Vitamin Quality Comparison

Vitamin Comparisons in Quality

When doing vitamin quality comparisons, it's important you take a lot more into account than just how much ingredients product X has over product Y.

We will cover here what we feel are the most important requirements a consumer should consider when doing vitamin comparisons in quality (or any kind of dietary or nutritional supplement, for that matter).

When choosing supplements or vitamins of any kind, you should make sure your product is being manufactured at pharmaceutical GMP compliant facilities. This will ensure your product is being produced under the most stringent conditions.

Why is this important?

Well, most of the dietary and vitamin supplement industry is currently self-regulated. This unfortunately means that many manufacturers are making subpar products. But don't just take our word for it. Both private and government agencies have shown that many products -- even large brand name ones -- do not contain the ingredients stated on the product label, or worse, harbor toxic contaminants!

The FDA recognizes the industry wide scope of this problem, which you can read more about here if you wish.

In short, the starting point for any vitamin quality comparison should be: is this product made at a GMP compliant facility?

Potency is also important issue. Just because a vitamin or supplement may contain an ingredient doesn't mean the ingredient being used is the same quality from one product to another.

Let's illustrate just how important this point is when it comes to vitamin comparisons in quality.

Consider this quote...

"Many supplement Companies mislead you about the potency of their ingredients. The amount of ingredient stated on a label does not reflect the amount of active ingredient. The active ingredient is what provides the benefit. Here's an example:

Beta Carotene is a form of Vitamin A and can vary incredibly in potency. It can be synthetic or natural. The active ingredient present may just be a few percent or up to 98% of the weight.

In other words if you have a supplement that contains 5mgs of Beta Carotene it might have active ingredient of 0.15mgs (at 3% active). Or, it may have active ingredient of 4.9mgs (at 98% active). In other words the 98% active product is over 30 times more potent than the 3% one (even though they both have exactly 5mg present).

And the cost difference? Synthetic Beta Carotene (3% active) costs around $60 per kilo, whereas natural pure pharmaceutical grade (98% active) costs around US$2,400 per kilo (98% active)."
More about Total Balance

Have you ever heard the line that "90% of your vitamins are going down the toilet?" Well, the reason for this is because of poor delivery systems.

Many people aren't aware of this, but a lot of nutrients -- especially some of the really potent and beneficial ones much more powerful that just vitamins -- can be partially or instantly destroyed by your stomach acids and therefore unused by the body.

The key is to make sure your product is using a delivery system called "enteric coating."

Enteric coating is also used on some pharmaceutical drugs because some of these need to bypass the stomach acids as well. When the tablet reaches the intestines, it will dissolve and then go to work in the bloodstream.

Bottomline: when it comes to vitamin quality comparison, choose enteric coated products.

Read more about the Total Balance and Enteric coating

Synergy is another big issue when it comes to vitamin comparisons in quality. Too many products have too much of one ingredient and not enough of another.

Worse, many vitamin products are on the market are conceived, designed and promoted by marketers, not by scientists with top notch credentials.

It's very possible for nutrients to interact unfavorably with each other.

So, when doing a vitamin quality comparison, make sure you are picking a product produced by a company or someone with strong scientific credentials.

Although you may only be interested in vitamins, the fact of the matter is that there are many nutrients available in supplements that have a great many benefits for optimal health, and many of these are much more powerful than ordinary vitamins.

Therefore, we feel that to only look at vitamin comparisons in quality is too narrow.

For example, certain nutrients like Alpha Lipoic Acid, Resveratrol, and Turmeric are very potent antixoidants. Alpha lipopic acid, to use just one example, is literally hundreds of times more potent than vitamin C as an antioxidant and even many times more powerful than Vitamin E.

Featured Product

We here at Nutritional Supplement Info, being passionate about health, went way beyond just vitamin comparisons in quality when it came to choosing a supplement for our own personal use.

After extensive research (and years of taking many different kinds of products), we discovered one called Total Balance manufactured by Xtend Life Natural Products, based in New Zealand.

New Zealand has regulatory manufacturing requirements for dietary supplements far more stringent than what exists in the US.

Their product Total Balance not only contains a broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals, but most of the powerful speciality nutrients we were looking for, all in one product.

In fact, on the Xtend-Life website, they state that their product is not a traditional multi-vitamin by any means:

"Total Balance is not a traditional multi supplement. Although we use a broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals they are used primarily as 'carriers' for the molecules of much more potent nutrients that are in the formula."

People who are serious about their health and want more than just a basic vitamin quality comparison may wish to have a look at Total Balance.

We here at Nutritional Supplement Info have personally been using Total Balance for over 2 years now with excellent results.