Have you ever wondered exactly what is in the food you’re eating or the supplements you’re taking? You’re not alone.
As the “clean label” movement gains momentum, consumers are questioning ingredients in products everywhere, from food to personal care to dietary supplements. And with good reason. There has been more in your food and dietary supplements than meets the label.
Recent examples include wood fiber, which qualifies as plant-based cellulose, used as filler in packaged Parmesan cheese. Or, how about hydrogenated oils? These are used in baked foods, processed foods, and dietary supplements. While the FDA might say these ingredients are safe to use, consumers are not buying it. Not to mention, companies have not always been honest in their labeling practices. For example, parmesan cheese is not “100% cheese” if it has been doctored with wood fiber!
4 Reasons People Want “Clean” Labels
- The clean label movement is driven largely by millennials, who are constantly questioning ingredients for a myriad of reasons
- Consumers with food allergies need to know for health reasons what’s in their food
- Food recalls have prompted consumers to push for greater food safety and transparency in the food supply chain
- Healthy eating, sustainable practices, Non-GMO, organic and local, are all reasons to want clean labels
Ultimately, consumers want to know if their food is free of contaminants, hormones, artificial coloring and flavors, chemicals, additives and any other unnecessary ingredients. This push translates to a desire for short, easy-to-read ingredient lists, with ingredients that are easy to recognize and understand.
Dietary Supplements
Not surprisingly, consumers are now looking at their dietary supplements. Connecting the dots from food as nutrition to dietary supplements as nutrition, they are asking the same questions: what’s in these supplements? But, the dietary supplement industry has been slower to respond. Companies have been happy to cost effectively pump out pills without offering details to ingredients. In particular, consumers are finding the “other” and “inactive ingredient” lists on supplement labels have been a place to hide questionable ingredients.
Are Liquid Vitamins The Solution To A Clean Label?
Liquid vitamins provide an opportunity to avoid unnecessary ingredients. Tespo’s vitamin and supplement line contains pure powdered vitamins made only from premium raw nutrients. You’ll find none of the extra fillers that are in most vitamin pills. Tespo’s powder formula gets converted into a liquid shot prior to consumption.
Learn more: So…. Why liquid vitamins, and why a dispenser?
“The use of ingredients such as magnesium stearate in traditional dietary supplements is one of the primary reasons we created Tespo,” says Ted Mills, CEO and co-founder of Tespo. Mills and Co-founder Jeff Linton watched as relatives with various health issues tried to take handfuls of supplements each day. But, what they discovered was that in addition to containing vitamins, these supplements also contained many unnecessary ingredients, such as magnesium stearate. These types of fillers are used as a flow agent to keep machinery from gumming up during the manufacturing process. This may help maintain cost-effective efficiencies in business, but it provides no health benefits to consumers.
Tespo was founded after discovering that these added ingredients offer no nutritional value. Ingredients such as titanium dioxide used in vitamins as a pigment, can potentially be harmful to our health, which is counterintuitive to taking dietary supplements. And the likes of magnesium stearate are thought to hinder the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
Learn more: Do your vitamins contain unnecessary fillers? What are they?
How Does Tespo Eliminate Vitamin Fillers?
“Because our delivery system uses water mixed with our formulas to provide a fresh, liquid dietary supplement, we can eliminate the use of unnecessary ingredients,” says Mills. “It was important to us to provide liquid supplement formulas with high quality, safe and clean ingredients. With the exception of using natural flavors to enhance the taste, we only use ingredients that your body needs. Nothing more, nothing less.”
If you’re looking for clean formulas to help you on your path to a “clean” healthy lifestyle, check out our line of vitamins and supplements. There are over 10 to choose from.