Extraordinary Health Magazine Extraordinary Health Vol 21 | Page 13
reverse engineered nature—
starting with synthetic vitamins
and finding a way to make them
more like real food.
Where Do Multivitamins
Come From?
Hint: They Don’t Grow on Trees.
Since Garden of Life® was founded, we’ve always
wanted to make a multivitamin that was from real,
nutritious organic foods. We’re not alone in that
goal. To understand why, it’s helpful to have a brief
look at history.
Birth of Synthetic Vitamins
During World War II, military doctors understood that armies living on canned,
processed rations for months at a time, and with limited access to fresh fruits and
vegetables, were especially vulnerable to nutrient deficiency diseases. So, synthetic
vitamins were created by using the newly developed technology of making plastic
from inexpensive and widely available petroleum. They succeeded in isolating,
fermenting and synthesizing single-nutrient vitamins.
But what we have been missing in multivitamins is nutrients from real, honest
food—full of essential “co-factors” that help the body to absorb, process and
utilize vitamins and minerals.
Next Up: Reverse Engineered Nature
The industry spent the next two decades on a strange path of invention. Rather
than starting with real food and working all the way down to a tablet, scientists
We credit Dr. Endre “Andy”
Szalay, a Hungarian pharmacist,
as the first scientist to “crack
the code.” By combining a
synthesized vitamin with a plant
in which it could grow (yeast),
and introducing growth agents
(sugars) as well as specific
peptides, Andy created what we
believe to be the first “cultured
whole food” vitamin. The new
vitamin was more affordable, more
convenient and, most importantly,
more concentrated than the
vitamin C in an orange, for
example, and it contained some of
the food factors that were present
in that orange. All of today’s
leading “whole food” vitamin
companies—including Garden
of Life®—use cultured or grown
whole food nutrients