Private Label Vitamins: A Complete Guide For The Beginners

Private Label Vitamins: A Complete Guide For The Beginners

In October 2016, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that portrayed that more than one-half of Americans take herbal or dietary supplements daily, making the private label vitamins industry a booming one.

Nutrition Business Journal published a report in 2018 that showed that the private label vitamins industry is reaching $128 billion yearly worldwide with sales. More than 31 percent of those sales take place in the United States alone.

Section 3 of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 defines the term “dietary supplement” as a product (other than tobacco) intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients:

(A) “a vitamin;

(B) a mineral;

(C) a herb or other botanical;

(D) an amino acid;

(E) a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake; or

(F) a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any ingredient described in clause (A), (B), (C), (D), or (E).”

So, dietary supplements include vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, and enzymes. You can find nutritional supplements on the market in tablets, capsules, soft gels, gelcaps, powders, and liquids.

These supplements are available in stores throughout the United States, as well as on the Internet. They are labeled as “dietary supplements” and include:

• vitamin and mineral products,
• “botanical” or “herbal” products. These are available in many forms and might include plant materials, algae, macroscopic fungi, etcetera.
• Amino acid products. Amino acids are called the building blocks of proteins and play a vital role in metabolism.
• Enzyme supplements. Enzymes are complex proteins that help to speed up biochemical reactions.

People all over the world use dietary supplements for a wide variety of reasons. Some wish to replace it for dietary restrictions, medical conditions or to act as an additive to their existing diet to replenish the need for the vitamins and minerals they cannot achieve. Other people use them to boost energy or even to get a good night’s sleep. Prenatal and Postnatal women use vitamin supplements to replenish that extra need, whereas postmenopausal women use them to counter the sudden drop in estrogen levels.

It is advisable to consult with a certified dietician or a medical professional before taking any dietary supplements since they cause side effects and substantial biological effects. You might even put yourself in harm’s way if you have a pre-existing medical condition and you take a dietary supplement that badly reacts with your body’s internal system.

It is also wise to remember that dietary supplements are not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or alleviate the effects of any health condition or disease. They can, at most, help you lead a healthier and safer life by boosting your immunity. Still, if you have a medical condition, the dietary supplement is not the medicine for any such medical condition.

1.1. Some Common Private Label Vitamins are:

1. Calcium
2. Echinacea
3. Fish Oil
4. Ginseng
5. Glucosamine and
6. Chondroitin Sulphate
7. Garlic
8. Vitamin D
9. St. John’s Wort
10. Saw Palmetto
11. Ginkgo
12. Green Tea

2. ATTRIBUTES OF PRIVATE LABEL VITAMINS:

2.1. Benefits:

As has been already mentioned, private label vitamins are not any magic medicine or cure for any medical condition or disease. However, private label vitamins do come with their own set of benefits.

Daily, our body requires all kinds of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients to keep up a stable and healthy state and replenish our immune system from regular wear and tear. From our food intake and balanced diet alone, it is challenging to get all the essential nutrients. Private Label Vitamins cannot replace your diet or food intake; instead, they are an additive to your diet. Taking private label vitamins along with your regular diet can help to provide adequate amounts of essential nutrients.

For example, vitamin D and vitamin C help keep bones strong and healthy and reduce bone defects; reduce the risk factor of specific congenital disabilities by folic acid; People with heart disease lead a healthier life with Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils. In age-related macular degeneration (AMD), vision loss is slowed down by certain supplements like vitamins C and E, zinc, copper, lutein, and zeaxanthin (known as AREDS).

As long as you are well-informed and use your private label vitamins responsibly, these vitamins can help considerably lead a healthy life. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, supporting sports-related performance, and supporting the immune system are a few countable benefits of private label vitamins.

While private label vitamins are for everyone irrespective of gender, age, or race, they have been essentially vitalizing in pregnant women, older people, and people with food allergies or restricted diets.

Pregnant women: Pregnant women are strongly advised to regularly consume 400 mg of folate, obtained from food intake or vitamin supplements, as folate safeguards against any congenital disabilities. Folate is a sort of Vitamin B which is essential to produce genetic materials, including DNA. It is made available in various prenatal vitamins, and some also contain iron, calcium, potassium as an added benefit.

Ensure reading the labels with due care before using any vitamin supplements if you are pregnant or are nursing; not all vitamin supplements are safe for pregnant women, nursing mothers, or children.

Elder people: Older people need far more vitamins, minerals, and nutrients than younger people do. Some of their regular needs include calcium and Vitamin D for bone strength, Vitamin B6 to improve red blood cells formation, and Vitamin B12 to maintain nerves and red blood cells.

People with food allergies or Restricted Diets: Some people are lactose intolerant, others have peanut allergies, whereas some others have skin allergies induced from a variety of food ingredients, and some people are vegan. Cutting off meat from your diet or excluding the allergic elements also means cutting off the essential nutrition in those ingredients. Private Label Vitamins take care of that for you by adding to your diet to provide you with the food you were missing out on.

2.2. Risks:

Bear in mind that even after taking your private label vitamins as directed and according to the consultation of a doctor or certified dietician, the risks are low but not non-existent. Side effects from vitamin supplements include but are not exclusive to upset stomach, gas, heartburn, heartache, or bloating.

If you are, in fact, not following the directions of use or ignoring the consultation of professionals, vitamin supplements can cause several adverse health effects. Side effects of not using vitamin supplements responsibly include nausea, bleeding, severe headache, and in some cases, liver damage too.

For example, overuse of Vitamin A can cause headaches and liver damage, reduce bone strength, and cause congenital disabilities in newborns. In contrast, an excess of iron in your blood level can lead to nausea, vomiting and may also damage the liver, among other organs. A lot of Vitamin D can cause harm to your kidneys. Excess calcium stores in your arteries, clogging up your blood flow, overuse of Kava herb can cause liver damage. Soy products can increase the blood estrogen level beyond healthy limits.

A Tufts University research published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine (April 9, 2019) found that daily doses of more than 1,000 milligrams (mg) of calcium can push to a higher risk of death from cancer.

2.3. Regulation:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States is not authorized to review dietary supplement products for threat and effectiveness before they are marketed and labeled. The regulation comes afterward to check for the quality, safety, and other issues with the finished product.

Some of the regulations observed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding a finished vitamin supplement product are:

• Every vitamin supplement, including private label vitamins, have to be labeled as either “dietary supplement” or with a term that showcases the description of the product’s dietary component(s) for the word “dietary” (e.g., “iron supplement” or “herbal supplement” or “iron supplement”).
• According to the FDA’s satisfaction, vitamin supplements have to be proven safe before being released to the market for public use.
• According to the law, there is no obligation on the part of the manufacturer or seller to prove to the FDA that the claim is correct or truthful regarding what it claims to be before it appears on the product.
• Generally, FDA’s role with a dietary supplement product begins after the product enters the marketplace. The ideal time is the agency’s initial opportunity to take action against a specific product that poses a significant or unreasonable threat of illness or injury or is misbranded or unadulterated.
• Federal Trade Commission enjoys the jurisdiction to govern over Dietary supplement advertising, including ads broadcast on radio and television.
• Once a vitamin supplement is on the market, FDA has safety monitoring responsibilities. They monitor any reports of serious adverse effects due to a private label vitamin supplement product and voluntary adverse effects reported by consumers or health care professionals. Be it product labels on your private label vitamin supplement, product information, package inserts, any accompanying literature, or Internet promotion; all come under the review of the FDA.
• Any serious adverse side effects reported to the Private label vitamin supplement companies by consumers or health care professionals must, in turn, be reported to the FDA.
• Private label vitamin supplement companies do not have to get the FDA’s approval before producing or selling these products.
• Private label vitamin supplement companies cannot claim to treat, diagnose, cure, or alleviate the effects of any health conditions or diseases. It is illegal.

Private label vitamin supplement companies also have to abide by the limitations imposed by the FDA on oversight of claims in vitamin supplement labeling.

2.4. Quality:

The FDA has established Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) that Private label vitamin supplement companies must follow to help ensure their vitamin supplements’ identity, purity, strength, and composition. These GMPs can be helpful by providing that a private label vitamin supplement company does not formulate a product with the wrong ingredient (or too much or too little of the correct ingredient), which reduces the chance of contamination or improper packaging and labeling a supplement product. The FDA periodically inspects facilities that manufacture private label vitamin supplements.

Several independent third-party organizations offer quality testing to display a seal of quality assurance that indicates the product was manufactured correctly, has the ingredients that it claims on the packaging, and does not contain any harmful or toxic levels of contaminants. These seals do not, however, guarantee that a product is safe or effective.

Some third-party organizations that offer quality testing include:

• ConsumerLab.com,
• National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) International (for Sports-related supplements),
• US Pharmacopeia (USP).

2.5. Safety:

Millions of Americans responsibly consume a whole array of multivitamins and do not experience side effects.

As already discussed, any vitamin supplement can cause several side effects. The risk is never non-existent, and even after cautious consumption, the risk factor is only ever low but never none. The side effects from vitamin supplements can arise if you take them at high doses or replace them for your prescribed medicines or take a variety of accessories simultaneously.

Combining supplements can have dangerous and life-threatening consequences. For example, St. John’s wort can speed up the breakdown of various medicines (birth control pills, chemotherapy medication, HIV or AIDs medication, heart medications, and transplant drugs) and, as a result, can reduce their effectiveness altogether. A study has also revealed that combining St. John’s wort with an anti-depressant drug can cause adverse consequences, like an increase in serotonin which is a chemical in the brain, the effect of which can be life-threatening.

Additionally, vitamin supplements such as Vitamins C and E can also reduce the effectiveness of cancer chemotherapy. Some vitamin supplements cause unwanted effects before, during, or after surgery. Such as an increase in the impact of anesthetics administered.

Many vitamin supplements were recalled from the market due to microbial, pesticide, and heavy metal contamination. Or because of the absence of a dietary ingredient claimed to be in the product or presence of more or less nutritional ingredients than the FDA permitted.

2.6. Ingredients used in Private Label Vitamin:

According to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, the FDA can take action to remove products from the market once it has been established that such products are adulterated (the product is unsafe) or misbranded (the labeling is false or misleading, i.e., the product does not contain the ingredients that the labeling claims to).

Vitamins can be derived from plant extracts or animal products or produced synthetically in a laboratory. There is no chemical difference between purified vitamins derived from plant extracts or animal products and those produced synthetically in a laboratory. Different laboratories worldwide use various techniques to create synthetic vitamins, as there are many other chemical reactions to obtain the desired result. Most companies make commercial vitamins from synthetic laboratory reactions cheaper and easier to produce than natural derivatives.

The most recommended ingredients in vitamin supplements are:

• Vitamin A: derived from fish liver oil. Chemically, acetone synthesizes vitamin A.
• Vitamin C: It is derived from citrus fruits or rose hips. Chemically, Kito acid can synthesize vitamin C.
• Vitamin D: derived from the flesh of fatty fish and fish liver oils. Vitamin D synthesis is a multi-stage process that yields the final product as vitamin D3.
• Vitamin B12: It is naturally present in foods of animal origin, including fish, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products. The synthetic form of vitamin B12 is cyanocobalamin, which can be converted to methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin.
• Magnesium: naturally occurring in pumpkin, spinach, artichoke, soybeans, beans, tofu, brown rice, or nuts. Chemically can be extracted from calcium hydroxide by adding it to seawater to form magnesium hydroxide precipitate.
• Calcium: naturally occurring in fortified cereals, milk, cheese, and yogurt, salty fish, broccoli and kale, nuts and nut butter and, beans and lentils. Salt of calcium can be derived from fossilized coral reefs.
• Iron: naturally occurring in nuts, beans, vegetables, and fortified grain products. Chemically, iron can obtain it from ferrous and ferric iron salts, such as ferrous sulfate, ferrous gluconate, ferric citrate, and ferric sulfate.
• Folate: naturally derived from dark leafy greens, avocado, beans, and citrus fruits. Bacteria from the substrate, para-amino-benzoic acid (PABA), synthesizes folic acid.

Sometimes vitamin tablets or capsules are combined with some additive that aids in manufacturing or assimilating the vitamin pill into the bloodstream. Such as:

• Forgive the proper vitamin bulk and act as filler: Microcrystalline cellulose, lactose, calcium, or maltodextrin are added.
• As a lubricant and flow agent: Magnesium stearate or stearic acid and silicon dioxide are added.
• As a disintegration agent: Modified cellulose gum or starch are added.
• Vitamin tablets or capsules are also usually coated to give the pills a particular color or flavor. The coatings are mostly made from a cellulose base. The polished appearance comes from the additional layer of carnauba wax.
• One may add herbs of various kinds too.

Private Label Vitamin companies also ensure that the ingredients and manufacturing processes follow the guidelines to make halal, kosher, vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO products.

2.7. Manufacturing Process:

The manufacturing process of private label vitamins include the various stages:

2.7.1. Preliminary check:

Raw vitamins and other ingredients come from a third-party distributor. Although they sometimes come with a Certificate of Analysis, the private label vitamin supplement manufacturer still tests all the raw materials for identity, potency, and bacterial contamination.

2.7.2. Pre-blending:

After the testing stage, the raw materials are then turned into a fine powder. If the ingredients are not finely dusted, they are then run through a mill to be finely granulated and grounded.

2.7.3. Wet granulation:

Particle size becomes very important for vitamin tables in determining how well the formula will run through the tablet machine. A wet granulation step is necessary when the distributor’s mill’s raw vitamins are not the appropriate size for tableting.

For the process, the vitamin powder is mixed with various cellulose particles and wetted, then dried in a dryer. The dried chunks are then sized by running through a mill.

2.7.4. Weighing and mixing:

After all the vitamin ingredients are ready, a worker weights them out on a scale and dumps all the ingredients into a mixer.

2.7.5. Encapsulating machine:

After the mixture gets approved by laboratory technicians, workers take it to the encapsulating machine and dump it inside a hopper. The vitamin mixture goes through one hopper while the other hopper holds whole gelatin capsules. The capsules obtained are broken into halves by the machine, and then the top part of the capsules is pressed down onto the filled bottoms.

2.7.6. Polishing and inspection:

The filled vitamin capsules are then run through a polishing machine, where the vitamins are circulated on a conveyor belt through a series of soft brushes. Any excess dust is removed from the exterior surface of the vitamins by the soft brushes. The polished capsules are poured onto an inspection table where all sides of the vitamin are visible for the inspector to see for the inspector to remove any pills which are too long or split or dimpled, etcetera.

2.7.7. Tableting:

Vitamin tablets are made in a tableting machine. The pressure inside the machine compresses vitamin powder into a compact tablet. The tablets are then placed onto a vibrating belt which helps to remove any loose dust particles and moved to the coating area.

2.7.8. Coating:

Coating a vitamin tablet makes it easier to slow, masks any unpleasant taste, and gives it a pleasant color as well. Some have an enteric coating, a kind of pH-sensitive chemical coating that can resist gastric acid. Usually, tablets of the same size and shape are coated in two different colors for identification.

2.7.9. packaging:

The packaging is done in several steps and via several different machines. The vitamins pass through several devices, which are devoid of human touches. The tablets or capsules fall into a bottle to be sealed, capped, labeled, and wrapped, ready for distribution.

2.8. Certifications:

The testing of finished vitamins takes place for product certifications and transparent labeling.

Some third-party certifications are:

1. NSF International
2. Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)
3. Dietary Supplement Verification Program
4. Underwriters Laboratories (UL)
5. Informed Sports
6. National Nutritional Foods Association
7. Quality Assurance International (QAI)
8. Food and Drug Association (FDA) Registered Facility
9. US Department of Agriculture (USDA), etcetera.

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