According to WebMD, over 150 million Americans take vitamins or supplements every year. It might surprise you to learn that there are no federal standards requiring that the ingredients listed on the label must actually be inside the capsules / tablets inside the bottle.

In fact, stealth evaluations regularly find that upwards of fifty percent of vitamins or supplements tested fall far short of their label claims.

So what’s a concerned consumer to do?

Well, if you’re a Co-op Customer, you know you can let out a deep sigh of relief. Every product we sell has been thoroughly tested by an impartial third party—Atlas Bioscience, Inc.

Recently this kat caught up with Dr. Dinesh Patel, Chief Chemist at Atlas Bioscience, and asked him a few questions. Dr. Patel is always incredibly generous with his time and knowledge (usually spending time with the humans, who all think he is one of the smartest and most decent people in this whole industry!).

My only regret is that I can’t capture the good doctor’s delightful British accent for our fair members.

OHC: The Co-op runs rigorous tests on all of our products. Can you walk our members through the process?

DP: I’ve been testing the Co-op’s products for nearly seven years now. My company, Atlas-Bioscience, takes a sample product, crushes it to powder form, and extracts the components we’ve been asked to test for. These components are sent through a test analyzer where we collect content data and log the numerical results.

Every test is run in triplicate and we take the average of all three runs. The entire testing process is designed to have the utmost integrity.

It’s important to note, too, that we don’t know who the contract manufacturer of the product is and they don’t know who’s doing the testing. Most companies selling products use contract manufacturers, and testing is a quality control audit—for both the consumer and the company selling products, the Co-op in this case.

OHC: How does the Co-op’s testing program compare to the industry at large?

DP: Most reputable or caring manufacturers run similar tests, but there are companies out there that don’t have the resources, or simply want to cut corners. Some don’t run tests as frequently as the Co-op does. A company like the Co-op knows they have a lot to lose if they don’t run rigorous tests since blending and manufacturing are human processes that can be fallible.

Your customers should be proud to know there’s an excellent system of checks and balances in place for ensuring quality at the Co-op.

OHC: Aren’t there some ingredients that are hard to test for?

DP: Well, you want to make sure you’re selling what you think you’re selling. Most vitamins and minerals can be tested fairly easily. It’s some of the non-standardized herbal products that are very difficult and sometimes impossible to test for, largely because there are no mathematical conversions from the marker components that we can measure. For example, many medicinal mushrooms and whole, dried, green leaf powders are so complex that from lot to lot there is nothing constant that we set our measurements on. In these cases we must simply rely on botanical fingerprints to ensure manufacturing consistency.

OHC: What’s the latest on testing much-hyped botanicals, hoodia cactus and acai fruit?

DP: Testing and analysis is always trying to catch up with the latest trendy botanicals. In the case of the hoodia cactus, a scientific paper was published in the peer-reviewed literature in 2006, almost three years after the first products containing this material entered into the market-place. This means that a lot of the early material probably went untested. Today, none of the hoodia on the market sold by large reputable organizations should go unchecked.

The acai fruit was a different story, since its availability was initially limited and it was hard to pass on adulterated material as authentic , due to acai's unique taste and astringent feel. So there was much less concern to get marker and species testing in place.

Instead much of the focus was on the high antioxidative properties, which again would have been hard to reproduce with false imitations. Today fingerprint analysis is routinely used to verify acai authenticity, although no single marker has been established yet.

OHC: What should people look for on the labels of vitamins or supplements?

DP: Regardless of what the label says, remember, there’s no guarantee that what the label claims is actually in your capsule or tablet. Consumers should instead look for verification of testing results, which can be difficult. Many analytical labs consider their test results proprietary and will not allow publication of their results.

In the Co-op’s case, all products are tested by peer-reviewed methods, meaning the process for testing has been documented, validated, and can be reproduced by another laboratory. We put the test methods directly on our test result reports.

The Co-op was one of the first companies that I know of that started posting results for every product in their catalog on their web site. The consumer is only one click away from testing results.

OHC: What does Co-op's recent test of Multi-Vites show? It’s an inexpensive product, so why does it really matter to test this product?

DP: Testing a formula with many ingredients allows a company to test a contract manufacturer’s blending process. It would be rare for a manufacturer to intentionally shortchange any of the ingredients, but many of the ingredients are in such small amounts that spot checking allows a company like the Co-op to ensure quality control measures are consistently in place.

As an aside, your customers might also want to note that the Co-op’s Multi-Vites product does not include iron. There’s concern in the medical establishment that elevated iron levels can be toxic and do serious damage. It’s generally believed most men and women get enough iron through diet.

OHC: What about expiration dates? Should consumers be concerned with this?

DP: Expiration dates indicate when a product will start to deteriorate under normal storage conditions. In other words, the date gives you an indication of when a product will start to slip below 95 – 100% potency.

So if a product is a week or a month beyond it’s expiration date, it may very well still have a good deal of potency. Obviously, the further from the expiration date, the greater the chance that you won’t get the full benefits.

OHC: One last question. What do you think of the kat?

DP: Oh, I think you’re ideal! It’s nice to know there’s someone so intelligent, calm, and level-headed as you minding the store.

Okay, I agree with the girls. Dr. Patel is the kat's meow! ^..^