Unfortunately, there are a lot of risks associated with the declaration of individual active ingredients in today's mushroom market that the average consumer has no chance of detecting.
Our German colleagues also regularly test competing products and sometimes it is hard not to wonder what some products contain.
A very popular trick of some raw material processors is to replace some of the active substances from vital mushrooms with alternative substances from cheaper sources.
Today, some manufacturers are replacing polysaccharides with starch, which is also a polysaccharide but has no significance for the body. If we send a mushroom extract for a polysaccharide test, a conventional laboratory does not have the methodology to detect whether it is a mushroom polysaccharide or ordinary starch.
We sometimes encounter that, for example, triterpenes are replaced by sage triterpenes, which are cheaper and easier to process. But again without much effect on the organism.
And starch or triterpenes from sage are certainly not substances that we want to find in good quality vital mushrooms. Especially if we take such a product, the effects of the individual mushrooms will shift and e.g. Reishi will no longer have the effects of Reishi.
At MycoMedica, we are able to check the quality and, more importantly, the origin of fungal polysaccharides using unique analytical methods that we have developed with great dedication and passion over a period of 20 years in collaboration with our German partner.
Our initial control of goods takes place in a GMP-certified pharmaceutical environment in Germany, where testing for various harmful substances such as 300 kinds of pesticides, heavy metals, radioactivity or PAHs takes place. Last but not least, we also perform microbiological analyses.
But back to the authenticity and origin of the active ingredients. In order to guarantee the authenticity (genuineness) of the individual mushroom ingredients, all raw materials are also subjected to the SEC analytical identity test - the so-called MycoPrint (our "mushroom fingerprint").
In this way, we and our customers can be sure that the declared mushroom species has actually been used for a given extraction and that the individual active ingredients have been created through a strictly controlled extraction process and have not been artificially added to the extract just to meet the parameters we declare.
Not all suppliers are able to control or correctly declare the individual active ingredients that a mushroom extract contains and if you are unsure about your product choice, ask your retailer if they also test the authenticity of the mushroom extract.
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