What’s Lurking in your supplements

At SFL, we teach you to eat read the ingredient list of the food products you are considering purchasing to ensure you are eating real food, not chemicals. The same thing goes for supplements. There are a lot of poor quality supplements on the market that have cheap and unnecessary ingredients added to them. This guide is meant to help you when choosing supplements you may need to take. Your supplements should be CLEAN, just like your food!

Table of ingredients to avoid in supplements:

• Cellulose starch: Used as a filler, binder, and disintegrate. If made from corn, it will contain free glutamate (MSG).
• Corn starch: If it’s not labeled organic, it is typically from GMO corn and can cause allergic reactions.
• Microcrystalline cellulose: A cheap filler.
• Methylparaben: A known carcinogen.
• Silicone Dioxide: It is the main component of beach sand and used as a flow agent. It can hinder digestion and the absorption of other nutrients as well as deplete HCL.
• Triethyl citrate: A plasterizer.
• Titanium Dioxide: Used for color, toxic for the liver. Also used in paints, plastics, paper, inks, food, and cosmetics.
• Propy-paraben: Part of the paraben family of preservatives. Parabens mimic estrogen and can be hormone disruptors.
• Sodium metabisulfite: Preservative, a bleaching agent. It can irritate gastrointestinal system and the central nervous system.
• Anything ending in –ose: This is sugar (cellulose, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, lactose) Also, corn syrup, corn sugar, HFCS.
• Artificial sugars: Sucralose, aspartame, sorbitol.
• Poor quality oils: Sunflower oil, palm kernel oil, soybean oil.
• Food coloring: A few of the more common food coloring substances to look out for are FD&C Red No. 40 Aluminum Lake; FD&C Yellow No. 6 Lake; and FD&C Yellow No. 5 Lake (tartrazine).

Steps you can take:

• If you take vitamins, get them now and read the labels. Do you see any fillers or additives?
• Try to eat more foods that are rich in the vitamins you were previously taking.
• Opt for a whole food vitamin to supplement your extra nutritional needs.
• Discard any vitamins with fillers in them.