| Abigail McShinsky | August 7, 2018 |

Imagine this:

You’ve spent hours over the last couple of months in the supplement aisle of your local natural product store. You’ve been reading labels, asking questions, and doing research, and you FINALLY found THE product that fits your needs. Even better, once you start taking it, IT WORKS! Months go by, and you repurchase your holy grail, taking it faithfully every day... until today, that is, when you head into the store, scoop your beloved formula off the shelf, roll it over to scan the label and see the worst – they changed it! NOOOOOOOO!!!!

Does this scenario sound familiar? Did you get annoyed just reading about it? If so, I’m with you!

As a manufacturer, however, we are sometimes put in the tricky position here at MegaFood of having to change a beloved product. It never feels good, but when it happens, it’s always for a good reason. To help take the sting out of your supplement sorrow, we’re detailing two of the most common reasons your favorite MegaFood product may have changed:

Common reason #1: Sustainability

When you work with fresh whole foods (like we do here at MegaFood), you play by Mother Nature’s rules. Several months ago, we were faced with just such a situation when we learned of the trouble facing saw palmetto plants in the US. Turns out, saw palmetto isn’t grown in a greenhouse, but instead wild-crafted, meaning that availability of the plant is reliant on the weather and growing season. AND, as it also turns out, it grows in the southern parts of the country – the parts hit hardest by the violent weather (I’m looking at you, Irma). Saw palmetto plants were decimated.

While we could continue to source this ingredient, we couldn’t do so organically or ethically – the crops need time to rebuild, and we wanted to give them just that. As a result, saw palmetto slipped from the supplement facts from MegaFood products.

This is all to say that while we use plants to nourish our health, we need to ensure their health and survival, and decreasing the supply chain pressure on this plant helps it recover.

Common reason #2: Purity

Have you scanned down the side of your MegaFood bottle lately? Lots of seals to be found (of the purity persuasion, not the sea critter). These certification seals are one of the most important aspects of a MegaFood formula, detailing the lengths we go to ensure a pure product. This means we ask a lot from the ingredients that we put in our products, and they can’t always live up to our high, high standards.

A recent example is the bacopa found in our products, such as Daily Energy Nutrient Booster Powder™. Bacopa is a gorgeous ayurvedic herb that supports cognitive function*, and it makes a great addition to energy and focus formulas – when it passes its classes, that is. Unfortunately for our products, we’ve had a hard time finding bacopa that isn’t harboring traces of the herbicides and pesticides we test for. In fact, 5 different batches from our supply partners failed our testing. Given that we test for over 125 different herbicides and pesticides, we were asking a lot, and it just couldn’t deliver. Taking the herbicide and pesticide certification seal off our labels was a non-starter, so we did the next best thing and removed the bacopa. In this case, we increased beetroot to ensure the function of the product remained the same. It’s still a bummer – for the right reasons, though!

While we know it’s never ideal when a beloved product gets changed around, we work hard to ensure we only do it when absolutely necessary, with the health of you, your family, and our planet in mind.

Have questions on a specific formulation? Reach out to our Customer Experience team at 800-848-2542, or chat us online!

*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.