How do we know our products are high quality?

In the herbal supplement industry, every company claims to be using the highest quality ingredients. But in reality, many default to cheaper options, some use lab-grown alternatives over genuine botanicals, and others mix small quantity of a premium product with larger amounts of fillers. Whether the end product is effective is ultimately determined by the purity of the ingredients, where they’re sourced from, and how they’re processed. If the company that makes a supplement you’re using won’t reveal these details, then you should probably look elsewhere, because it’s likely that quality is far from their top concern.

“The biggest question is, ‘What is quality?’” said HANAH’s lead advisor Dr. Venugopal, who’s an Ayurvedic practitioner, Pranic healer, and traditional counselor in Kerala, India. “In Ayurveda, we talk about efficacy. The whole focus is on trying to identify the right herb. There are always duplicates in nature that look alike. In manufacturing HANAH ONE, we have Ayurvedic doctors and collectors who have been handling herbs for years. When herbs and other ingredients are brought to our facility for processing, only the best, those that meet our high standards, are accepted for processing. Once accepted, we use only traditional processing methods that have been handed down for generations for thousands of years. We ensure that the ingredients in HANAH ONE, as well as all of our products, are of the highest quality and efficacy.”

Diversity leads to efficacy

Just as eating a wide variety of foods, rich in probiotics, prebiotics and fiber leads to a healthy gut and strong immune system, so too does allowing a diverse range of plants to grow in a natural way lead to a diverse, robust, and healthy ecosystem. Many botanicals found in modern supplements are grown in a monoculture – i.e. they’re the only thing planted and farmed in that particular area. This encourages overgrowing the area’s capacity using herbicides and pesticides, which in turn results in heavy-handed harvesting that further damages the soil. It often involves extremely high water use, which can deplete areas sometimes already prone to dryness and drought.

In addition, high-yield farming discourages the use of sustainable methods passed down between generations in favor of machine-based harvesting. When used responsibly, this can be fine, but when driven by the pursuit of more crops and greater profits, automation not only disrupts a way of life, but also exploits natural resources beyond what can reasonably be sustained. So while a farmer might get a bumper crop for a few years, eventually their soil will lose its minerals and vitality and may eventually become barren. And along the way, the crops themselves will start to decline in quality and, therefore, efficacy.

In contrast, the ingredients in HANAH ONE and our other products come from India and Bhutan the same today as they were thousands of years ago. On his recent trip to India, our co-founder Joel Einhorn went into an India forest with local harvesters and noted, “There were hundreds of herbs, plants, and tree species within the small area we began to explore.” Here, the local producers aren’t cultivating one or two crops in the way of Western agriculture, but rather allowing nature to take its course and then carefully wild harvesting just enough of the desired botanicals, and no more. This allows them to feed their families while enabling the forest to continue thriving now, next year, and for generations to come.

“Most of the herbs we use are from the wild,” Dr. Venugopal said. “The few we get from other sources are always grown in healthy, natural soil.”

As every plant picked is the product of a richly varied multi-culture fed by natural springs and rainwater and unspoiled by chemicals, they are packed with nutrients. To ensure these are preserved, our partners use traditional processing methods that leave the full herb intact and do not destroy phytochemicals that quick, intensive, high-heat extraction methods that many less conscientious producers resort to. In fact, some of the methods used actually enhance the plants’ natural properties, such as the soaking of our Ashwagandha+ in milk and combining the root found in our Turmeric+ with black pepper, which research suggests boosts the effectiveness of its curcumin compound by up to 2,000 percent.

Relationships matter

Another key part of the quality puzzle is relationships. Say you asked a farmer for 50 litres of his best Vechur ghee. If he was honorable, that’s exactly what you’d hope to get every time. But perhaps at a certain point, another side of his business isn’t doing so well. He does the math and realizes that if he gives you 100 litres of his highest-grade ghee and the rest from a lower quality batch, he makes more money. So you end up with what you think is the same kind of premium raw material you and your customers have come to expect, when in fact it is, quite literally, a mixed bag.

The best way to avoid this is to put in strict controls and testing criteria and to visit the farmer, have a meal with him and his family, and see how his operation works. We invest time and effort into our relationships with our suppliers. This way, we’re not only sourcing the highest quality products available anywhere, but also getting them from people with whom we’ve established mutual trust and respect. We believe in developing relationships, but not just taking our suppliers word for it, as mentioned earlier, we do rigorous testing of all our products. Our focus on quality isn’t restricted to our products, but also extends to people, our business practices, and the planet.

Learn more

Want to know more about our commitment to purity, quality, results? Check out these pages:

• More Purity. Quality. Results. information
• Purity. Quality. Results.launch blog
• Not all supplements are created equal: why purity, quality and results matter 
• Character and terroir: how HANAH ONE is like fine wine
• Farm to superfood: HANAH's mission to change how we think about health