As the raft of EU legislation casts an increasingly gargantuan cloud over the food supplement industry, it’s become difficult for even the most optimistic proponent of natural medicine to find a silver lining. Nevertheless, in perhaps the ultimate ‘holistic irony’, these unnecessary restrictions to safe nutrient forms, potencies and ingredients could (and should) be the perfect catalyst for the supplement industry to re-invent itself.

While the recent ‘ramping up’ of absorption technologies and other innovative production tools could be seen as a step in the right direction, a true re-invention requires a re-evaluation of the very paradigm in which we, as manufacturers, formulate our products.…

Nutraceuticals have, quite rightly, carved themselves a seemingly permanent niche in the future of healthcare. But is it possible that the food supplement industry has taken its collective eye off the signs which would lead to an even brighter future. . . an even more profound impact on health and wellbeing? Based on my 36 years in this industry, I’d have to say that the answer is undeniably YES.

In an industry which has spent twenty years severely hampered by the spectre of destructive legislation and saturated with ‘hand-me-downs’ from a broadly dysfunctional American supplement sector, what’s needed is more than just new products and new technologies.…

In my 36 years in the supplement industry, including more than a decade as Technical Director of Europe’s market-leading supplement company, I was extremely fortunate to experience first-hand the best that supplementation could offer. So, four years ago, when I decided to develop my own range of supplements, I saw no point in merely providing another choice of standard high-potency supplements. There were plenty of excellent companies already doing that. Instead, my interest was to look in great depth into the limitations of nutritional and botanical supplements and somehow find a way to overcome those limitations.…