If you take Synergy products, you belong to a special group of people who appreciate the value of organic foods and supplements. You know that organic and sustainably wildcrafted botanicals offer more nutrients and phytonutrients and are simply safer and more beneficial than those conventionally cultivated.

Synergy products contain not only the purest organic and wildcrafted ingredients, but also no harmful additives. Many products claim to be pure, yet they contain additives you would never consume if you knew more about them. In this article, we will explore this “myth of purity” in the supplement industry.

Additives used to manufacture a product are crucial determinants of purity. Undesirable, nonnutritional additives and processing aids can ultimately undermine otherwise beneficial products. Ask yourself one question when evaluating supplements seemingly similar to our products, and you can easily distinguish Synergy products from any others on the market: Is this product a truly natural supplement from source to shelf?

Nearly all other supplements contain numerous unnatural ingredients, which are identified in the “other ingredients” section of the supplement facts box on the product label. These ingredients are added simply to aid in speeding up the manufacturing process and are of no nutritional value to the human body. Additionally, the amount of these chemicals an average supplement user consumes is considerable — as much as a pound over the course of a year!

Excipients are additives commonly used in tablets and capsules. They include substances that lubricate the ingredients so that they mix well and run smoothly on manufacturing equipment. Ascorbyl palmitate, stearic acid, magnesium stearate and calcium stearate are used as lubricants. They are oils—hydrogenated oils (usually cottonseed or palm oil). Not only do they contain transfatty acids — a contributor to cardiovascular disease — but also studies have shown that these additives interfere with the body’s ability to efficiently break down and absorb nutrients. This can result in a 50% or greater reduction in efficacy of a supplement. To make matters worse, cotton (the source of cottonseed oil) is not considered to be a food by the EPA, which means that pesticides banned for use on foods may be used on cotton, whose oil might end up in your nutritional supplements!

Dyes are used to improve the appearance of a product, while sucrose, dextrose, lactose and gelatin are commonly used as dilutants, fillers and flavor enhancers. Even natural flavorings are suspect—flavoring manufacturers are not required by law to reveal the ingredients in their formulas, leaving their content a mystery. The term “natural” is a term so abused that it has become almost meaningless.

Maltodextrin and vegetable glazes commonly come from corn (also referred to as maize or zein) and are widely used as fillers, carriers and tablet coatings. Corn is highly allergenic, and the majority of corn is genetically engineered. Fillers and glazes are nonnutritive (and cheap) ingredients that, in extreme cases, can comprise 95% of a product. A commonly used alternative, pharmaceutical and food glaze, is actually shellac, a substance secreted by beetles.

After years of research, The Synergy Company pioneered proprietary processes for tableting and encapsulation that allow us to manufacture all of our products free of all the above additives. Our tablets are formed with our exclusive process using only whole foods—no lubricants, binders, flow agents, fillers or dyes are ever used. We also pioneered the use of beneficial and genuinely natural carriers for dried botanical concentrates. For example, we use the highly prized and valuable herb astragalus as the carrier for our Asian herb concentrates and organic manioc root as the carrier for our camu camu and acerola concentrates. In this way, we can avoid potentially allergenic substances and GMOs while enhancing the absorption and quantity of the beneficial nutrients and active ingredients in our formulas.

The Synergy Company welcomes comparison. We are well known in the nutritional supplement industry as the gold standard for purity, excellence and innovation. In choosing Synergy, you are getting not only the very best organic and wildcrafted products available, but also the guarantee that every ingredient in our potent formulas is included for one purpose only: to provide pure, whole-food nutrition.

Let's Do the Math

It’s tempting to believe that the quantity of additives in supplements is so small, it is insignificant. However, let’s consider just one commonly used additive: magnesium stearate. Magnesium stearate is usually between 1% and 5% of a tableted supplement, and sometimes as much as 15% of an encapsulated product.

Because we often consume both encapsulated and tableted products, let’s assume an average of 5% magnesium stearate in a 1,500-milligram tablet/capsule (a common serving size). That’s 75 milligrams per tablet/capsule of magnesium stearate alone, a quantity that is often more than the individual active ingredients. Over the course of a year, that adds up.

Consuming six tablets/capsules per day for one year delivers slightly less than six ounces of transfatty acids into your body. That’s the size of one and one-half cubes of butter, in the form of an unappetizing lump of transfatty acids.

This is a conservative estimate. Most people who use supplements often consume two (or more) times our assumed daily average of six capsules/tablets per day. That can quickly add up to pounds per year of the very substances you are actively trying to cleanse and eliminate from your system. It’s ironic. Not only might you be inadvertently consuming undesirable substances, but also you could be directly inhibiting the utilization of the very nutrients you are consuming.

Fortunately, when you use Synergy Company products, you do not have to be concerned about any of these additives. All our products are formulated and manufactured to provide pure, whole-food nutrition and are guaranteed to be free of additives.

Czap, AF. 1999. Supplement facts: All the facts. Alternative Medicine Review 4, no. 1 (February): 5-9.

Tebbey, PW, and TM Buttke. 1990. Molecular basis for the immunosuppressive action of stearic acid on T cells. Immunology 70, no. 3 (July): 379-86.