Long-term review of Erinamax?

Because the number is meaningless without better testing. You can spike polysaccharides to make things look better, and many brands do. Even beta-glucans sucks as a measure of quality in the current way things are measured. Those can be spiked easily, and are often across the industry. Just take something like our 50% beta-glucan yeast extract and mix it in. BAM, beta-glucan numbers go up. You can get pure yeast beta-glucan as well, and add that in. Nobody would know. The Megazyme number would go up, so people would think it is better. However, it's just spiked with yeast. It's just the best measure we have right now, as long as you know there are not adulterants using other orthogonal testing. You can see the spiking with other methodologies, which we use to ID our raw materials. However, nobody else in the industry is doing that. They just do the Megazyme testing and put the number they get on the results. We have been working for many years to solve these issue, but the chemistry is a pain in the ass. Enzyme chemistry can be very difficult, especially to weed out spiking. However, we might finally have a solution soon.

We are working with Waters on some new methodologies that will solve this issue. It's called size exclusion chromatography with multi angle light scattering detection. It will allow us to separate grain-based polysaccharides from mushroom-based ones, along with separating alpha and beta glucans, giving us a much more accurate picture of things. This will be a chromatographic technique, allowing us to physically separate polysaccharides from each other before measuring them. This is accurate chemistry. The current Megazyme testing is not chromatographic. It uses enzymes to break down different polysaccharides/glucans, then measure using UV-VIS, then calculate the numbers based off of the difference. You have to have very specific enzymes that only break down specific thing, and you have to make assumptions based on the matrices of the samples. As I said, it's the best we have right now, but nowhere near what I would consider good enough. Once we get some more accurate methodologies in place, and can really start separating all these polysaccharides from each other, then we will be able to more confidently set specifications and put our name behind the numbers.