Focus on Quality Part 1: Manufacturing Practices

Focus on Quality - Part I

This month we're going take a look at dietary supplement quality and safety by covering various topics from manufacturing regulations to possible contaminants, allergens, heavy metals, and third-party testing.

Professional marketers and influencers make a lot of claims about quality and a lot of what they say is nonsense simply to distract the consumer from the lack of quality, and at times the potential dangers, in the product they are pushing.

cGMP: What is it and why should you care?

Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) is a set of FDA regulations meant to ensure that each batch of products will meet MANUFACTURING quality standards. cGMP regulations are enforced by the FDA and are used by manufacturing facilities to ensure proper quality, purity, design, monitoring, and control of the overall FACILITY.

The FDA routinely inspects cGMP facilities to ensure compliance with these rigorous manufacturing standards.

What many consumers don't think about when buying a dietary supplement is that the actual manufacturing facility that puts the contents in the bottle and the nice label on the front probably also produces hundreds or even thousands of different products for hundreds of brands under contract.

With so many different products being produced under one roof, what procedures and practices are in place to ensure that the manufacturing facility only puts what they were supposed to put in the bottle you purchased?

Producing hundreds of thousands or millions of bottles for various brands is a very complex undertaking and the cGMP regulations were established to significantly reduce the risk of manufacturing errors affecting the finished product.

It is important to note that even if a supplement is not cGMP certified it may still meet high-quality standards, but the ones that have a cGMP label have gone the extra mile (and incurred additional cost) to prove to their customers that they care about manufacturing quality.

If you aren’t sure whether or not your supplements are cGMP certified, check the label. If you don't see cGMP on the label, reach out to the supplement company and ask them why they don't follow cGMP and how they can be certain that their contract manufacturer ensures high manufacturing quality.

cGMP regulations are designed to protect YOU!

And, of course, OptimalAmino® and OptimalStack are produced in an FDA-registered, cGMP-certified facility.

But remember: cGMP is only an indicator of the quality of the manufacturing facility and its processes but not necessarily the ingredients in the product.

We'll cover ingredient quality and safety including scary contaminants and underdosing next week.

Thank you for being with us on this journey of health and fitness as we bring OptimalAmino® and OptimalStack to the world!

Dan & Katie
Optimal Labs
OptimalAmino.com

P.S. Answers to many common questions can be found in the FAQ.

P.P.S. You can also learn more about cGMP at the FDA's website HERE.