Extraordinary Health Magazine EHMagazine Vol 36

DOES A BODY GOOD by Dawn Thorpe Jarvis, Senior Director of Nutrition Science & Educational Content Garden of Life is proud to present our new Grass Fed Collagen Line. We offer three products: Collagen Peptides, Collagen Beauty and Collagen Turmeric, all from traceable sources with third-party certifications. Collagen makes up 30% of the body’s protein; it gives structure to very important tissues such as skin, muscles, bone, hair, tendons and cartilage. As we age, the body’s ability to make collagen diminishes significantly starting at around age 30. This new line is designed to bring clean, high quality, absorbable collagen to consumers, for skin elasticity, strong hair and nails and for joint support and mobility. † Recently we have seen a tremendous demand for collagen products and there are various options available. So, let’s start with: what’s the difference between Collagen, Bone Broth and Collagen Peptides? Collagen is a very large protein; it consists of three very long chains of amino acids. These chains are made up of 18 different amino acids including three important ones called Proline, Hydroxyproline and Glutamine. Each collagen molecule has three long chains wrapped around in a triple helix structure. Because it is such a large molecule, the body needs to break it down in order to digest it. Bone broth is a partially-digested form of collagen (made by boiling bones for hours). When collagen is completely digested, it is in the form of small chains of amino acids called collagen peptides, which are easily absorbed and are very bioavailable to the body. They travel in the blood stream to deliver the amino acids to the tissues for building collagen. GARDEN OF LIFE GRASS FED COLLAGEN The entire world gets its collagen as byproducts from the meat/beef industry and hence the supply chain for ethically, humanely-raised, grass-fed beef is very tiny and the market is full of sketchy claims. Garden of Life has worked very hard to find the cleanest source of collagen available. For us, this was the most important part of the process, working with farmers with the same values that we uphold. Healthy cattle roam free, feeding on Non-GMO grass, being treated humanely and not being treated with antibiotics and hormones. All of this matters to us. Where there are extremely large herds of cattle such as in South America, complete traceability of the animals in the herd is not possible. So, we needed to partner with smaller farms with more traceable systems before we could bring our collagen to market. We are sourcing our collagen from Germany where we worked with smaller farms; we went to Europe because GMOs are not allowed there and the herds are much smaller and more traceable. Our entire Collagen line is third- party Certified Paleo Friendly and Non- GMO Certified Keto, plus NSF Gluten Tested Free. As we worked on building a supply chain for our collagen, we learned of the challenges of obtaining other third-party certifications for livestock (versus plant and dairy). For example, Non-GMO Project Verification does not have methods available yet for livestock, although they are working on them for us. Although we know that there are no GMOs used for our cattle and the grass is Non-GMO, we needed third-party verification to meet our own standards. Our new Collagen line is tested by IGEN™ which stands for the International Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Evaluation and Notification Program. IGEN is a third-party certification program developed to test for the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). ❖ IGEN tests products using direct analysis. ❖ IGEN adheres to ridged European standards and to receive certification, a product must contain undetectable amounts of GMOs. ❖ IGEN is a fully transparent certifier with full consumer reports available on all products tested. Extraordinary Health ™ • Vol 36 7

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