidification and esterification on vitamin forms. 

GARDEN OF LIFE CREATES REAL FOOD VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS with vitamin co-factors.

What are Vitamin Co-Factors?

Return soon for added excitement on this topic. Check out this article for some details>

Selenium

Originally, GOL and Orgenetics listed Organic guava as source for selenium. This is another amazingly low source selenium food at just 1 mcg per 165 grams, or one cup of guava. To extract out of guava to get a serving size of 90 mcg of selenium requires 90 cups or 14850 grams or 33 pounds. A bottle of 60 servings would require the selenium to be extracted out of 1980 pounds. So how do they do it? They standardize selenium to a certain level in a given amount of guava that fits in a tablet. Again, where does the selenium come from that is used to standardize?

Presently, Orgenetics has changed to listing Mustard seed extract as their selenium source. Doesn't look like GOL is using this source yet since mustard seed is not listed on any labels, at least not on their websites. Mustard seeds have 8.32 mcg in 4 grams of seeds, a much higher amount than in Guava. To get to 90 mcg serving needs 1.5 pounds of seeds. A 60 serving bottle would require the selenium out of 90 pounds of mustard seeds. But they use an extract. Really doesn't matter. They still need 90 pounds of mustard seeds to start with before they make the extract and then take the selenium out of it.  Just 14 mg of Orgenetics selenium mustard seed extract is standardized to .5% and gives 70 mcg of selenium. This represents an extraction of over 2500 to 1. While not impossible, sure is mind-numbing.

Bottom line Obervation: Since GOL just admitted for the introduction of the MyKind line that in the past they were not completely honest about their previous multiple vitamin sources, they used synthetics, can they be trusted now when they say all the MyKind vitamins are only from food. Remember their first attempt at labels for the then called Kind Organics line contained some false facts. The changed labels for the newly named MyKind products still leaves some issues open. Yeast does not produce Vitamin B12.

PLANT CALCIUM

CAUTION: As part of the MyKind Line, Garden of LIfe also offers a Calcium product. Please be aware that in this red algae product, plant source calcium takes the form of calcium carbonate.** Plus, as an algae growing in ocean water, it can pick up lead and other heavy metals. Since past algae calcium samples have shown lead contamination, companies should be more dilligent in testing. Make sure Garden of Life tests each batch. A little Lead is probably everywhere.

**This point could use some clarification. Yes, Red Algae builds calcium into a carbonate form when making the outer protective shell. While limestone calcium carbonate is a 100% calcite form of calcium carbonate, in red algae there are 2 other calcium carbonate forms as well. One is aragonite, the other is vaterite. Aragonite is similar to calcite, in fact it can become calcite, and they both are quite stable and have low reactive properties. Vaterite is more reactive and has increased solubility and interaction abilities. Unfortunately, vaterite represents a smaller percentage of algae calcium carbonate. The solubility factor difference between limestone and red algae calcium carbonate is about 10% in favor of algae source, 75% compared to 69%. While algae calcium carbonate is 60% calcium, limestone is 70%. But, again the advantage goes to algae since it has 15% more space for some extra minerals. The downside of this plant algae calcium is that it is still calcium carbonate and will use up stomach acid during digestion acting as an antacid. This may not be wise for anyone with low stomach acid.

A possible unique advantage to algae calcium is due to the association of RankL suppression. RankL rubs bones the wrong way plus is involved in cancer spreading and bone loss due to cancers. It needs to be held in check by OPG. Estrogen usually helps OPG hold RankL in check until menopause. ref This research needs immediate verification and clarification due to importance. Other nutrients also have this influence. Check out this study on the value of magnesium to suppress rankL. ref The fact that Algae calcium is very low in magnesium presents a potential problem as this study points out unless magnesium is added. The MyKind Plant Calcium does not add magnesium, thus it is suspect as a bone supplement without added magnesium since the ratio of calcium to magnesium is a vital factor for what happens to calcium in the body.

 

***NOTICE:***  Do not consume the Grow bone product containing 680 mg of Strontium unless under the supervision of your Medical Doctor. (the bone formula without 680 mg strontium is OK) This is critically important. While the warning below is for the European drug, Strontium Renelate, OTC supplements of strontium at 680mg could have the same adverse effects as it is strontium displacing calcium in body structures, not just the acid combining agent holding the strontium that is the problem. Well, maybe renelic acid is a little bit of the problem. For explanation> article  Warning copied below:  ref

Protos (Strontium Renelate) should only be used when other medications for the treatment for osteoporosis are considered unsuitable. Protos is contraindicated and must not be used in patients with established, current or past history of: ischaemic heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, uncontrolled hypertension, venous thromboembolism, pulmonary embolism. It should also not be used in patients who are temporarily or permanently immobilised. Protos should be used with caution in patients with risk factors for cardiovascular events or venous thrombosis: hypertension, diabetes, smoking, hyperlipidaemia. All patients prescribed Protos should be fully informed of the risk of cardiovascular events and venous thrombosis. Patients should be regularly monitored, every 6 months.

 

Women's Multiple (2 Tabs per Day) Evaluation

GOL needs to specifiy the source for MK7 as usually sources are animal or fermented soy natto. GOL lists natto in the MyKind multiples with the old labels but left it off of this new label. If they still use natto, soy should be listed as an ingredient. Notice that the fat soluble vitamins are not part of the Orgenetics supplied nutrients. They are all from different suppliers, except maybe E. This label only includes vitamin forms for B12, Vitamin K as MK7, and D3. The others must be in a true food form. The vitamin B12 source lists Saccharomycees, a yeast. But yeast does not naturally contain B12, so B12 is added to the yeast not from the yeast.  

SCORE:  10.2 (scale 15 to 5)

THIS IS A VERY GOOD DOSAGE MULTIPLE FORMULA based upon ratios of nutrients to body functions. BUT NEEDS SOME EXTRA SUPPORT or separate products FOR calcium and magnesium, AND DOES NOT SPECIFY IF ANY FAMILY MEMBERS ARE PRESENT IN FOOD BASE FOR beta carotene, vitamin C and vitamin E (alpha carotene, lutein, lycopene, zeaxanthin, astaxanthin, beta, delta, and gamma tocopherols, alpha, beta, delta, and gamma tocotrienols, bioflavonoids, rutin, and hesperitin.) Both folate plus Selenium and Chromium are on the high side and would be more appropriate at just one a day.  Organic base might supply some of the family members, but without any listings or amounts, they do not factor into score. Organic base does add. Plus need to know MK7 amount separately since it is given as part of a K complex. And of course, taking iron separately only if needed is all a desireable aspect. Tablet clean fillers add to score.

The dosages listed are higher than any other all natural food source multiple vitamin. The new extraction method must really be significantly more effective than past methods. Verification from outside parties would increase credibility.

Article originally appeared on Vitaminworkshop.com (http://www.vitaminworkshop.com/).