Good manufacturing practices

I recently received a Google Alert (key word: “curcumin”) that pleased me very much. The link took me to the website of the NSF or National Sanitation Foundation, which, according to Wikipedia, is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that develops standards and provides product certification and education in the field of public health and safety. Interesting website, actually, I will have to check it out more thoroughly when I have more time (more…TIME??? Belly laugh: hahahaha! ).
 
At any rate, a few months ago Sabinsa contacted NSF to pursue ingredient certification for a number of their raw materials, as you can read here: http://tinyurl.com/2fgfon
 
Among the raw materials to be certified was the curcumin that I and many others take: Curcumin C3 Complex. The NSF ingredient certification process took approximately sixty days and included a formulation review, an audit of the Sabinsa manufacturing facility in Mysore, India and ingredient component testing to verify conformance to NSF American National Standard 173-Dietary Supplements. Sabinsa Corporation was pleased with the outcome as all six ingredients were certified. This excellent news is almost hot off the press, perhaps a couple of weeks old. 

Oh, and by the way, I came across a curious little fact on the NSF Wikipedia page, which I found confirmed elsewhere, too: the chairman of the NSF Board of Directors happens to be (!) the vice-president for GlaxoSmithKline’s (big pharma!) Worldwide Regulatory Affairs…hmmm, hardly someone who would be thrilled to have curcumin or any other natural product certified, no? So this makes this bit of news, in my view, rather remarkable. Good for Sabinsa!

(Disclaimer: by the way, I am in no way involved with Sabinsa Corporation, financially or otherwise. I am just someone who takes C3 Complex, either in powder or capsule form. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to state that I have now and again received free supplement offers, which I have always courteously and firmly turned down…not because I am a millionnaire, hah!, but because I want to test substances "with no strings attached." If I cannot afford a supplement, I simply won’t take it. End of story.)

6 Comments

  1. Hi Margaret,
    Please ignore my email re “what is C3?”!!! With a little googling, I was able to find the three ingredients that comprise C3, and also found Sabinsa’s website, with a list of companies that carry their C3 curcumin. I’m very glad to hear of this ringing endorsement of Sabinsa that you’ve posted here, too!
    Thanks so much,
    Melinda

  2. Well, concerning endorsements, if the reverse had happened, i.e. if Sabinsa had NOT passed the certification tests, and that fact had come to my attention, I would have reported it for sure. I will report the good and the bad. That’s the beauty of being independent.

    By the way, your comment, Melinda, ended up in my Spam box (no idea why!), and I wasn’t notified as I usually am. I rescued it by pure chance when I went to the Spam box to delete a comment that had strangely been approved but was (instead) clearly Spam.
    So, in general, if your comments don’t get posted, please drop me a line, and I will go retrieve ’em from the Spam box. It’s a never-ending battle against Spam. Sigh!
    Thanks!
    🙂
    Margaret

  3. This is really good news Margaret – I hadn’t heard of NSF before but having looked at their website this is a very reassuring endorsement of the quality of the ingredients in C3.

    Interesting to hear about the freebie offers too – could be very tempting so you are to be commended for retaining your independence – it’s appreciated!

  4. Hi Margaret: As you know I am taking a sabbatical in the fall and I am looking at decreasing my costs. I now take curcumin in capsules – 500 mgs a day in one capsule. I see that curc at Sabinsa is $73 a kilo – my question: how big is a kilo of curcumin – I was going to ask “how many 500 gr will I get out of it” but easier: at 8 gr a day, how long does a kilo last you? Thanks. I was better at languages in school than math.

    Marguerite

  5. Hello Marguerite,
    A useful mnemonic is “two and a quarter
    pounds of jam weighs about a kilogram.”
    It’s not scientifically accurate but it’s good enough for me.
    Old Bill.

  6. Sorry, Old Bill, but your mnemonic relates pounds to kilograms, whereas Marguerite needs to know the relation between kilograms , grams, and milligrams.

    Marguerite, a kilogram is 1,000 grams. And there are 1,000 milligrams in a gram. Your 500 mg capsules therefore each contain only 1/2 a gram. In order to get 8 grams per day in capsule form, you would need to take 16 of these capsules daily. If you are using the powdered form, 1,000 grams (or 1 kg) divided by 8 grams per day = 125 days. Your $73 for a kilogram of curcumin would last you 125 days at the rate of 8 grams per day. However, if you want to continue to take it at the rate of only 500 mg (or .5 gram) per day, it would be 1000 grams divided by .5 grams per day = 2000 days.

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