What Our Food Scientist Won't Buy at the Supplement Store w/ Ruston Pack

0:00Welcome to the Just Ingredients podcast. I'm Cara Lynn, and here we dive deep into the journey of healing and wellness. If you're ready to learn, feel empowered, and take charge of your health, you're in the right place. Welcome back to the show. Today we have our food scientist on the show, and you guys loved his last episode about natural flavors and where those really come from. And so he is back on the show today to answer a lot of questions. So welcome back to the show, Rustin. Thanks, Carl, and it's good to be back. Well, it's always fun having you. Why don't you tell my listeners, though, first a little bit about yourself and your background and maybe how you came to Just Ingredients.

0:41My educational background is in chemistry. I studied analytical, physical, even nuclear chemistry, as well as biochemistry. I was really passionate about just interactions between molecules, learning how everything interacts together. I also had a passion for nutrition as well. I thought eventually I would get into maybe more like chemical engineering or mining industry. But yeah, my first job out of college, it was somebody who wanted to create liposomes. And so I actually didn't have a lot of experience in that particular thing, but I did have background in research. And so that was my focus for the first few years out of college was building hydrocolloid systems and being able to nanoencapsulate different things.

1:25Liposomes are interesting because a lot of supplements like glutathione, they're super good. They're the master antioxidant, right? But there's the problem. You have to go through the GI tract. And the GI tract, it's... Destroys the glutathione. Yeah. I mean, you've got proteases. You've got, you know, super high acid systems. So, yeah, it rips everything apart. And that's what it does its job. It tries to make sure that pathogens and your food is broken down. So that's how I got into formulating and food science. Well, we should say really quick about glutathione, though. That's why you want a liposomal glutathione.

1:58So it protects the glutathione through the acid, through the digestive tract. I like to compare it to like a really miniature fat water balloon that has like a water core. And that's where it's able to encapsulate the glutathione. and it can bypass the GI tract entirely and then be absorbed into the gut lining. So through my research, I found different ways, different sizes of liposomes, different ways to increase encapsulation efficiency. And that's the thing, like that's like liposomes. That's one of those catchwords that, oh, we have liposomes. Great. Like what's the encapsulation efficiency?

2:31What's the shelf life? What's the Oswald ripening? Like, is this a shelf stable product? And that's why we're so glad you're at Just Ingredients because you know so much about making supplements. But should we say why you even came to Just Ingredients? Yeah, so I'd worked for a bunch of different brands in co-manufacturing, and I helped them develop different systems. Some that I was not really like their biggest fans and some that like I truly believed in their mission and they did things the right way. Yeah, Karlyn was one of my clients. I loved working with her. I love the novel approach. It's crazy.

3:02It's a novel approach, but it's really about doing things the way they were done 100 years ago, right? Yeah. Back then it was, hey, we want our crop to last a little bit longer. Okay, we have our grain silos. We could add it there. How do we fix it with other things? They made fermentation for alcohol and cheese and yogurt and salt preserved meat. But what about all these other foods? And a lot of it is about just literally just drying out foods. And, you know, food science has gone so much beyond that. We're at the point where we've missed the mark. We're not focusing on making food last longer and be shelf stable.

3:37we're thinking how can this be hyper palatable almost like an addiction to gambling or social media how can we make people eat this bag of cheetos or or whatever and be addicted no slander to cheetos but and want to keep eating it over and over right so that that's where food scientists are now like if you think about the preservation systems we have in food they work right like have you ever seen those tiktok videos of a mcdonald's hamburger that somebody's been keeping for five or 10 years. It's crazy. And then they're still fine. The crazy thing is nutritionally, they probably still have a lot of the same nutrition because those antimicrobials, those preservatives are working so well, no biological life wants to touch them.

4:18I'm sure they're dry as everything, you know, they're not hermetically sealed or anything, but that's where the food industry is. How do we make things more like McDonald's? How do we make things more like Coca-Cola? How do we make things last longer and be addictive is what food scientists are working on. And, you know, you have a lot fewer recalls when you, you know, scorch earth, your food, right? If there's no nutritional content there anymore, if there's no bioactive compounds that are helpful, nothing's going to grow, right? Which it's kind of like salting the earth, in my opinion. So you're at Just Ingredients.

4:50You help us with a ton. You make sure all our dosing on supplements is efficacious. You make sure our supplements are the best out there. You help with flavoring food and... Yeah. So ultimately, you hired me for quality and compliance. And I remember we were doing a TikTok reel, which was following a viral trend, basically explain what you do to a group of kids. And I always say I make sure the food is safe. That's my main job. But yeah, you've let me work more on like the research side because you appreciate my background in supplement and food development. So wherever I can, I look for studies.

5:26I look for ingredients. I have a pretty extensive supplier network. So that's what I do at Just Ingredients. Yeah, it's been fun having you and we've been making a ton of new products. So many new products. And I'm excited for a lot of them that are coming out. Okay, I want to talk about a lot of things that are trendy out there, some myths out there, lots of different things. But I first want to start with gummies. So a lot of people keep asking me to make creatine gummies. And I'm a little hesitant because of all the things that I've learned from you about creatine gummies. So let's just talk about gummies.

5:57Like, what is the problem with them? Yeah, who doesn't love gummies? Like beyond the sugar content, I love fruit snacks, right? And that's essentially what we're doing is we're making Flintstone vitamins for grownups, right? Gummies taste good and they can be the right answer with certain nutrients that we want to encapsulate. The problem with gummies is unlike a dry powder, which, you know, when we have supplements, we always make sure we put a desiccant or an oxygen absorber in there. And that's because the two biggest things for life are what? Water and oxygen. That can be a good thing, but it also can be like a double-edged sword.

6:33Water and oxygen are not good for stability. Like they're great for biology, and that could also help with microbial growth, which we're trying to always eliminate. We always want to make our stuff shelf stable. But even at a molecular level, a lot of compounds in an acidic or aqueous, a water environment, they can degrade in a water environment. And from a supplement standpoint, that makes it very hard because unlike foods, supplements are required at the end of the shelf life, whether it's 18 months, two years. Technically, you could make a supplement that has a 10-year shelf life if you wanted, as long as you have the data to back it up.

7:14But you want to make sure that that potency is there. When you print out a label, that's essentially a contract that you're making with the customer that you're getting at least that amount. And I say at least because there's always going to be an overage. You're always going to want to build in a buffer just in case there's any degradation or in case for any reason the mixture wasn't completely homogenous. So the problem with gummies is it just accelerates all those degradation pathways. Something that's in a capsule, you might need 15 % or 20 % overage, and we could put it in a shelf life study, and, you know, there might be 5 % overage at the end still, and that'd be great.

7:55In a gummy, certain compounds really degrade quickly. Okay, let's review this for everybody. So gummies have water in them. That's what makes them gummy, like with gelatin probably. So water, oxygen, water and oxygen are the two things that start degrading the supplements over time. And so you're saying that when creatine is in the gummies due to the water, it can degrade over time. Absolutely. So, you know, we eat creatine in our diet. We get about a gram or two per pound of like red meat and to a lesser extent with other meats. We have it in our muscles naturally. It's a bioactive compound and it's constantly being changed from creatine to creatinine.

8:37And if you ever get a blood panel, you'll look and creatinine is actually one of the byproducts of creatine. And sometimes it can show, or at least it can be a signal to your doctor that, hey, your kidneys might be in trouble. It's just a waste byproduct and it's a signal. It's really useless if it's in a gummy. If you put five grams of creatine in five gummies, you know, you get one gram each. After a year, you're looking at maybe 200 milligrams total. And is this because of the water in the gummies? Yeah, it's the water. It could also be affected a little bit by the pH. A lot of fruit flavors have some acids in them to make them tart and tasty.

9:14I actually had a client before you and they wanted to lean on my liposomal research and they said oh wouldn't it be cool like without any validation for would it actually be beneficial but they said wouldn't it be cool to have a liposomal creatine and I was like I mean we could do that like it's a small enough molecule that within a hundred nanometer liposome we could we can make that work but I told him I said the water activity which the water activity is how much unbound water there is So like in honey, like a lot of the water is bound, but in a soda, it's pretty much all unbound water. Like if I crack this open and if I came back in a week, this can would be completely empty.

9:55That's because it's unbound. But I said in this type of system, we would need, and I did some quick calculations based on our stability on it. I said we would need just for a year shelf life, we can't do the two year shelf life, but for a year we would need a 3x overage. He wanted five grams. And he's like, well, what if we go to three grams and you just put nine grams of creatine in there? So in this situation, this product is still out there. It's sold at Target. Yeah, this product is still out there. If you look at the date and if it's fresh, you could get eight grams of creatine, eight or potentially nine grams.

10:29But if you get it close to that one year to the end of expiration, you're looking at six grams of creatinine and about three grams of creatine. So it's just a little bit more work for your kidneys to do. Interesting. Okay, so that's why there's so much noise out there on TikTok, Instagram about creatine gummies is because the creatine is degrading. So people put in five grams at the very beginning, but after a year, they go and test these gummies and they're down to like one gram. And gummies in particular, in order to get the gelatin to harden and everything to solubilize, you have to heat it up, right?

11:02There are a couple things. Heat, UV light, water, acid, oxygen. These are all things that degrade various vitamins and bioactive compounds. So yeah, maybe with a gummy right off the bat, even if it's fresh, you're probably looking at, you know, less than label claim. Okay, so I'm curious then for melatonin because there's a lot of parents that give their kids melatonin gummies. So does the same thing apply to melatonin gummies? So it's a hormone, right? and it's one of the more quickly degrading things in an acidic aqueous solution like a gummy. So yeah, a lot of companies, they won't get sued if they put 10 or even 20 milligrams, if the label is two milligrams for serving.

11:47They will get sued if after 18 months or whatever the shelf life is, if it has 1.6 milligrams, they could say, hey, this is false advertising. You guys didn't do your homework. This actually, I think, is sort of dangerous because I've seen gummies out there for melatonin that save five milligrams. And I know a lot of parents, like I said, are getting these for their kids. So companies are putting overage in so that they don't get sued in a year. So they'll still have five milligrams in. So they're maybe putting 10, 15, 20 milligrams of melatonin in. And you don't know you're giving that much to your kids.

12:20Yeah, exactly. Milligram amounts of melatonin, the cost difference is less than a penny per serving. So yeah, a lot of these companies, they would rather just have a healthy overage and not worry about it. I've seen certain companies that, you know, test results, third-party tests where it's actually 10x. So the five milligrams is actually already really big for a hormone, especially for a kid. So if they 10x that, 50 milligrams, could you imagine if your doctor prescribed you like any hormone and instead they said, oh, take this, depending on the expiration date, it might be accurate or it might be 10 times the amount that you need.

12:57This is terrible. Yeah. So how do parents even know what amount they're giving their kids? Well, they don't. Third-party testing is very important, but third-party testing only happens when the batch is fresh, right after production. You could tell if it's in a gummy and it's a 5 milligram claim and they have like 5.2 milligrams, that that's probably not going to last the full shelf life. But also, at least you know that you're not super dosing your kids with a hormone. This seems like a scam. And the thing is, you know, you want your kid to sleep at night. Your kid wants something that tastes good.

13:30Also, some people, you know, adults, they like gummies as well. Like I said, I love fruit snacks. I mean, I try not to eat them. But yeah, if you want me to swallow three or four big pills or eat some gummies, I'm going gummies all day. Except I actually know that it's just better just to find something that's dry powder that is as accurate as possible. Yeah, so there are certain compounds that just it doesn't make sense for gummies. And melatonin does not make sense in gummies. So that is one that parents should probably stay away from. Absolutely. Get it in a dry powder form instead. You're better off with them underdosing you and then it degrading over a year and being hardly there because at least you're not mega dosing a hormone with your kid.

14:12Yeah, that is so crazy. And honestly, I don't really think we need to even use melatonin. I like melatonin for jet lag, like to try to get your body back in the right circadian rhythm. But other than that, like if your kids can't fall asleep, if you can't fall asleep, to me, it's your body screaming, hello, like you need some help. We need something. And so sometimes maybe those kids just need a little bit more magnesium. Maybe those kids need, you know, something else rather than melatonin. Okay. So I'm curious though. So is it just creatine and melatonin gummies that I should be aware of? Or like there's a lot of vitamin D gummies out there for kids.

14:48Are those okay? So vitamin D typically has a pretty good tolerability with an upper limit. I think there's like some Swiss physician, I don't remember his name off the top, but he has this phrase that basically, I'm going to paraphrase him. He says the dose is the poison, right? And we like ingredients that have a lot broader dose. Like his full statement was basically everything is poison at a certain dose. And that's even true with water, right? If you get too much water and not enough sodium, you can get hyponatremia and your brain can swell and you can die, right? But water's great, right?

15:21Nobody's saying anything about that. But vitamin D3, that's one that you don't really need a whole lot of. And the side effects aren't that bad. A lot of people are trying to get more vitamin D3. The stability of it in the gummy is better than melatonin, better than creatine. and what you can do is you can add antioxidants in there. Things like D-alpha-tocopherol. These things can kind of be the shield in front of the gummy that takes all those oxygen bullets and saves the vitamin D3. So I don't want to disparage gummies entirely. I think there are a lot of great use cases. D3 is one of the more important supplements that a lot of people who spend more time inside nowadays are not getting enough of and it's been shown to have great health outcomes when people get sick.

16:05A lot of this is just looking at like, hey, who's sick? What are their vitamin D3 levels? But typically D3 is one that I feel pretty good about. Just a full list of what I think is good in a gummy. Minerals. Minerals are great. Sure, sometimes they have a metallic taste, but minerals do not degrade. Minerals are atoms in of themselves unless there's some sort of nuclear fission or fusion going on, which I assure you at room temperature gummy, nothing like that's going on. If you put some zinc in there, it's going to be there. So typically, most companies only add a 5 % overage for all minerals.

16:39And that goes for, you know, iron, zinc, copper. Minerals are really good. Water-soluble vitamins, sure. Let's list some water-soluble versus the fat-soluble. Yeah, so all the B vitamins are pretty good. And also, the B vitamins, they're really like some of the more micro of the micronutrients. For example, the average adult only needs 2.4 micrograms of B12. The B vitamins, those are the ones that all day, every day, they're meant to be in that sort of environment. They're water-soluble and yeah. Okay, so can I ask you about greens gummies? Because those are popular. So what I've seen is they promote like, oh, it's, you know, your daily's worth of vegetables.

17:22You've got broccoli and kale and spinach. And in reality, it's got a bunch of vitamins in there with just a little bit of greens. Is that correct? Yeah, but at the same time, and I'm not trying to be on the fence one way or the other, a lot of those phyto compounds are more stable. That comes down to formulation. How much are you really getting of the greens? And how much is this just a vitamin mineral gummy? So yeah, a lot of it is marketing. We know that more than most. Okay, so would you recommend a greens gummy or not necessarily? You know, I think that greens gummies are nice because they just kind of help clear the table and say, okay, I'm at least getting this much of all these essential vitamins and minerals.

18:04At the same time, that's kind of like what cereal does, right? They fortify it with all the vitamins and minerals. So can it be helpful? Sure. Is it necessary? Probably not. Okay, but a greens gummy is more like a multivitamin rather than getting your daily allotment of spinach and broccoli and kale. And from that perspective, sure. Like a lot of these greens drinks are heavy on the vitamins and minerals and light on the greens. Let's take a quick break to hear from our show sponsor. This podcast is sponsored by Active Skin Repair, a skin health brand that helps your skin heal using natural, non-toxic, medical-grade ingredients.

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19:19Trusted by over 1 million customers and clinicians, thousands of five-star reviews and ingredients so safe and clean, they can be used from the youngest member of the family to the oldest. You now have one simple solution for all your family's skin health needs. To learn more and get 20 % off your order, visit activeskinrepair.com and use code JUSTINGREDIENTS. You can also find Active Skin Repair on Amazon and at your local CVS. Now back to the show. Okay, next thing I want to talk to you about is supplement labels. And so on the back of a bottle, everybody's seen it, the supplement label. But there's supplement labels and there's nutrition fact panels.

20:02And so let's talk about the difference between them. And then you've got some concerns about them that I know that I want listeners to hear. So first, describe the difference. Yeah, so you always use a nutrition fact panel when the product is a food, right? When you can say, look, this is meant to be taken as a food and our protein shakes, that's a food. Like, you know, the byproduct from cheese is whey and that's a food that people use. Which is crazy, though, because most protein powders out there have a supplement panel. But because we use food in ours, we have a nutrition food panel. And an important distinction is also how it's marketed.

20:40If you want to talk about specific benefits that it has, that's typically a supplement fact panel. Now, because protein helps you build muscle, helps repair tissue, those are common things that even a nutrition fat panel can say. And those are structure function claims that we can make. But with the supplement, it's specifically marketed towards a gap in nutrition. People usually think of a supplement in terms of a capsule. And I think that's great because, first off, that's the most shelf-stable, that's the most accurate way to get those micronutrients. But it's not just vitamins and minerals.

21:13Some people use Eastern medicine, different herbs, different amino acids, creatine. So a supplement fat panel has a little bit different rules. With a nutrition fat panel, you're just trying to say like, this slice of bread has about this much calories. And, you know, back in the day when people really worried about fat, they're like, oh, this is fat free. And that's what they looked at the nutrition fat panels for. And then the past 10 years when we realized how added sugars were so bad for us and people wanted to make sure they got as little of that in their diet, that's what they would then look at.

21:47Really, it's meant to just give you the macronutrient breakdowns, carbs, fats, and proteins. And then at the very bottom, it's got vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium. And those are required? Those are required, yeah. And why those four? Because the government just came up with that rule. Here's the thing. A lot of times, better isn't always better, right? Like the poison is the dose. We have a lot of people who like our chocolate protein because we're using a lot of cacao. And cacao has iron in it. And if we are not completely accurate with that, then some people think they're getting more iron than they are or getting less.

22:22And there are some people who have hemochromatosis, which they're trying to eliminate iron almost completely from their diet. And then there are other people who are anemic and need a little bit more iron. So they put that there just to help people have a better understanding of exactly those micronutrients. Makes sense. Okay, but on a supplement panel, we do not put the fats, the carbs, the protein, the sugars, things like that. We can if there's enough of it. Like you said, those protein supplements, they do put the amount of protein in there, and they'll also put carbs and fats. But typically supplements don't really have a lot of energy, like fats, carbs, proteins.

22:55So what's really important there is that they have the daily value and the correct weight associated and that it can reach the shelf life. So if you have an 18-month shelf life, you better do your homework ahead of time. And usually people just do an accelerated stability study or they can use like products to help determine what overage they need in order to make sure that it's at least that label at the end of 18 months or two years. Okay, so you just talked about overage again. So do all supplement pills out there have overage so that they can meet their label claims? From my past, like helping fix other people's formulas, I know for sure that sometimes they're not even there at the beginning.

23:34So depending on the level of food scientists, they might not understand potency or the moisture content that everything has. Even here in Utah, where it's super dry, there's an ambient, you know, 10 to 15 percent humidity. and on powders, it hydrates those. It doesn't look wet or anything, but if you put like 30 grams of creatine that's just been sitting out here and you put it in the oven for a little bit, it'll come back and it'll be maybe 28 grams because all those water molecules that were hovering right nearby have been pushed out. So if you don't understand the science between potency, like a lot of vitamin B12 is only 98 % potence.

24:13If you're just saying, oh, this is B12, I'm gonna put it at 2.4 micrograms, you're ignoring, you know, possible degradation, you're ignoring potency, and you're ignoring the amount of water that's in there. And there are some other factors to be concerned about as well. So yeah, I can certainly say that without third-party testing, you don't know what you're getting. So a lot of companies don't even put enough in to begin with. Yeah. And then you've got some that maybe are putting way too much in to have overage so that it can last longer. Right. And as a food scientist, as a chemist, I'm not concerned when people put like a 200 % overage of like a B vitamin because B vitamins are water soluble, right?