Exposing Consolidation in the Nutritional Supplement Sector
This turned into a much deeper rabbit hole than I was expecting
Welcome to another installment of Cheap Thoughts, grumpy sofa-based observations by a 19th Century Refugee not really enjoying my front-row seat for The Apocalypse.
I’m Ol’ Doc Skepsis, and my pronouns are we / were.
Edit: I have created my first Substack Chat to support this post:
Please join the conversation and add your 2¢ to which brands you support and/or avoid.
This post was a long time coming / way overdue. I’ve been teasing it for weeks. The two source articles are from last November (2022!) and from about five months ago. Both articles are well done and overlap considerably, but I still had to track down each company to make sure the info was current.
I wanted to include images of the logos of each brand for easy identification, but that would have taken too long, and I felt the need to publish this sooner rather than later.
The data is presented primarily by corporate affiliation, and grouped into three broad categories of ownership.
At the end I have included an alphabetical list of the brands mentioned, for use while supplement shopping. As should be obvious to everyone by now, woke corporations have gone wild, and it’s time for consumers to wield the power of the boycott to send a clear message that we will favor their competitors — like we have done to Bud Light, Disney and Target.
Please note that while every effort has been made to be comprehensive, there may be errors / omissions / bad links etc. Please help make this a better reference article by posting a comment.
Prologue: Why take nutritional supplements?
I take a variety of supplements, and have been for years. For me, the most important are enzymes — I have congenital difficulty digesting foods from the alium family (onion, scallions, leeks, shallots, garlic etc.) Yeah, sux to be me, because those are all good for us. But I can take enzymes that will mitigate the symptoms (not sure if they also mitigate the benefits?)
Anyway, the great thing about enzymes is that if we take them on an empty stomach, instead of helping digest our food, they get into our bloodstream and catalyze necessary metabolic reactions of allsorts. So now I take one each morning, with a couple of drops of liquid melatonin (3x daily - antioxidant micro-dosing).
I also take an adaptogen daily - right now I’m alternating between astragalus, curcumin and ashwagandha (others include ginseng, rhodiola and certain mushrooms). In addition, I rotate irregularly through separate anti-inflammatories, vitamins and minerals, and immune boosters.
But why? For example, Dr. Mercola sells supplements, and even HE recommends getting “most of your nutrition from real, unprocessed foods.” Unfortunately, the reason we can all benefit from supplementing is that most of the items readily-available in our food supply retain little nutritional content. Reasons include:
most forms of “food processing” remove nutrition, due to high heat or caustic chemical action, in order to increase shelf life
after decades of agrichemical farming, the soil no longer contains the nutrients which pass through plants and animals into us
GMOs and other foods can actually be “anti-nutrients,” inhibiting the absorption of nutrition by our bodies
No matter how well we think we eat, we simply cannot get enough nutrition from the foods available to us, especially when considering seasonality. Nutritional supplementation can be the difference between surviving and thriving.
So about this consolidation issue. First, why is consolidation a bad thing?
This should be obvious, so I’ll just say that consolidation limits consumer choice. This is the premise behind antitrust laws, which are beneficial for consumers as long as those laws are enforced equally (they’re not, but that’s another story).
Of my two reference articles, the older one, Big Pharma Buying Up Supplement Companies, was published on the Alliance for Natural Health website on 11/15/2022.
I think the title is totally wrong…it should be “Big Corporations Are Buying Up…” like the caption of the accompanying pic:
The article separates the ownership categories into three: Multinational Corporations, Big Pharma, and Private Equity.
It begins with a great overview of consolidation in the fast-moving consumer goods [FMCG] sector (AKA consumer packaged goods [CPG] - terms I had to look-up), where I found this:
The following are well-known Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturing companies [global Top 5 in 2020]:
Nestlé
Procter & Gamble
PepsiCo
Unilever
AB InBev [Budweiser etc.]
I also found this, undated but probably from 2021, at statista.com:
So anyway, if you happen to think that Multinational Corporations are generally bad, then Nestlé takes the trophy for the worst offender in the FMCP / CPG space. And according to ANH, Nestlé is also leading the charge in anti-competitive behavior in the nutritional supplement sector, being the most prolific gobbler of small independent manufacturers.
The money quote from ANH:
Nestlé Health Science, a division of Nestlé, bought Pure Encapsulations and Douglas Foods, along with a host of other supplement companies, including Garden of Life, Vital Proteins, Nuun, Wobenzym, Persona Nutrition, Genestra, Orthica, Minami, AOV, Klean Athlete and Bountiful. Bountiful itself owns Solgar, Osteo Bi-Flex, Puritan’s Pride, Ester-C and Sundown, which are now all under Nestle’s control.
Taking that paragraph as my starting point, I came up with this:
Atrium Innovations - Acquired by Nestlé - 2017
Pure Encapsulations
Douglas Laboratories
Klean Athlete
Garden Of Life
Vital Proteins
Wobenzym
Nuun
Persona Nutrition
Genestra
Orthica
Minami
AOV
The Bountiful Co. - Acquired by Nestlé - 2021
Nature’s Bounty
Solgar
Osteo Bi-Flex
Puritan’s Pride
Ester-C
Sundown
I realized that this was just scratching the surface, but I was already shocked. In my own pantry I had two of those brands. And all are owned by ONE CORPORATION. I closed my eyes and pictured how much shelf space in stores is taken up by those brands alone. And I really just don’t want my money going to Nestlé.
But since the Bud Light fiasco, the word BOYCOTT has been everywhere, and I think that’s just fine. For years I have tried to localize as much of my spending as possible, so the process of vetting and changing suppliers of items I need is a familiar one.
Because of its business of pumping groundwater out of aquifers and then bottling and selling people back THEIR OWN WATER (actually happening about a hundred miles north of me), Nestlé was already on my boycott list, so it was easy to add more brands under that umbrella.
Feeling accomplished, I moved on to ANH’s next-in-line megacorp, Unilever. As shown above, it’s also in the FMCP / CPG Top 10.
OLLY - Acquired in 2019
Onnit
Welly
Equilibra
Liquid I.V.
SmartyPants
None of my brands there. Good, since I don’t support Unilever (I was recently disappointed to find that a go-to household brand, Seventh Generation, is owned by them — another brand to replace).
Also mentioned is conglomocorp Procter & Gamble, the No. 2 FMCP / CPG corp:
Full stop. Here are two of the most prominent brands I see online and on shelves — including my own. Suddenly this boycott activity is becoming a thing and I’ve got lots of brand replacement to do. OK.
Forward to the next category the ANH article uses, Big Pharma:
Otsuka, a pharmaceutical company, owns MegaFood and Innate Therapeutics [I could find no info on the latter, but Otsuka does also own Nature Made]
Otsuka Pharmaceuticals
These are also high-visibility brands with large market shares. But Otsuka does not seem to me to be “big pharma” — certainly not in the same league as Pfizer et. al. [Note: the ANH infographic shows that Pfizer owns Centrum and Emergen-C, and that Bayer/Monsanto owns One-A-Day, although these are not mentioned in the article - now THAT’S “big pharma”]
…Schwabe, another pharmaceutical company, owns Integrative Therapeutics, Nature’s Way, and Enzymatic Therapy
Dr. Willmar Schwabe Pharmaceuticals
I must admit that I know very little about homeopathy, but this company was apparently there at the beginning. I do know that homeopathy was unnecessarily vilified by the Flexner Report, itself flagrant anti-competitive behavior. I will do more digging on this company.
I now need to introduce the second of my reference articles, published 3/29/2023 over at Corey’s Digs: Major Acquisitions & Changes in Booming Dietary Supplement Industry: Do You Know Who is Behind Your Vitamins?
Corey Lynn does not mention whether or not she is familiar with the earlier ANH article…there is much overlap between the two. I continue here with a brand not mentioned above in ANH’s Big Pharma category:
Best Formulations - Acquired by Sirio Pharma - 2022
This is another common and popular brand.
But as for “big pharma” — when considering the above-named three companies, they don’t seem very big…or very predatory. I must do more research on all three before adding any of their brands to the boycott list.
The focus now turns to what ANH calls “Wall Street:”
… Wall Street is also getting in on the action, with private equity [PE] groups purchasing brands like Nutraceutical and Metagenics
Variously known as private equity / venture capital / vulture capital, this financial subdomain is the world of merger and acquisition “portfolio” companies. Arrangements such as these can be very beneficial for smaller businesses needing a cash infusion for expansion etc. — or in the event an owner retires or passes away. Obviously, not all PE firms are predatory, but the potential for abuse is always present (Mitt Romney / Bain Capital is a notorious example of an asset-stripper). In the case of nutritional supplements, the concern is that new accountant overlords will slash budgets, and thus quality. ANH mentions these two:
Nutraceutical - Acquired by HGGC - 2017
KAL
Solaray
Zhou
Nature’s Life
Thompson
Zand
Herbs For Kids
Metagenics - Acquired by Gryphon Investors - 2021
The Nutraceutical brand family contains several of the most well-known names in supplements…the favorite brands of millions of smart, healthy people; I bet they don’t know that some of their purchase price is going to “Wall Street.” And if they don’t care, that’s fine, as long as they know.
Here are other brands owned by PE mentioned by Corey Lynn:
Vytalogy - Owned By New Mountain Capital - 2022
Jarrow
Natrol
These two are also highly-regarded and widely-available brands.
To be clear, buying supplements from a company partly owned by a “Wall Street” firm is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the reason I wanted to do this research was to allow people to see where their money was ultimately ending up, so they can make informed purchasing decisions.
Interestingly, these three entries from Corey Lynn’s list are all partly foreign-owned (I am a US citizen):
Thorne - Largest shareholders are Kirin Holdings Ltd & Mitsui (Berkshire Hathaway)
Country Life - Joint Venture Agreement With Kikkoman, partly owned by Master Trust / Bank of Japan
Doctor’s Best - Acquired By Xiamen Kingdomway Group, China
Again, being partly foreign-owned is not, in-and-of-itself, a negative. Also, some of the brands mentioned earlier have multi-national connections (like Nestlé, which is Swiss). But many consumers today prefer to patronize US businesses, and should have info at their disposal to make appropriate choices.
Here is the alphabetical list of the brands I will be replacing / avoiding going forward…bring it with you to the store the next time you go supplement shopping.
Note that this list does not include supermarket brands like One-A-Day (Bayer) or Centrum or Emergen-C (Pfizer); nor products from GNC, owned by the Chinese Communist Party / Harbin Pharmaceutical
Supplement Brand Boycott List
AOV - corporate
Country Life - pharma
Doctor’s Best - corporate
Equilibra - corporate
Ester-C - corporate
Garden Of Life - corporate
Genestra - corporate
Herbs For Kids - Wall St.
Jarrow - Wall St.
KAL - Wall St.
Klean Athlete - corporate
Liquid I.V. - corporate
Metagenics - Wall St.
Minami - corporate
Natrol - Wall St.
Nature’s Bounty - corporate
Nature’s Life - corporate
New Chapter - corporate
Nutranext - corporate
Nuun - corporate
OLLY - corporate
Onnit - corporate
Orthica - corporate
Osteo Bi-Flex - corporate
Persona Nutrition - corporate
Pure Encapsulations - corporate
Puritan’s Pride - corporate
ReNew Life - corporate
SmartyPants - corporate
Solaray - Wall St.
Solgar - corporate
Sundown - corporate
Thompson - Wall St.
Thorne - corporate
Vital Proteins - corporate
Welly - corporate
Wobenzym - corporate
Zand - Wall St.
Zhou - Wall St.
It’s up to every consumer to do their own due diligence, and to decide which (if any) of the above considerations is a priority for them. The Bud Light Phenomenon has demonstrated to consumers the power we have when we become united. I hope you can use this information to your advantage.
Good grief...I have been supporting big pharma with buying some of these brands. That's it, I'm done. I'm happy to have run across your articles.
Nice review.