Every day science discovers another compound in a different plant that benefits the human body-lutein, isoflavones, resveratrol, oligomeric proanthocyanidins (OPC), to name just a few. It’s getting rather hard for the usual consumer to keep up with all of them! Luckily, nature provides all the plant combinations we need to be well, and E. Excel Nutritional Immunology strives to make it simple to receive the wide variety of nutrients naturally found in whole plant foods. Nonetheless, all of this new and exhilarating scientific research takes significant time to duplicate, provide absolute proof, and become received nutritional doctrine-and ultimately reach the labels on food and supplement products.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada, have strict regulations regarding nutritional product labeling. They have established specific daily values on the commonly received essential vitamins and minerals. This RDI 1(Recommended Daily Intake) has only been established for 25 substances, and only the top 4 (Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium and Iron) are required to appear on nutrition labels. The FDA has established exact specific regulations about what can and cannot appear on a nutrition label on a packaged food or dietary supplement. Health Canada has similar regulations.
The US FDA regulations can be found in Title 21- Food and Drugs. Section 101.9, paragraph (c)(8)(B)(iii), specifies rounding actions that have to be used when placing percentages of RDIs on nutrition labels: -The percentages for vitamins and minerals shall be expressed to the nearest 2-percent increment up to and including the 10-percent level, the nearest 5-percent increment above 10 percent and up to and including the 50-percent level, and the nearest 10-percent increment above the 50-percent level. Amounts of vitamins and minerals present at less than 2 percent of the RDI are not required to be declared in nutrition labeling but may be declared by a zero-.-2 Therefore, based on these strict regulations, by law E. Excel cannot indicate levels that are less than 2 percent of the recommended daily intake of the 25 recognized nutrients- even though they are present in the product. But whole plant foods contain more than just 25 essential vitamins and minerals. The principles of Nutritional Immunology emphasize the benefits of whole plant foods because of the many valuable polysaccharides, antioxidants and phytochemicals found in them. In fact, each individual plant food may contain hundreds of different compounds, and science is just beginning to realize the synergistic effects of these compounds.
Dr. Michael S. Donaldson in Nutrition Journal stated, -There are many substances that are protective in fruits and vegetables, so that the entire effect is not very likely to be due to any single nutrient or phytochemical.-3 Researching and formulating its products specifically from a whole foods approach, E. Excel creates balanced daily nutrition in forms that make it easily accessible for today’s busy, on-the-go lifestyle. This balanced, whole foods approach means you may see a smaller percentage of the RDI of a particular nutrient on a nutrition label, but that nutrient is considerably more bio-available-meaning your body is more likely to use all of what it gets to better advantage. It also means your chances of hypervitaminosis or adverse effects from chemically-extracted or laboratorymanufactured compounds are nil because we don’t add extra vitamins and minerals to our products.
They continue as nutritionally complete as nature made them. The FDA and Health Canada label requirements are designed to protect consumers and make sure that they have the necessary information to make good decisions about their food and supplement choices. Then again well intentioned, though, labels do not tell the whole nutritional story of a product, especially a whole foods product. They are only allowed to tell a exact limited and severely restricted part of that story-the part that has already gone through decades of extensive study. Who knows? Fifty years from now lutein, isoflavones, resveratrol, oligomeric
proanthocyanidins (OPC) and others may make their way to the FDA’s RDI list.