Toxic Ingredients Widespread in Vitamins
& Nutritional Supplements Today

Check the labels on your vitamins and nutritional supplements – do they list magnesium stearate or stearic acid as ingredients?  “Natural” flavors?  Sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate?  Stearates have been shown to suppress the immune system.  Natural flavors is the new term used for MSG, or monosodium-glutamate, a known brain neurotoxin.  Sodium benzoate is carcinogenic.  Stearates are used in many capsules and tablets; “Natural” flavors in lots of protein drinks, and sodium benzoate as a preservati ve in many liquid vitamin supplements or juice drinks. 

Does this mean that you should never take vitamins with any of these fillers?  Well, we think everyone needs to decide for him or herself what kinds of things they want to put into their body.  But the problem is that lots of people take a lot of vitamins that that they think are 100% natural and 100% good for them, when that is simply not the case!

Take magnesium stearate, for example, if you try to find a supplement without stearates, you may have a hard time finding one!  So if you can’t find a particular vitamin or supplement that you have determined you need without stearates, maybe you will still want to take it for the short term to boost your nutrient level.  Or maybe you will decide it’s better to try harder to get that nutrient from the foods you eat, perhaps from superfoods, like greens or seaweeds.

Toxic Irradiation Byproducts and Pesticide Residues:  
Common in Vitamins and Nutritional Supplements

It is also common to find ingredients in vitamins and nutritional supplements that have been irradiated, fumigated or contaminated with pesticide residues.  In fact, up to 70% of raw materials that are imported into the US today are irradiated.  This irradiation process creates toxic radiation byproducts, that remain in the ingredients that you ingest. Besides the excipients listed above, other common additives to avoid include silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide.

Toxic Fillers Often Used to Reduce the Cost of Nutritional Supplements, including Vitamins

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an excipient as:   a usually inert substance (such as gum arabic or starch) that forms a vehicle (as for a drug).  The International Pharmaceutical Council of the Americas states that “excipients are substances other than the pharmacologically active ingredients which are included in the manufacturing process or are contained in a finished product.  In many products, excipients make up the bulk of the total dosage form.” 

Excipients are used in nutritional supplements and vitamins for many reasons, as fillers, lubricants, colors that liven up the product, preservatives, sweeteners, and  coatings and glazes that make it easier to swallow.  Many of the excipients, especially the lubricants, are used to make it easier and cheaper for the company to manufacture. 

One example is talc, a suspected carcinogen, that is used in many capsules for vitamins and other nutritional supplements today when they are manufactured with a high-speed encapsulator.  It makes the ingredients flow faster and therefore it is much cheaper to make when the talc is included.  But over the long term, taking that vitamin may very well be detrimental to your health.

So Buyer Beware!

More about Stearates.
More about Sodium Benzoate.