Some health bodies such as the NHS even recommend that certain vitamins, such as vitamin D, should be supplemented into people's diet during the autumn and winter months in the UK [i], and that pregnant women should take Folic Acid during the first three months of their pregnancy [xvi].
Do you Need to Take Vitamins With a Healthy Diet?
In the UK, we have ample access to different foods such as fruits and vegetables. When eating these, they can provide our bodies with the essential micronutrients it needs (apart from a few such as vitamin D which is stated above).
Nutrients such as the ones we offer at Nourished are designed to ‘support’ a healthy balanced diet, boost deficiencies and add certain high-impact superfoods into your diet which are harder to come by in traditional food products.
Our in-house development team have worked tirelessly to make sure our Nourished ingredient line-up offers a variety of superfoods that have a body of extensive scientific research behind them. Many of our active ingredients are extremely difficult to incorporate into a standard diet, so we made it super easy to add them into your daily, delicious Nourished stack!
Ingredients That Are Difficult to Consume in Your Diet
The superfoods/ingredients that you can add to your Nourished stacks can offer a variety of additional health benefits for the body, such as BPL1® and Ashwagandha Extract.
Scientific studies into BPL1® found that this revolutionary vegan and allergen-free ingredient has a variety of impressive benefits around metabolic health, impacting the markers related to oxidation pathways and decreasing waist circumference [vi] [vii] [vii].
Ashwagandha is another example of a highly beneficial superfood that can be extremely hard to eat and incorporate into your diet (ever tried munching on small amounts of Ashwagandha root?). But did you know that this powerhouse has been used for centuries in ancient medicine as a potential remedy for stress [ix] [x]?
You can read our full articles about ashwagandha and BPL1® on our blog. If you would like to also see our full line-up of ingredients on offer (including vitamin C, ginseng, Mango Powder and much more) then you can visit our Nourishment page here.
Personalised Gummies vs Mass Produced Vitamins
Some of you may be wondering, ‘what does a personalised nutrient mean and how does this compare to a traditional multivitamin found on the high street?’. Well, let's get into some of the issues that can be found with more traditional multivitamins, and examine the benefits personalised vitamins offer.
What are Multivitamins?
Multivitamins are a great way for people to supplement a variety of different nutrients, vitamins and micro-nutrients into their diet, with the convenience factor that these are all contained in a single consumable (usually in pill form).
Despite the convenience of having multiple vitamins manufactured into a single supplement, the dosages of these particular ingredients are often too low for the consumer to have any positive effect (more on this later), meaning that vitamin lovers have to still pop multiple pills each and every day with little to no health benefits.
Popping multiple pills every day was actually the lightbulb moment for Nourished. During a business trip, our founder and CEO Melissa Snover (who was an avid consumer of vitamins for over a decade) accidentally dropped her bag of various pills and tablets on the floor at airport security, spilling out the contents.
After crawling around in her suit and heels, picking the pills up, she thought to herself that there had to be a more convenient way to take nutrients that were personalised to her and that contained all of the correct dosages she needed. Thus, Nourished was born!
The Issues with Traditional Multivitamins
Not all multivitamins are made equally. Multivitamins are usually mass-produced using traditional manufacturing methods to maximise profits, which are not made with the end user in mind.
This also creates a huge amount of wastage and normally comes from long supply chains, meaning that by the time you are taking them they can have low efficacy and sometimes be up to 18 months old from when they were manufactured [xi].
This means:
- The ingredients are less effective for your body due to longer supply chains. The older vitamins become, the more efficacy they will lose as they begin to break down over time [xi].
- They can be worse for the environment due to an increase in wastage as products don’t get sold/consumed before their expiry dates, and they are often packaged in plastic packaging.
- They can be less effective for your specific body as they are made with a ‘one shape fits all’ approach and are not targeting what you actually want to accomplish.
While most people know they need vitamins and minerals, many don't realise that different nutrients offer different benefits, depending on their dosage.
Certain manufacturers also try to cram in as many ingredients as possible into multivitamins to add extra selling points to the label. But by doing so, some brands are providing really small dosages of said ingredients, resulting in less-than-optimal results.
At Nourished, thanks to our patented gel encapsulation process and 3D-printing technology, we are able to offer high-impact dosages of up to 7 different active ingredients, in a single gummy nutrient.
We also continue to monitor academic studies and clinical trials to update our current ingredient line-up. For example, as stated earlier in this article, we recently increased our vitamin D3 dosage by over 5x in line with new studies on how an increased dosage can aid immunity [xv].
This increased dosage of vitamin D3 is encapsulated into only one of our seven gummy layers.
If you would like to gain a further understanding of which vitamins your body is lacking, then you should consult your local GP or doctor.
Why Personalised Stacks Are Better Than Traditional Multivitamins For Healthy Living
As we have mentioned above, most multivitamins are made for the masses in a one-size-fits-all approach in order for companies to easily produce a profitable product, which isn’t ideal for the end consumer.
But why are personalised stacks better? To put it simply, every single person is unique. We live in contrasting environments, eat a diet made up of different foods, have individual goals, different health conditions and overall lead dissimilar lifestyles from one another.
These factors all show how we deserve a vitamin that is tailored to us, rather than one made for an average.
When you factor in the issues around mass-made vitamins providing less efficacy and that there could also be issues surrounding dosage amounts in certain brands as well, it's clear to understand why we are so passionate about providing a truly personal experience.
At Nourished, we believe that everyone is unique and thus requires a unique nutrition regime. It’s why we make each Nourished stack to order based on the lifestyle, goals and preferences of each individual customer.
Thanks to our science-backed algorithmic quiz, individuals can get a tailored nutrient recommendation on the back of answering questions surrounding their lifestyle and individual goals (rather than the limited data in a blood sample).
Customers are also able to craft their own stack completely from scratch too from our Lab. Our personalisation options for ingredients and flavours, mean that there are millions of potential stack combinations available.
We then 3D-print each order on demand in our patented gummy gel to ensure optimum efficacy and absorption levels and deliver them directly to provide even more convenience to our customers.
Our gummies offer up to 99.5% efficacy, are chewable and easier to consume than traditional pills, and studies have shown that gummy form can lead to higher absorption of certain ingredients too [xiii] [xiv].
How to Get Your Own Personalised Gummies at Nourished?
Whether you are looking for ways to aid healthy bones, improve immunity or help with the uncomfortable symptoms that can come as a result of the menopause, you can take our quick and easy quiz right now on our website and we will recommend a unique stack of scientifically-backed ingredients just for you.
With millions of potential different stack combinations, you can also create your own gummy from our Lab, which will then be freshly 3D-printed by Nourished and delivered directly to your door.
Want to Learn More About Vitamins to Add to a Healthy Diet?
To find out more about the ingredients, research and studies mentioned in this article then click the links listed below or visit the website research page here:
- [i] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/
- [iv] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27847637/
- [v] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27426932/
- [vi] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30262813/
- [vii] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.5b05934#
- [viii] https://www.biopolis-microbiome.com/the-science-behind-bpl1/#toggle-id-1
- [ix] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3252722/
- [x] https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-is-ashwagandha/
- [xi] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7040264/
- [xii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00174dg
- [xiii] https://www.intechopen.com/books/probiotics/encapsulation-technology-to-protect-probiotic-bacteria
- [xiv] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566230/
- [xv] http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/may2020/covid-19_vit_d_irish_med_j_mccartney.pdf
- [xvi] https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/folic-acid/pregnancy-breastfeeding-and-fertility-while-taking-folic-acid/
