If you are not sitting down, you’d better. What I’m about to share with you is a real jaw dropper…
An estimated 97% of the supplement industry is absolutely LOADED with GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) and other toxic ingredients.
Let me say this another way…
The vast majority of your vitamins are toxic and filled with hidden GMO’s.
Now, just in case you’ve been living in la-la-land and tuning out the potential dangers of GMO’s because you say you can’t afford the organic stuff, even though health advocates like me are screaming from the rooftops to avoid them at all costs, let me remind you that farmers are using glyphosate, aka Roundup, on their GMO crops, for starters.
Glyphosate has now been proven in a court of law, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be a direct cause of cancer! (see FINALLY THE ROUNDUP DECEPTION IS OVER blog post) The long-standing debate is officially over.
In other words, you can save a nickel now by chowing down on GMO foods, or you can pay later to the tune of the very real probability of developing cancer down the road since GMO foods now make up approximately 80% of the food industry.
In sorting out this deception of massive proportions, let’s start here…
First of all, if you think you are avoiding the pharmaceuticals by purchasing all those supplements… WRONG!
Big Pharma has their finger all the way into the supplement money-making pie and is churning out cutesy little flower and rainbow labelled bottles of vitamins and herbs. The same gigantic chemical labs that are making drugs are cooking up vitamins and herbs and slapping deceiving labels like “natural” and “wholesome” on them.
The reality is, Big Pharma is going to the bank on the approximately $40 billion annual cash cow supplement industry.
We are talking about pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, Novartis, and Bayer. For example, Pfizer makes Centrum and Emergen-C vitamins, and Bayer makes One-A-Day, and the bigger the company, the more likely they are to seek out cheap, bulk ingredient suppliers in less developed countries like China.
The demand for lower priced supplements equates to lower quality ingredients. You get what you pay for.
Now let’s break this down and take a look at what’s actually in those vitamins you are popping. But first, you need to understand that there are 2 categories of supplements—natural or synthetic.
Natural supplements are obtained from whole food sources. Synthetic supplements or “isolated” nutrients are artificially cooked up in an industrial lab.
The vast majority of supplements on the market are synthetic, meaning, they do NOT come from whole food. They are artificially made in a chemical lab with GMO and petrochemical products.
How do you know the difference? Become a label-reading detective.
Natural products will list the food source and are labeled 100% plant or animal based. Synthetic products will list the nutrients individually such as vitamin C (ascorbic acid), amino acids, vitamin E, vitamin B, antioxidants, and minerals.
The controversy out there is that synthetic supplements are chemically identical to food. However, your body reacts differently to synthetic substances and typically regards them as toxicities that can’t be properly utilized by the body, thereby increasing the toxic burden on your body.
You just can’t replace the way nature makes nutrition in a lab.
When you eat whole food, you are consuming the whole range of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes that allow for maximum absorption and use by the body. When you consume individual, synthetic vitamins, the body just doesn’t get it and does not absorb and use them the same efficient way as when whole foods are consumed.
For example, that vitamin C, aka ascorbic acid, that you are taking daily is really coming from corn and more than likely from the 85% of the corn market that is GMO.
You heard right. Ascorbic acid is being cooked up in a lab from GMO corn.
Now, you won’t see this truth disclosed on the label. What you will see is “vitamin C” or “ascorbic acid,” period. This is your red alert.
The 2 clues that you are consuming a synthetic vitamin C—an isolated vitamin is listed with no food source disclosure. The same holds true for all the single-listed vitamins on your multi vitamin. You’ve just been duped.
When is the last time you saw “100% organic” or “non-GMO project verified” on your supplement label? You haven’t. Because they are not.
Think you are safe because your supplement says “pharmaceutical grade” or “100% pure”? Wrong. Just more labeling smokescreens for what hidden ingredients are actually in your supplements that the manufacturers don’t want you to know about.
What you want to know is this… WHAT. IS. THE. SOURCE. OF. YOUR. SUPPLEMENT?? And, “pharmaceutical grade” is not a food source.
If the food source is not clearly stated, and you only see individual vitamins listed, get very worried because more than likely it is sourced from GMO corn or some other source you do not want to consume like human hair.
I kid you not. Those individually listed amino acids on your vitamin bottle that do not declare their plant-based source are generally being sourced from the keratin in duck feathers and human hair purchased from barber shop floor sweep ups and head-shaving operations in under developed countries. Can you say “ewww?”
So, what other disgusting delectables are on the synthetic ingredient list…
- Bulking agents to top off capsules and pills
- Binders to stick ingredients together
- Anti-cakers to stop ingredients from clogging the machines
- Carriers to maintain powder consistencies
- Coatings to make swallowing those horse pills easier
- Preservatives to extend shelf life
- Emulsifiers to bind water and fats
- Artificial colors to make things pretty
- Artificial flavors to make things taste better
- Artificial sweeteners to make things more palatable
- Excipients to bind and glue tablets together
- Glazes to coat with shellac
- Silica flowing agent
Not a one of these additives have anything to do with nutrition, yet your supplements are full of them.
Just stop and consider the toxic load that adds up when you are taking handfuls of supplements with these added ingredients every single day.
If your head is not yet spinning, here are a few more GMO fillers to run from on your supplement labels…
- Modified food starch (corn)
- Hydrogenated oil (corn or soy)
- Citric acid (corn)
- Lactic acid (corn)
- Xanthum gum (corn)
- Maltodextrin (corn)
- Dextrose (corn)
- Soy lecithin
- Gelatin (GMO grain fed beef/pork/scraps/diseases organs/tumors)
- Whey (egg white/milk protein from GMO grain fed cattle/chickens)
- Natural flavorings (MSG from corn)
- Ascorbyl palmite (corn)
- Ascorbic acid (corn, corn and more corn)
- Stearic acid/magnesium stearate (cottonseed/canola/corn/palm oil)
- Titanium dioxide corn starch
- Sodium benzoate/BHT
- Cellulose (corn)
- Potassium sorbate/propyl or ethyl anything (corn)
So where do we go from here if all or almost all of our vitamins are totally contaminated?
Here are a few tips…
Avoid any supplement items from china. They tend to contain high levels of aluminum, lead, and arsenic. Items like green tea can also contain high levels of fluoride.
Do not buy grocery store vitamins.
I repeat.
These varieties are mass produced, artificially made, and not from real food, and are totally toxic concoctions that the body will not be able to utilize or assimilate.
Don’t buy “natural” minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, selenium, and zinc. You might as well eat rocks because these minerals are found in rocks, not in food. Minerals, in order to be absorbable and usable, must be plant-based. Once these “rock minerals” are processed through the root system of a plant, they are converted into usable minerals for the body.
Beware of any supplement marked “natural” or “food-based” as this is a synthetic coverup. By law, a vitamin marketed as natural only has to contain 10% natural, plant-derived ingredients and the other 90% can be synthetic. And remember, GMO corn is “food based.”
Even if your supplement is marked 100% organic, it may not be natural food at all. Again, thanks to labeling laws, an item only needs one carbon atom which broadens the range of food sources to materials like coal tar and wood pulp. Look for the food source to be listed.
Avoid membership club and large discount store brands like the plague. They are producing in mass, probably in China, and are very toxic!
Don’t waste your money on supplements that tout you only need them once a day. Since your body can only absorb so many nutrients at a time, supplementation needs to be spread out over the day.
Go with capsules. Tablets are extremely hard to break down and will more than likely end up being flushed down the toilet.
Go TOTALLY additive free. Look for one ingredient on the label.
Avoid cute gummies. There is nothing cute at all about their ingredient labels.
In short, save your hard-earned money on crappy vitamins and rechannel it into top quality organic whole foods. And, if you do supplement, look for the listed food source to make sure you are not being hoodwinked into buying another synthetic, garbage vitamin.
If the food source is not listed, set the bottle down and step away from the shelf.
Go with liquids and powders to avoid all the additives, toxic gelatin capsules, and tablets that you won’t break down anyway.
Look for vitamins and minerals from whole, real food. Organic superfood powders are a good alternative and are packed with nutrients.
Just make sure that your expensive whole food vitamin is not another tricky deception in fancy labeling.
Wait… Am I saying that whole food vitamins are deceptive in labeling and processing, too…? YES. But, that’s another blog.
Need help sorting this out? I understand and would love to chat with you. Let’ talk.
Dr. Lisa: Another great article!