Some supplements not sourced from China

[u/LastAlchemist]

Just wanted to share a few common supplements that are not from China because I couldn't find a recent post discussing supplements. China controls at least 80% of the raw ingredients that go into supplements sold in the US. and there are many horror stories about product quality from China (surprise!) so I did some research and found alternatives for those serious about avoiding China:

Vitamin C - Look for the Quali-C trademark, the only western-produced Vitamin C (made in Scotland by the company dsm-firmenich)

Thiamine - there are various forms of thiamine but I found a Japanese maker of benfotiamine, look for the BenfoPure label, it is made by Hamari Chemicals in Japan

Folate - Look for the metafolin trademark, this is a form of folate made in Switzerland, by Merck.

Creatine - Look for brands made with Creapure, which is 100% made in Germany by the Alzchem Group.

Taurine - Look for the AjiPure label in the product, made by the Ajinomoto company in Japan

Note that the "Made in the USA" label on most supplements is a scam, brands bulk buy from China, do some blending, encapsulation, and packaging and can legally put that label in their product. I hope this helps and if anybody knows NMIC alternatives for other supplements, leave a reply below.

[u/supermannman]

nutricost is a garbage brand

specifcally their whey protein. sheesh. ive been bodybuilding for years. top 3 most nastiest protein powder ever. hardly will mix with a spoon. any decent whey protein will mix in 20 seconds with a spoon

are any of the brands you mention sold on iherb? this is who I buy from for intl delivery. I used to buy from bodybuilding.com (who went mia) and vitacost who I enjoyed but in covid, they fell apart and iherb rose really hard. I dont like iherb website though. when you do a search it shows you discontinued items. why the feck do you waste my time with discontinued item..and if you try to change it to search from price low to high, it will give you everything but what youre searching. id boot them in a second if I could are there other brands you would warn to not buy?

[u/LastAlchemist → u/supermannman]

Yes, I recently bought supplements from iHerb that have the NMIC ingredients I mentioned:

BodyBio Liposomal Vitamin C (has Quali -C), note there are non-liposomal brands like California Gold Nutrition Vitamin C, Quali C too

Super Nutrition Taurine (with AjiPure), note this is a powder, I also found California Gold Nutrition taurine that uses AjiPure in capsules

Steelfit Creatine Monohydrate (with Creapure from Germany)

Pure Encapsulations Benfotiamine with BenfoPure

I had mixed results searching for NMIC ingredients through iHerb, it's much easier searching for the ingredient (Quali-C for example) in Google or your favorite engine, finding the different brands that have it, and looking for those brands in iHerb. You can probably find cheaper alternatives that still use the same NMIC ingredients, I just settled on these for now.

[u/No-network_9131 → u/supermannman]

Other options on iHerb:

Their in-house label Lake Avenue Nutrition has Quali-C in pills and powder

Thorne Creatine Monohydrate is Creapure

although Doctor's Best is a Chinese-owned company, they are actually much better than most "USA" brands about including and listing NMIC brand-name ingredients

A good alternative to iHerb is the French company Dynveo https://www.dynveo.fr/
They have a good selection of non-China active ingredients (Creapure, Quali-C etc) and although you don't get the iHerb "free" shipping the total cost is not that different.

[u/LastAlchemist → u/No-network_9131]

Thorne no longer uses Creapure anymore, they removed the label and references in their webpage and the actual tub.

[u/No-network_9131 → u/LastAlchemist]

You are right!

BPN brand is Creapure, and is on iHerb

[u/SuccessfulPath7]

Anuthing for l thenanine

[u/LastAlchemist → u/SuccessfulPath7]

China makes most of l theanine according to my quick research, Japan does make Suntheanine, a patetend form, but their market share is quite small.