• steve
• August 5, 2021
• 17 Comments

Last updated 7/21/22

Finding vitamins not sourced from China: a sobering statistic

If you’re like me, you fastidiously check the label on all products you buy. When you see “Made in the USA”, you breathe a sigh of relief and buy it, no questions asked.

But let’s say I cite a statistic to you that says that well over 90% of all Vitamin C comes from China. Or that 86% of all Vitamin D comes from China. And let’s say I tell you that China controls similar percentages of other vitamins and minerals. And that these numbers are from years ago, so the actual percentage is probably much higher.

Your first reaction would probably be to point to your label and say “but it says made in the USA”.

The problem is that the criteria to meet Country of Origin labeling requirements is very vague and seldom enforced. The regulations say that if a label says “Made in the USA”, then that means “all or virtually all” of the product must be made in the USA. But what does “virtually all” mean and what does “made in” mean?

In the case of vitamins, if a manufacturer sources all of its ingredients from China but uses a US-based manufacturing facility to produce the product, that product can be called “made in the USA”.

And so for years, we’ve been buying vitamins that say “made in the USA’, even though most if not all of the chemicals and raw ingredients that went into the vitamin are from China.

So what’s wrong with China?

Let’s take the best case scenario. As I mentioned in other posts, I visited China several years ago. When you step foot off the airplane in cities like Beijing, you are enveloped with a thick cloud of smog that follows you everywhere you go. That smog gets everywhere–into your lungs, into the dirt, into the air, into animals’ lungs, into plant life. And that’s in a city where they actually purport to regulate emissions. Those raw materials are all getting processed and getting into their end product. And then it gets into our bodies.

You’ve heard all the horror stories about how melamine got into dog food and baby formula. The lesson American companies learned (or should have learned) was that the reason it happened was that China manufacturers, in order to be the lowest bidder” on contracts, did the minimal it took to make their product, and if that included cheating on testing, so be it. Profit margin was the only goal for these suppliers and the American companies who contracted to them. If it took out thousands of dogs, babies, or adults, that’s just a calculated risk.

Thats the “best case scenario”. But let’s take another scenario.

We know that the People’s Liberation Army was embedded into the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We know that there was “gain of function” research going on that resulted in COVID-19.

It’s almost unfathomable to think that a government would intentionally produce substances that would hurt people. But look throughout history at evil regimes. Chemical, biological, nuclear, and conventional weapons are all designed to hurt people. Do the math. 86% of Americans take vitamins or supplements. Over 90% of those are made from materials from China. Do you think the scientists of the PLA, just maybe, are looking at how they can exploit this to their advantage if and when 1) they control 100% of the supply and 2) the relationship between the USA and China turns sour?

If you think the CCP isn’t that evil, just look at what they’ve been doing with Fentanyl for years. They’re flooding the US market with cheap opioids, which is causing Americans to become debilitated or worse. In their minds, perhaps they think turnabout is fair play–after all, the West got them hooked on opium in the 1800s. But the control that China has over imports to the US today makes the Opium Wars pale in comparison.

And look back at the history of the Chinese Communist Party. The people in charge today are the descendants of the same people who murdered millions of their political opponents in order to gain power. If they intentionally hurt their own people to preserve their power, does anyone believe they would not intentionally hurt us?

How did it come to this?

It seems that I repeat this in every post, but China didn’t create this situation, they merely exploited it.

The fault lies in ourselves. When China got most favored nation status in the WTO in the 1990s, vitamin and supplement manufacturers fell over themselves to get access to that cheap labor. We consumers rejoiced when we started paying less and less for our vitamins, and pharmaceutical and nutritional companies rejoiced at seeing their stock prices go through the roof. But what no one saw coming was how we exposed our entire population to existential risk.

Only those who are naive or fools think that China is not considering using this leverage they have over us to their advantage one day. And it may already be too late for us to reverse the tide.

But we can start by rewarding companies who publicly state that they are not just making their products in the US, but sourcing from the US as well. Remember, in the case of vitamins and multi-supplements, just looking for “Made in the USA” on the label isn’t enough. You need to go deeper for a company that avoids “globally sourced ingredients”.

But they’re not easy to find. If you Google “vitamins made in the USA”, you’ll find brands like MegaFood, VitaFusion / Lil Critters, Puritan’s Pride, Garden of Life, and Nature Made that claim to be, but say nothing about their raw ingredients (and if they don’t mention where their source is, you can pretty much guess what iti s).

Best Vitamins Not Made in China – Quick Ranking

1. Lifesource Vitamins

While most vitamin manufacturers get “cute” when they try to dance around the fact that they source from China, the founder of Lifesource Vitamins clearly states that “we don’t source any products from China”. Click on that link and you’ll find an excellent summary of the many risks that come with sourcing from China, including a lack of toxicity testing, overall inferiority of their products, and the horrible working conditions of workers in China. Another article on their site goes into detail on China’s horrific environmental situation with their soil and their waterways–things that absolutely must have an impact on their product safety.

Something else impressive about Lifesource is that they’re not in it for the profit; 100% of the profits go to support Christian philanthropic organizations like Samaritan’s Purse and Compassion International.

Lifesource, based out of Florida, sells on its own Web site (check their Facebook page for periodic discounts), as well as on Amazon. Here are some of the more popular formulations (based on the top selling vitamins and supplements in general):

Vitamin D-3

Multivitamin

Curcumin/tumeric

B12

2. Nutrigold

Nutrigold does something on their Web site that sets them apart from all other vitamin manufacturers. While other manufacturers make claims that they’re transparent, Nutrigold puts their money where their mouth is. On their Web site, you can view the country of manufacture of the finished product (which is always the USA), and the country of origin of raw materials used in the product.

I was pleasantly surprised, for example, to find that their Vitamin C product doesn’t contain any materials from China. That’s because they don’t use synthetics, they only use all-natural ingredients.

There are other products where they can’t avoid using China-derived ingredients (such as their multivitamin products that use B-12 from China), but it’s clear that they go out of their way to avoid it.

Vitamin D-3

Magnesium

Fish Oil

CoQ10

Multivitamin (Women / Men)

Curcumin/tumeric

Vitamin C

B-Complex

B12

3. Vitamin C Products NOT from China – GMO Free Vitamins and Liposomal Vitamin C

If you’re like me, you were sad to learn that virtually all vitamin C used in the USA comes from China. This means that any juice, drink, cereal, candy, vitamin supplement, or other processed food fortified with Vitamin C at least in part helps fund the Chinese Commmunist Party. It’s enough to make you sick to your stomach.

Since 2005, there is only one company left outside of Asia that produces ascorbic acid, or Vitamin C, called DSM Nutritional Products. If you see a vitamin product that uses the phrase “Quali-C”, the vitamin C came from them. Specifically, they manufacture out of a plant in Dairy, Scotland using corn grown in the UK. Better yet, all of this corn is non-GMO, unlike virtually all of the corn grown elsewhere in the world, including the USA.

Here are some manufacturers of Vitamin C products, many who use Quali-C in making their products:

GMO Free Vitamins – GMO Free Vitamins is essentially the pure ascorbic acid that DSM sells under their own brand. Amazon reviewers rave about how this is the absolute best, highest quality ascorbic acid available on the market anywhere. If you take Vitamin C, this is far better than Emergen-C or any other product on the market. It’s free from additives and filler and mixes into your favorite drink.

Liposomal Vitamin C Capsules – If you prefer your Vitamin C in pill form, this brand touts that they have a completely China-free formula. Core Med also has a similar product that they label “China free”.

Doctor’s Best Vitamin C – Another brand featuring Quali-C manufactured in Scotland.

Pure Synergy Pure Radiance C – If you’re looking for an alternative to synthetic Vitamin C, Pure Synergy’s Vitamin C product is derived from fruits and berries. I appreciate how Pure Synergy explicitly says that none of their ingredients are sourced from China. They have an impressive 4.8 out of 5 rating from over 4,000 customers–and those reviews look pretty darned authentic.

Do you know of other vitamins and supplements not made in China worthy of mention here? Let us know in the comments!