Comment · Sat, June 18, 2022 · ND Owner
Why artificial colors?
Original post in this thread
ResponsiblePen3082 · 2 points
Firstly I'd like to thank the ND team for everything they do, high quality testing, unprecedented reliability and quality, and amazingly fast shipping(literally went from ordered to shipped within 1.5 hours, and received the order in 2 days. Even buying from Amazon they always deliver way ahead of estimated schedule)
That being said it shocked me to see the addition of artificial coloring(Blue 1) for my Apigenin bottle for the pills. I assume this helps them differentiate the pills in sorting in some way? That's the best explanation I can think of, it seems like an entirely useless thing to add and for most of us who are into supplements for health reasons, seems completely counterintuitive seeing as it's linked to all sorts of problems(mental/behavioral especially). I'm a little surprised to say the least coming from ND. I understand the addition of most additives and I know the team works hard to reduce and minimize them, but artificial coloring is a bit much, it's hard enough trying to avoid it in all of our daily foods and such.
Additionally the Sleep Support bottle looks to have colored capsules as well, but I see no colors listed in the ingredients. Is there a reason for…
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
I explained our position on the colorings recently in this thread:
We are talking insanely low amounts. They are meaningless. Where I would maybe be okay with concern is in foods; especially children's foods. You will get orders of magnitude more dyes when consuming foods. Like so insanely more that this might as well be two completely different topics. As you can see on that thread I posted, a capsule of our caffeine/L-theanine will contain 0.33795mg of coloring. We also generally don't go with the FDA on a lot of things. We go with the more strict EFSA and California regulations. I understand how some might not trust the FDA's recommendations on things, but we always use multiple sources to make our decisions. The EFSA says that the acceptable daily intake (ADI) for my body weight is 588mg of that red dye. So the numbers in our capsules are meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
As to why we use them, it's to help customers tell products apart. The big places that is necessary are like caffeine/L-theanine. We have customers that buy both ratios from us, and if they mix them up that means they might get double the caffeine they expect. This is why color coding the capsules makes sense. On the apigenin it's not so crucial, and I totally forgot we decided to do that on the 50mg dose ones. We can always do the next run in clear capsules if people would prefer that. It's not one where I would be adamant on the color coding being there. It's more a convenience thing on that product.
As for the sustainable packaging, we have already been discussing it for a bit. We hate waste, too. So at some point we might start offering an option for sustainable packaging if people want to choose that. It will cost more, so there will be an extra cost. I will be curious to see how many people select that option. We will likely test it out on a subset of products, like mushrooms or something. It's an unfortunate reality that most people are probably just going to select the cheaper option, though. Also, some stuff just needs to be in glass or plastic to stay stable. Glass sounds better on paper, but the carbon emissions from the extra shipping weight will offset any of that, not to mention the increase in shipping cost, which has gone CRAZY this year. So it is a balance we have to strike between everyone's wants. That can be tough sometimes.