Magnesium Stearate, Cellulose and other moot additives: thoughts?

These are not "overlooked" ingredients. They are crucial ingredients to the formulation of certain things to ensure accuracy in manufacturing. We don't put anything in our products unless we absolutely have to. Trust me, I want nothing more than to never have anyone ask me about magnesium stearate and MCC again. However, the fact of the matter is that those are the safest and most effective things to ensure accuracy in encapsulation. Ask anyone that has used an auto or semi-auto encapsulation machine if they can formulate accurately without ever using a filler or excipient. They will laugh their ass off, because you can't. There is a filler or excipient in 90% of the capsules out there. Many brands just lie about it and leave it off the label. We have tested multiple of them claiming to use no filler or excipients, and they were still in there. Anyone actually running a capsule manufacturing operation knows the truth. There are some crystalline powders that will run fine on the machine with nothing else in there, and in those instances we don't put anything else. However, that's the exception to the rule, not the standard. Many powders stick to the machines. Many don't flow properly. Many don't compress properly in the capsules. Many don't have enough give, so when you close the capsules it cracks the shell. Many powders stick to themselves and act like clay. Some are amorphous and flow in uneven amounts and rates. To ensure that each capsule has the target fill amount, and to ensure that each capsule is consistent with each other, sometimes you have to use an excipient to achieve that. There are certain products where you just have zero choice not to.

Trust me, we have tried everything. If I had an alternative that worked just as well I would use it. That's not because magnesium stearate is bad. It's because all these dumbass jabronis online have written pseudoscientific articles making people scared of it. I would just as happily leave it out if we could to avoid people freaking out. However, when we try to, or we try alternatives to it, we get inconsistent and inaccurate fills. The science behind it is clear, though. It's literally magnesium and stearic acid... You consume both everyday in many foods you eat, and in MUCH larger quantities than you would ever get in a supplement capsule. The average intake of stearic acid from foods is 5.7 g/day (8.1% of total fat) for women and 8.2 g/day (8.4% of total fat) for men. The amount of magnesium stearate in a formulation is usually 0.5-2% to get the excipient properties you need. So let's say we are talking about our Cognizin capsules. Those are 250mg of Cognizin, but the total fill weight of the capsule is 262mg on average. We have a 5% overage on the Cognizin to ensure nothing is ever short, but there is loss in the manufacturing process. In this batch, the average fill of Cognizin per capsule is 257.5mg. This means there is 2.5mg of magnesium stearate per capsule. Magnesium stearate is roughly 96% stearic acid. This means that in each capsule of Cognizin contains 2.4mg of stearic acid. A steak has roughly 1.1% stearic acid. The average steak size is 400g. This means that an average steak will have 4.4 GRAMS of stearic acid. That's 1,760 times as much stearic acid as one of our L-theanine capsules.

* Stearic acid in one of our L-theanine capsules: 2.5mg

* Stearic acid in the average steak: 4,400mg

* Amount of stearic acid in a steak compared to our L-theanine capsule: 1,760X

The amount of stearic acid in a capsule used as an excitement is meaningless. Obviously the magnesium is even more so. Moreover, stearic acid is healthy for you. So even if it was in a larger amount, it is good for you. Magnesium is also good for you. Neither of them have any reason to be concerned over.

So what about MCC? Well let's look at L-theanine capsules. Those are 200mg of L-theanine per capsule. The total fill weight of those is 321mg. The amount of L-theanine in each capsule was 205mg, on average. The amount of MCC used per capsule is about 110mg. The amount of MCC used in flour for baking is 1%. An average slice of white bread will contain roughly 17g of flour. This means that each slice of white bread will contain roughly 170mg of MCC. Shredded cheese also has roughly 1% of MCC. The average serving size of shredded cheese is 27 grams. This means each serving of shredded cheese contains roughly 270mg of MCC. You can see how much of these things you are consuming everyday in higher amounts. Even so, MCC has nutritional properties and benefits.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.carbpol.2017.04.021

So you can see that neither ingredient is cause for harm. In fact, they are beneficial. They are also in very low amounts in dietary supplement products compared to normal food products. They are also not moot additives. They are crucial ingredients to the accuracy, precision, and consistency of encapsulated products.