Meeting Label Claims Without Overdosing
Recent FDA regulations require that dietary supplement companies abide by good manufacturing practices to reassure consumers that the products they purchase are exactly “as advertised”.
At Maxx, we think the ruling makes microencapsulation technologies more important than ever, providing manufacturers with the ability to deliver products containing nutrients in the exact amounts claimed.
Microencapsulation not only protects nutrients from degradation – so that the amount added to a product formula remains intact throughout processing – it eliminates the need to apply overages, defined as the difference between what is formulated and what is on the label.
Supplemented ingredients, and those that are naturally occurring in foods, can exhibit significant changes during storage. Formulators typically add overages to make up for the inherent losses that occur during processing and sitting on shelves.
Supplement Label In 2008, Peter Berry Ottaway reported that in milk-based fortified drinks and multivitamin tablets, 30-45% more vitamin C is added to achieve a shelf life of 12 and 30 months for each product preparation respectively. Today, many manufacturers invest as much as 5x the necessary amount of a nutrient to meet the product requirement.
Microencapsulation eliminates this hit-or-miss approach to nutrient delivery, along with the need to overdose to meet label claims.