If you are reading this blog, you are probably someone that already cares deeply about what goes into your body, or you are trying to become more conscientious.Whether that is by scrutinizing labels, eating fruits and vegetables, shopping local, or avoiding toxic cleaning products. How products - including dietary supplements - are made matters, and Gaia Herbs has a dedication to bring you only the best - and show you the proof.
Choosing What to Put in Your Body
It's important to choose your herbal supplements as carefully as your food and drink. After all, not all herbal supplements are created equal. Two bottles may say they contain the same herb, but one brand may have herbs grown in rich fertile soil without pesticides and picked at the height of its phytochemical activity, like the herbs in Gaia Herbs’ products.*
The other bottle may contain herbs from a monocrop grown in depleted soil. The latter results from the agricultural practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land, devoid of nutrients and minerals, or an herb doused with chemicals, and picked before or after its peak, diminishing its overall potency.
The other product may also contain herbs that were extracted using harsh solvents that can leave traces in the final product. That’s why it’s important to do some research to find out where and how your herbs were grown and processed when choosing the best supplements for your health.
Learn Where ALL Your Herbs Come From
At Gaia Herbs, we have nothing to hide and everything to share. That’s why we created Meet Your Herbs®, the world’s first herb traceability program. Why did we do this? Because everyone deserves to know the life story of their herbs and should feel confident about what they are putting in their body.
With Meet Your Herbs®, you can enter the ID number on the back of any Gaia Herbs' product and learn instantly the origin of the herbs in your bottle, the manufacturing date, the parts of herbs used, history of that herb, and what tests the product underwent, including which lab tests were conducted to screen for its purity, integrity, and potency.
What do we mean by those terms? Let’s learn more.
Lab Validation: Testing For Purity, Integrity, and Potency
- Purity means we keep it clean. The herb is responsibly-sourced and cultivated as nature intended, and it is rigorously screened for the presence of pesticides, heavy metals, and microbial contamination such as yeast or mold.
- Integrity means we keep it real. We source, harvest, and test carefully, using science to validate the intelligence of nature. This ensures that the herbs inside the product match exactly the herbs listed on the outside of the label.
- Potency means we keep it strong. Crafting our products from seed to shelf, we ensure the power of each herb is preserved and deliver a consistent level of active constituents from batch to batch. Gaia Herbs also invented a patented Liquid Phyto-Caps® technology to deliver our concentrated plant extracts in convenient, easy-to-swallow capsules.
Herbal Sourcing: Quality Starts at the Soil
To properly provide the potency, purity, and integrity we want to, we employ high-quality farming practices at the Regenerative Certified (™) Gaia Herbs farm in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. A few unique elements of our farm include:
- Certified organic through Oregon Tilth since 1997
- Regenerative Organic Certified (™)
- Tractors run on biodiesel and designed to be light-weight, to avoid soil disturbances
- Natural pest management, such as companion planting
- Proper soil and water management to sustain the surrounding ecosystem.
- Hand harvesting when necessary to protect the usable parts of the plant
- Bee hives and other pollinator habitats
- Annual planting of native trees for biodiversity and soil carbon sequestration
When we are unable to grow something on our farm, we source plants from our experience and passionate partners around the world.
Partner Farms
Our partner farms, located in places like Siberia, Peru, and Vanuatu, agree to uphold the same standards as Gaia has around our own farm.
We have over 100 partner farms worldwide that ensure we receive high-quality herbs to pass on in our various products to our passionate customers.
From farmer to customer, we are all passionate about using herbs to foster our well-being while caring for the planet.
Wild Harvesters
Wild harvesting (sometimes also called “wildcrafting”) refers to manually gathering or collecting plants, fungi, or other natural resources directly from their native wild habitats rather than cultivating or farming them. We work with wild-harvesting communities throughout the world, who are stewards of the land and promote ethical and sustainable practices.
Some of the over 45 herbs we use that are wildcrafted include goldenseal in southern Appalachia, Rhodiola from the Altai Mountains, Saw Palmetto in Florida, and Vitex in Albania.
Want to Learn Even More About Herbs?
In addition to the groundbreaking Meet Your Herbs transparency platform, you can also discover our comprehensive Herb Reference Guide. Carefully compiled by our formulators and Scientific Advisory Board and integrated with expert references and resources, our Herb Reference Guide lets you enhance your relationship with herbs by giving you a full profile of each plant, helping you make an informed choice on the best herbs and products for your wellness needs.
Want to learn more about how confident we are about our transparency standards, as well as the process of validating our potency, integrity, and purity? See our recent invitation to the FDA.