At Together Health, our primary mission is to provide optimal nutrition to as many people as possible. While we recognise the value of organic certification, it doesn't always align with our goal of delivering high-quality, affordable nutrition.
It's first worth noting that 'organic' does not mean a product is grown without herbicides and pesticides. But rather if it is grown without herbicides and pesticides and has been certified by the Soil Association. This certification certainly has value and prevents bad actors from misusing the organic description. However, this distinction is worth considering as we examine why some of our products are certified, and others are not.
With that said, we'll explain the reasons behind our choice to use both organic and non-organic ingredients in our products.
Cost of Organic Certification:
Obtaining organic certification can be costly because of the large amounts of red tape. In some cases, the price of an organically certified ingredient compared to the same ingredient without organic certification can be three times higher. We strive to keep our products affordable without compromising quality, so we carefully consider whether the added cost of certification offers significant benefits to our customers.
Relevance of Certification for Specific Ingredients:
Certain ingredients, like Omega 3 derived from algae, are grown in tanks or wild-grown ingredients like seaweed are harvested from the ocean. These are not farmed, so herbicides and pesticide are not used. When certification of these types of ingredients is possible without adding excessive cost, such as with our Iodine product, we do obtain it.
Availability of Organic Certified Ingredients:
Related to the previous point, another factor is sometimes there is simply no organic option available. We work with unique suppliers worldwide who share our values and ideals of what a supplement should be. Suppliers of natural non-agricultural ingredients will often simply not offer them organically certified and do not wish to work with us to obtain it. Not using these ingredients would imply more importance to certification than the nutrition of our products.
Organic Ingredients vs Organic Products:
Many of our products contain a mix of farm-grown foods like oranges and carrots, where organic certification is relevant, and non-farm-grown foods, where it is not. Our Multivitamins are a prime example. In these products, we have organically grown fruits and vegetables alongside non-farmed ingredients like nutritional yeast and seawater. These non-organic ingredients prevent the product from being organically certified. And because the product is not certified, we cannot refer to any of the ingredients as organic, even when they are indeed grown organically.
Organic Certified Manufacture:
Something else to consider is that since organic products are in our range, our manufacturing processes adhere to organic guidelines. This ensures that all our products, whether certified organic or not, are manufactured to the same high standards and benefit from the rigorous quality control associated with organic production.
Third-Party Tested:
It's also worth mentioning that all our products are third-party tested for herbicides and pesticide content. This ensures they are below the legal limits for pesticide residues set by the relevant body where the ingredient is made. In reality, our ingredients are well below those limits, and most have no trace.
The Proportion of Supplements in Your Diet:
In our products, the quantity of ingredients is minimal. For example, our B Complex contains 450 mg of nutritional yeast, which is just 0.1% of the weight of your minimum daily produce intake when following the 5-a-day recommendation of 80 g portions. This drops significantly lower when considering it as part of your overall food intake.
Organic Products can Contain Non-Organic Ingredients:
Organically certified products can legally contain 5% non-organic ingredients. Take an organic protein powder where the serving suggestion is 30 g. This can contain 1.5 grams per serving of non-organic ingredients. Using the example above, this is over 230% more of a non-certified ingredient than you'd find in our B Complex product.
Pesticide Exposure from Other Sources:
Unfortunately, herbicides and pesticides are now part of our environment. Even organically grown produce can contain trace amounts of synthetic pesticides and herbicides which have not been used to grow them, and non-organic foods will contain much more. Dietary sources of herbicides and pesticides include grains, cereals, nuts, seeds, legumes, dairy products, meat, poultry, fish, herbs and spices, seafood, honey, tea or coffee, and even drinking water, to name a few. These are often not held to the same strict testing that supplements in general and our supplements in particular are.
We believe considering all of these points together brings a little perspective to the question of the importance of consuming exclusively organically certified supplements. It doesn't diminish our dedication to bringing our customers organic certified products when it aligns with our mission and certainly does nothing to detract from the importance we place on rigorous third-party testing. But we believe it does strengthen our decision to focus on delivering high-quality, safe ingredients that cater to the nutritional needs of our customers at an affordable price over ensuring organic certification across our range.
We hope you agree!