For the 156th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Nutraland USA and Chief Scientific Officer, Gene Bruno. Nutraland USA is a pioneer in the development and manufacture of functional ingredient for nutraceutical, cosmeceutical and F&B industries. Established in Irvine, CA, in 2011, Nutraland USA has been dedicated to offering science-based & plant-based innovative ingredients not only good for the health, but also good for the Earth.
"Together Talks" feature # 156: Nutraland USA presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What have been the biggest challenges? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company? What is your why? If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your industry?
Story of how it was created?
The company was created back in 2013. Two gentlemen, Sanying Xu and Ling Lin, originally from China, but since moved to Irvine, California, wanted to offer up some good quality nutraceuticals to the dietary supplement industry. But they discovered fairly quickly that the commodity items they were offering were just that, commodity items, and it was very, very easy to find those same kind of commodity items at many other nutraceutical raw material suppliers. With that it became a price game without necessarily the same consideration for quality.
They shifted gears and said let's offer something a little different. Let's look at offering sustainable, unique types of ingredients for which they may be a demand and not focus so much on the commodity items. They started doing just that and one of the items they first introduced was vitamin D3. There's vitamin D2 and D3. Vitamin D3 is considered to be the better of the two in terms of its bioavailability and use of the body. However, the common vitamin D3, while effective, is derived from lanolin from sheep's wool and it goes through a synthetic conversion process in the lab to create vitamin D3.
For people who want a natural product, that's not natural; and if they want a vegan product, well, it's not vegan. They offered a vitamin D3 called VegaDelight®, which was derived from a species of lichen known as Cladonia rangiferina, commonly known as reindeer lichen since reindeer eat it, and it grows in various areas of the world of alpine regions. They created an herbal extract out of that and it naturally contains the vitamin D3. They were able to provide that as a high-quality source, as a sustainable source, as a safe source. Pretty quickly, it became the top seller. Then, subsequently they started introducing other kinds of nutraceuticals such as various kinds of vitamin K2, which is a popular one, from natural sources.
And so, as time went on, they started producing other kinds of materials, including a something called Miricell™ which is a rice germ extract which contains polyamines. These polyamines have many, many benefits of human health and wellness. The company grew and started adding some more people.
What separates your company from competition?
I was hired as the chief scientific officer in 2023. I've helped in not only the promotion of materials vis-à-vis education, industry trade shows, podcasts, blogs, and articles, but also I'm helping to coordinate a number of different human clinical trials on our raw materials to help further validate their benefits. And so for me personally that's one of the most exciting things to do. I get to work with different clinical research organizations, finding the best ones to do the right kind of testing that we'd like to do on our products to see what works, what moves the dial and what the results might be. This is what we've done at a Nutraland USA. I've been in the dietary supplement industry for 45 years. I've worked for a number of different companies, and I really, really love this one. I love the owners. They're highly ethical, which means a lot to me over the years. I've worked for a lot of different people. Some are more or less ethical. As an example, our president Sanying will talk with potential customers and advise them if he doesn’t think we're the right fit for them. He is honest to a fault.
I have great respect for the owners for this and other reasons. Our mott is “good for you, good for the earth”, because we always want everything to be effective and sustainable. Even in products such as VegaDelight®, where the material is wild crafted, we always make sure that anybody who's doing it gets a fair wage, there's no child labor, everything's done cleanly. Our manufacturing facility where the products are produced, which is in China, is one of the very, very few, you can count it on one hand, that's actually been inspected by the US FDA and pass with flying colors. You could eat off the floor in that place, everything is done on the up and up, and it's one of the best facilities that you'll ever see anywhere in the world.
What have been the biggest challenges?
One that resonates with me is having an even playing field in business. Competition is great. Competition is a healthy thing, but you want everybody to be honest. For example, we're not the only company out there that provides a vegan, natural source of vitamin D3, but one of the issues I've come across is that there's others out there that don't identify the source. They'll say, well, it's from lichen, they don't tell you the species. Well, there are 20,000 of species lichen. Some of them are on the endangered species list. Some of them are not suitable for human consumption. And if you don't know what the species is, how do you know what you're getting?
Also, that allows the raw material supplier at any given time to switch the source. If you are manufacturing products such as liquid, gummies or powders where taste is an issue, that's not necessarily a good thing. And there's other ones that say their D3 is from algae. Great, what's the species? And they don't tell you. Oh, there's 200,000 species of algae, some of which are actually toxic. I don't think anybody's using toxic algae. But again, it's kind of like saying, hey, I got this great probiotic and it does these wonderful things and you go, okay, that's great. What species is the probiotic? We can't tell you. It's like, well, no, you have to tell.
That's the kind of thing that makes it a little bit frustrating is not always having people be upfront about things and honest. Wanting that level playing field is a dream. And then when you put in the extra mile to make sure your product is high quality, meets every standard, can lawfully be sold, meaning it's either your material is either grass, generally regarded as safe, or it's an old dietary ingredient according to the regulations, or it's a new dietary ingredient that's been approved according to the regulations-when you go through all the steps to make sure everything is done correctly, and some of the others out there aren't doing the same thing, that's sometimes little bit of a challenge.
Otherwise, I would say that we haven't had a great many challenges, mostly because of the way we've chosen to do business. We like to grow, but we are not interested in just selling anything to anybody who wants it. We want to make sure we're selling to ethical companies.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
We're in a phase right now where there's two things we're interested in doing. One is examining other kinds of interesting novel ingredients that we might be able to bring to market and maybe be the first ones ever to do it. Also, at the same time, we're really working hard at making sure we do some good human clinical research.
We have a few different studies running right now. We've got five more scheduled to do this year and we want to do good quality human studies that not just support claims, but that makes it so that somebody who uses it is most likely to get a positive effect.
I would say innovation, and validated research, human clinical research, is kind of our direction for this year. We're looking forward to it. We just completed a small study, a pilot study, which I like as a researcher and as chief scientific officer, I like to do pilot studies first.
You test something, you see if it moves the dial, and if it's looking good, then you invest in a larger randomized double blind placebo control trial. And we're seeing some very, very positive results, which excites us greatly. Some things that we've tested that haven't never been tested on these kinds of ingredients in the industry, seeing wonderful results that we're very excited about.
I would say that innovation and clinical research are our goals in our direction for this year. What we want to achieve and presenting that information to industry right now, I'm preparing the manuscript for submission to a peer review journal to share some of the most recent results. It's exciting. It's a lot of fun. I would say it's the best job I've had in 46 years.
Describe a decision that was made that didn't materialize the way it was envisioned?
I will go back to what was saying in the beginning, often times you make decisions that change the course of your company. Those decisions turned out to be okay because they brought you to where you are now. The initial decision to sell quality commodity items was, theoretically, a good direction to go. But as the owners found out at the time, it really wasn't the best choice because there was saturation. They're constantly competing on price. And when you compete on price, oftentimes you have to sacrifice quality for your price to be where you want it to be.
I think that decision of, let's do commodity items was one that they discovered wasn’t a good decision. But that led them to the next one, let's do some very high quality innovative novel items that aren’t offered everywhere.
What is your why?
First of all, I love the industry. I have a passion for the industry. I can honestly say in my job, 99% of what I do, I love, you know, and I'm lucky to be at that place. I wasn't always at that place. Sometimes it was very, very different. But the idea that I can help in the creation of nutraceutical ingredients that have good research, good data to support different aspects of human health and can make an impact on people's life, to me, that is very powerful and that's what motivates me.
I mean, I started in the industry in 1979 and I'm working in vitamin stores at the time. And I got to see firsthand in dealing with customers who'd come back in and report using a product and how that product works and made a big difference for them. Or, conversely, how it did nothing for them. But seeing how when a product did something to them, for them in a positive way, you got a real high. Wow, I recommended that and this person is getting a good result. Now, take that and multiply it by many, many times that when you're creating a material or involved in creating material that helps thousands of people.
That, to me, is just super exciting. And to be able to be involved in making the decisions on the right kinds of directions to go is wonderful. And then you get bad players in the business who aren't doing what they're supposed to do. They don't care about the research. They're just looking to sell a material or look at sell a product. There's absolutely no research to support it. And they're making claims that can't be substantiated and many times they're just outright lies. And I'm passionate about that too.
I get on my soapbox and speak out against that. I'm a big proponent of doing the research, put some money into the research and do it right or just don't do it at all. But unfortunately, there are people who don't do it right. But for me it's what I can do for people that'll help improve their lives, which is what excites me.
If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your industry?
Exactly what I just said. I would get rid of the bad players I would get rid of them in a second because here's the deal, the bad players aren't just bad players but they hurt people. I will tell you there's a certain brand of mushroom coffee on the market, where you can see them on social media platforms, and they'll make crazy claims like “no more inflammation”. Well, that's ridiculous. First of all, you wouldn't want no more inflammation. It's part of the immune process. When it's chronic and it's not serving a purpose, that's a different situation.
There are drugs that address that. There are some nutraceuticals that can help and have research. But when you're selling something that has absolutely no studies, no research, and your ingredients aren't in the right form or are present in sufficient amounts to do anything, that hurts people. People go, oh, wow, I have inflammation. Maybe I have arthritis, maybe have this disease or that and now don't have to take those medications which might have risk. I can just take this and I'll have no more inflammation.
Well, you'll be in for a very, very rude awakening when your disease gets worse, because you're taking something that's not helpful. That is potentially dangerous. If I could get rid of all of those companies that do that and just leave behind the good players, the people who work right and that have some ethics, that's what I would do in a second.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy about your time at the company so far?
I just look forward to jumping into whatever it is that I'm working on at the moment. And I take a great deal of joy in that. It's hard for me to choose a single thing, but there are a number of different things that I give me great joy. One of the things is the joy of discovery where something turns out very, very well.
For example, we contracted with a clinical research organization, one that I've worked with before at other companies, who does great studies and does it right to do a pilot study on our Miricell™. We wanted to test this material for its impact on markers of autophagy. For anybody who doesn't know what autophagy is, it's basically your cell's process of house cleaning. It helps to break down and recycle old, damaged cell parts. Think of it like you've got an old engine and you're going to rebuild the engine so it's now functioning again.
As people get older, autophagy lessens, and so their cell repair weakens. If you can increase autophagy, then you have a better chance of your cells working better and working longer. While there had been research that some of the same active compounds found in Miricell, were also found in many types of food and were beneficial at increasing autophagy, it was basically just through dietary intake. You ate a diet, you got some of this particular compound in the diet, and it was shown to have a beneficial effect when you reach a certain level.
That's very different than saying, take this discrete ingredient, put it in a supplement, and you test it at a certain milligram amount and see if it works. The first way is good, but it doesn't really tell you how much is going to be effective to do it. We tried a couple different dosage levels. We did markers of autophagy, and we found some very, very clear indications at a certain dose level. It had increase in these markers of autophagy in a meaningful way. And at the same time, it increased brain-derived neurotropic factor, which is something that a marker for a neuroprotection of the brain, it helped to decrease C-reactive protein, which is an inflammatory marker. It helped decrease VLDL cholesterol, the very low density lipoprotein cholesterol. It also decreased triglycerides and in a meaningful way. We had some excellent results.
I got a lot of great joy out of seeing some of these things. Some of the markers, we didn't know what was going to happen. We just wanted to test and see. We were mostly interested in the markers of autophagy. But imagine our delight when we saw how it was impacting these other markers in such a positive way. And so that's the manuscript I'm currently writing up for submission to a peer review journal. That brought me a lot of joy to see that because that doesn't always happen that way.
Advice for consumers based on your expertise?
For somebody living in America today, then I can look at data that has been accumulated and see what Americans as a whole, are not getting sufficient amounts of. And which of those things are you most likely to see a positive response from if you take them? So, it'll probably not come to anybody's surprise that vitamin D is something that is a common deficiency.
You can have vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. Insufficiency means you're just not getting enough of it and you might have some negative effects and deficiency means you definitely below what you should be and you're likely to get negative effects as a result including diseases, disorders or symptoms. My recommendation is for most everybody unless they are working outside on a daily basis and have enough of their skin exposed to the sun so that the sun can convert a form of cholesterol in their skin into vitamin D. Maybe they're outside picking crops and agriculture or something, if not you should be taking vitamin D. You should be taking that on a daily basis. Too many people aren't getting enough and it impacts so many areas, not just bone health, but immune health, cognitive health, hormonal health. It's all across the board.. That's one.
The other one is magnesium. Magnesium is something that the majority of Americans do not get a sufficient amount of that, and they do not meet the daily value for magnesium in most cases. Magnesium does many things in the body, including helping with stress and sleep and just a number of areas. Also, there's an interesting relationship between magnesium and vitamin D. Let’s say you're taking vitamin D and you're taking a lot of it and you go to your doctor and you get a vitamin D test. What they're testing is the vitamin D that you take gets converted into another form. If your vitamin D levels come back lower than they should, you might wonder why since your taking all this vitamin D. The doctor may then increase the amount your taking, but your serum levels still may not be where they need to be. You wonder why it isn't increasing? Well, it's because you may not be getting enough magnesium. Magnesium will convert your vitamin D and the kidneys into a more active form. Sometimes all it takes is just taking some magnesium with it and boom, it bumps it up. The two have a synergistic relationship. Also you need vitamin D to help absorb magnesium. The two work very, very nicely together.
Then the other thing I'd like is just a good omega-3 fatty acid like a fish oil type supplement because the majority of Americans don't get sufficient amounts of those. That affects cardiovascular health and inflammatory health. Those are the things I would say for most people. Look at those things because it's a very good chance that you're not getting sufficient amounts of them.
How would you suggest sourcing a new product as a consumer?
This is somewhat difficult to give a really solid answer for, but I'll give you what I can. The problem is there's so much information out there. Some of it is just totally bogus and some of it is not. My recommendation is find somebody who, in your experience, is knowledgeable and trustworthy. That might be somebody working at a vitamin store, maybe somebody who's been around a while. Maybe somebody who seems to have a good amount of knowledge and ask them their opinion.
Because if you don't have the knowledge yourself, then you need to go to an expert. If you don't have access to an expert at a high level, somebody like myself or colleagues of mine in the industry, then you go to somebody who maybe has been around for a while and has a better sense of what's real and what's not but works and what doesn't. Ask those people.
In some cases, like in the case of magnesium, for example, you know, it's a single ingredient, as long as you get a sufficient amount, some are better absorbed than others, but as long as you get a sufficient amount, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter in a huge way. And there's other things that matter greatly. You may say I want a turmeric product, because I heard turmeric is good for inflammation. Well, the problem is turmeric is very, very, very poorly absorbed. It's active curcuminoid compounds are very poorly absorbed. You may absorb as little as 1% of what you take. So, you have to find one that's an extract that's been treated in such a way to improve bioavailability. You got to make sure you're using the right one, that you use sufficient amounts of that right one.
How do you know? Well, you're going to have to research it or find somebody who knows about it and develop a relationship with somebody at a local vitamin store or that is knowledgeable. Ask them how they got into the business, ask them how they learned what they learned. Sometimes you'll be surprised they may have quite a bit of knowledge.
Over the years, I've written a tremendous number of articles and virtually all of my articles, I give all my scientific references in them when I'm saying something. So, I would invite anybody to put in my name to Google, Gene Bruno, and whatever their topic of interest is. For example, Gene Bruno magnesium. Chances are you'll find an article that I've written that will help provide some information and some guidance.
New Products
We've introduced a couple of new products within the last year, meaning the raw material. I think they are particularly interesting, and we've actually won a couple of industry awards for these.
One of them is called Somato™. Somato™ is a tomato extract standardized for its melatonin content. And melatonin, as we know, is beneficial for helping induce sleep and different parameters of quality sleep. Conservatively 98% on the melatonin on the market is synthetic, which isn't a bad thing. But if a person would like to get a natural form, consider Somato™. After all, we’ve been eating tomatoes for thousands of years, and they are natural. That is very cool, and what's interesting is in some countries, melatonin is a prescription drug, so they can’t buy it over the counter. But in some of those countries, there's been great success of introducing tomato as a supplement because it's tomato extract that happens to have melatonin. Some of those countries allow that statement on the label, and so it's a way for people to be able to actually get over the counter melatonin legally in those countries. That's been pretty exciting, and we're in the process of doing a study on that one, which is really cool. We're using the OURA ring to help track various parameters of sleep and stress, and so we're looking forward to the completion of that. The results should be completed sometime mid-February, so I'm really excited about that one.
And then another one, which was really cool, is something called Black Ginger Extract, and our brand name for that is Actiz!ng™, and it's not your regular ginger, if you think of ginger like you get with your sushi or ginger ale. It's a completely different genus and species. It's often referred to as Thai ginger or even Thai ginseng. It's not a ginseng, but it's from traditional Thailand medicine. And there's three buckets of research. One of them is reducing abdominal fat. There's some human clinical studies showing it to reduce abdominal fat, visceral fat (the fat that trails the organs), subcutaneous fat (the fat right under the skin) and also research on it for physical fitness, athletic performance, and the research on it for male health. It's quite interesting, and we have a study running on that right now for abdominal health on our particular one, which is higher in its active compounds than most any other one on the market. We won an award for the ginger extract in the nutrition industry executive magazines and ingredient awards in the category of weight loss and maintenance for the research that exists on that.
And then we also won another award in 2023 we want to award on our Miricell™ the rice germ and not for the reasons mentioned but because there's other research showing its primary compound helps in hair growth. That was pretty cool so you know it's always fun to get those kind of awards you know.
2 Podcasts
Piece of Advice
Somebody can take this and apply this in different areas, I guess. But for me, I would say understand the difference between what I like to call real science and marketing science. There's a difference between something that I have data to support and something that you just think is neat, so you believe it. For example, I've had people say, oh, you believe in vitamins? I'll say, well, no, I don't believe in vitamins. Belief is what you have for your religion or your philosophy. For vitamins and herbs and those kinds of things, you either have scientific data or you don't. And if you do, and this scientific data supports it, then you consider using it.
So, to me, it's not a matter of belief. Somebody makes claims in any area, whatever it is, whether it's claims in science, whether it's claims in politics, whether it's claims in whatever, demand the data, make sure the data is from a reputable source. Don't just take it because somebody that you like, whether it's some doctor with a TV show or whether it's some political party, or a news station, says something. Instead, do the research, find out if it's real, or if it's marketing.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Nutraland USA and Chief Scientific Officer, Gene Bruno, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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