0:00:00.0 Speaker 1: The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of Mother's Market & Kitchen. Mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

0:00:12.1 Kimberly King: Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the Mother's Market podcast, a show dedicated to the truth, beauty, and goodness of the human condition. On today's episode, "Our Kids Don't Always Have the Best Diet, But We Can Help Them By Supplementing What They Eat." We all need more D3 these days, so listen closely and get more great suggestions on the best ways to enhance your child's diet. But first up, Amber Lynn Vitale is a national educator for Garden of Life. She completed her training as a nutritionist through American Health Sciences University in 2000 and as an ayurvedic clinic consultant through the Florida Vedic College in 2005. After 14 years consulting on the integrative nutrition and practices with physicians, acupuncturists and chiropractors, Amber joined Garden of Life empowering extraordinary health nationwide. And we welcome Amber to the Mother's Market podcast. How are you?

0:01:06.2 Amber Lynn Vitale: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very well.

0:01:09.3 KK: Great. Why don't you fill our audience in a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today's show topic?

0:01:15.8 AV: Sure. I guess I've always... Since fourth grade, I remember being fascinated with foods. I felt like the four food group plan seemed very interesting to me, that there might be a formula to health. I've gone down many good turns, positive turns, and many negative turns like the fat-free era, if you remember that one. And...

0:01:34.5 KK: Oh, yeah.

[chuckle]

0:01:37.2 AV: And eventually came to my passion, which was how the body works and holistic nutrition, and then even further, an amazing system which is ayurvedic medicine, and helps people more individualize their approach, because every one of us is different. And it's been amazing to work with Garden of Life because they really put education before supplementation. And we really create supplements that not only empower extraordinary health, but help your body help itself. That's really how I view what we do.

0:02:08.7 KK: Oh, I love it. You have my full and complete attention. Today we're talking about what supplements can enhance your child's diet. And this, I think, is also fascinating. My kids are grown and flown, but it's good for everybody to know and give everybody, especially with kids, a running start. So what is the first thing we need to know about what you offer for babies and kids?

0:02:32.7 AV: Well, it's clean. [chuckle] That is the most important thing. And I think being a parent myself, having raised children... My kids, 2006 and 2008, were their birth dates, and we... It doesn't seem that long ago, but we didn't really have a lot of really clean, truly food-derived supplements. And yet, we were hearing information about what was important. And so it's pretty beautiful to have a lot to offer for infants, newborns, infants, toddlers, all the way through teens. We've focused a lot on adults, and only now are beginning to really offer comprehensive support for infants and toddlers, especially. Because I think that's where parents start to freak out. I know the pediatricians tell you, "Look at your diet of your kid over the whole week. Don't look at one day, you're gonna stress out because kids get kind of focused on one thing." And then I know that breastfeeding moms, and especially formula-feeding moms get very concerned. So you wanna fill those nutritional gaps and also focus on optimizing health, not just preventing disease.

0:03:39.4 KK: Great. Yeah, I wish you were around when my kids were young. What do you offer for newborns?

0:03:46.6 AV: So I think we need to know what's important for newborns. When mom is pregnant and the baby is in utero, the baby is getting all of its nutrition from the mom. There's no supplementation necessary, right? But we do know that moms need certain things themselves. Obviously, prenatal vitamins provide multivitamins and minerals that are crucial. Not the least of which is folate, which is type of B vitamin. Iron, absolutely important. You can't grow a human without iron. Vitamin D3, critical. And then even your A's and your E's and things like that are very important. And so something that a lot of moms kind of ignore and don't realise is Omega-3 fatty acid DHA. And we know it's so crucial for neurological development in infants, that it is also a common prenatal supplement.

0:04:42.7 AV: And so then you're getting close to the baby being born and you're like, "What's gonna happen when they come out? How are they gonna get everything that they need?" Well, if mom has been properly supplemented with iron or eaten proper amounts of foods that contain iron... So wilted leafy greens, red meats. She may have a vegetarian focus or may have an omnivore focus, there's ways to accomplish that both through diet and through supplementation, then she will have stored up enough iron and her baby will have stored up enough iron to make it until solid foods are introduced. So that's great. Supplement mom, it's easy, everything gets passed through her first. And once the baby is born, we can't really get iron through the breast milk, but we can get vitamin D3. We can get all the vitamins and minerals. We can get DHA. We can get probiotics and prebiotics through the breast milk. So there's a lot on a breastfed baby that you can still supplement mom, which is exciting, 'cause I think that just makes us feel a little bit safer as parents. It's the...

0:05:48.8 KK: And right.

0:05:50.2 AV: It's when they get to introducing solid foods at six months to a year, that all of a sudden, the panic sets in. And we're like, "I'm not sure they're getting enough." And so that's where we really come in to meet those needs. But from birth, you certainly can give DHA to mom or to baby or both. And there seems to be a lot of information out there on how important this is. And you can give it by the weight of the baby, which is really how it should be and it's very exciting to be able to offer that. I know I gave my kid's DHA right away, and that's why they're such smart alecks now. Even though...

[chuckle]

0:06:26.6 KK: Right now they're... They're schooling you up now. That's so great.

0:06:30.4 AV: It's terrible. Big heads, that's what DHA gives, big heads.

0:06:35.2 KK: Oh, this is great information here. I love it. Is it ever too late to start, even though my kids are... They're almost, both of them 20. So are... I don't know...

0:06:44.9 AV: It's not too late. The damage you already did, it's done, but we can move forward and [chuckle] Help them from there on.

0:06:52.9 KK: We can start cleaning up the mess, right? [chuckle]

0:06:53.7 AV: Yeah. Good for you Kim, you can take DHA and be able to think better and more clearly if you need to. So, yeah.

0:07:00.4 KK: Oh man, I'm doing that for sure today. It's on my list. What can mom do for her newborn when she's concerned about vitamin C and vitamin D? I know you were just talking about that, the pre and probiotics and... Yeah. Is it too... Is an infant ever too young? You kinda just said that. That's the exciting news.

0:07:17.6 AV: Well, so some things are. So if... Let's compartmentalize. If mom is breastfeeding exclusively, from birth to six months or so, it's great because we can supplement mom. DHA we can give to the baby, but we can also give it to Mom. Vitamin C, Vitamin D, iron, all of that. And good news is that D3, if mom is getting adequate D3, baby will get adequate D3, all sunshine exposure aside. I know you're in Southern California, but that doesn't always translate for all of us. I mean month to month.

0:07:53.9 KK: True.

0:07:56.5 AV: The problem is that if mom is deficient in D3, baby is not gonna get enough. So really, the studies showed that mom needed to be supplemented at least 5000 IUs for the baby to get adequate vitamin D3 through breast milk. If you look at formulas, they always include D3. So formula-fed babies, that's just one of the things that is known. There's iron in there, there's D3 in there, there's usually DHA in there. There may be other vitamins and minerals to try to replicate what the healthiest breast milk might contain. So if they're breastfed, they're covered. If they're formula-fed, they're supposed to be covered, except that what's in formulas is pretty much laboratory-created. And so when we can get a hold of them at six months to a year and we can start to supplement Vitamin C from real food, from amla berries, when we can supplement a really clean D3, when we can put in a multivitamin that comes from real plants and isn't just made in a laboratory, when we can give them probiotics. Then we can really start to make a difference when parents are concerned that all they want is the rice cereal. All they want is the green pea baby food.

0:09:07.1 AV: They just start to get focused on their favorites and it doesn't look like they're getting all the brightly coloureds that we know that they should, that's when there are options, at six months to a year to start really supplementing those.

0:09:21.6 KK: And that's great, that's good information. A question now, why do we need to give new borns and infants DHA and why not EPA?

0:09:30.5 AV: That's a good question. So it's especially important for very plant-focused eaters. So your vegans and strict vegetarians, especially, can make EPA from their seed sources of Omega-3. So your walnuts, your flax, your chia, your hemp seeds. EPA, you will get some, you'll make some out of those sources. But DHA, you will make barely any. And so when it came to putting out a plant-derived algae-derived Omega-3 product, it was very important to provide that preformed DHA predominantly. And the other problem is that most people, period, don't consume enough Omega-3s and DHA winds up being the least consumed and yet absolutely critical. EPA, we'll find some in, obviously, all fish, you'll find some. You'll make some from plant sources. If you took a fish oil supplement, it typically has more EPA, and from that, you can make some DHA, but you just won't make nearly the amount that you really need. So it's the true deficiency of Omega-3s in most populations is the DHA ultimately.

0:10:48.7 KK: Okay, that's... Okay, thank you, that was interesting. Is DHA from algae or is it a different kind from fish?

0:10:56.4 AV: It's still DHA. And when fish consume algae or phytoplankton or this kind of a thing, they may get some preformed DHA, they may make some themselves from other fats that are in the algae. Algae themselves produce a lot of different types of fat and they can be sort of selectively multiplied or bred to produce more DHA or more EPA or all of the above. It's a bit like you have a black dog and a white dog and you wanna eventually have more white dogs, and so you kinda selectively breed them to get more white dogs. And so algae's great because it's plant, it's vegan, and yet, they produce essential fatty acids naturally, and we can kind of put them in environments where they produce more DHA, and we get DHA from a vegan source that is ready to go. Bioavailable, bio-active in the body, doesn't require conversion by our body, doesn't waste your energy, doesn't have any residual loss, and can just really move the needle in your health and wellness without much effort at all on your body's part. Again, helping your body help itself.

0:12:13.5 KK: Right. You're training it and training up from their early on, obviously, when you're starting with the infants. How do you give that? How do you distribute that to the kids?

0:12:25.2 AV: So with the infant and baby line, we really wanted everything to be a liquid. And that's more tricky than it sounds. [chuckle] Because, especially with newborns getting anything liquid in their mouth, your product, use a little syringe. Yeah, you know. And you think, "Oh." Squirt this in their mouth, and then it's all over their face... Even drops, I remember trying to drop Cod liver oil in my son's mouth and he's shaking his head and it's getting everywhere, and he smells like fish for the rest of the day.

0:12:51.8 KK: Oh my goodness, I still do that. No, I'm just kidding. [chuckle]

0:12:54.8 AV: Yeah. Still dribble down your chin. So you want a liquid, but with infants and babies, I absolutely, absolutely tell parents, "Use common sense. Your babies are gonna suck on your fingers anyway. Put it on your fingers, put your finger on their tongue. Let it... Get it in their mouth. Put it in your breast milk if you pumped it. Put it in the formula if you're feeding them a bottle." When they're starting to eat solid food, it's so easy to mix a liquid into the solid food. They'll never know it's there. So all the time that we're getting up to the age when they have teeth and can chew on things without it being a choking hazard, which at Garden of Life we kinda say is four years, that's up to you as a parent to decide. But we always put four years on our gummies and chewables. Up until that point, we're doing liquids and even powders, and we wanna mix them in with other things, or put them... Breastfeeding moms can put the DHA or the gripe water, or the probiotics on their nipple. They can put it on the nipple of a bottle, they can put it on a pacifier and put the pacifier in the baby's mouth. These are all ways to get it into the baby without dropping something into their... Down their throat, which, I mean...

0:14:06.3 AV: If you've ever tried giving gripe water for colic to a screaming baby, you'll know what I mean. It just...

0:14:11.4 KK: What is gripe water? Can you clarify that? I don't even... I've never even really heard of it, called that...

0:14:15.5 AV: So gripe water's for griping, which is like an old word for the contraction of your intestines that is uncomfortable. When you have cramping and bloating and gas and discomfort, griping of the gut. And so gripe water was kind of one of those old apothecary terms for... And it's kind of always been the same. It's herbals. In our case, it's phenol and ginger and chamomile, lemon balm that calm the nervous system and move food through the digestive system. So chamomile and lemon balm are nervines and they help to calm the nervous system, which your gut has a lot of nerves. And then the phenol and ginger are both calming and also digestive. And so you're just trying to help them break up... Even breast milk. If you breastfed, Kim, you know. You're like, "Oh, I had to have the Mexican spicy hot red chilli. And then I paid for it for three days 'cause my child screamed."

0:15:10.8 KK: Exactly.

0:15:14.5 AV: So it helps maybe digest that stuff that somehow makes it through our breast milk. Moms should do it too. If your baby has colic, crying after nursing, after having a bottle, after having solid food, discomfort, chronic hours and hours of crying, mom should also be sitting down with a cup of phenol ginger digestive tea after a meal and or digestive enzymes as well, so that the breast milk is more digestible by the baby. So gripe water for baby and ginger tea for mom, and everybody's a little more relaxed. [chuckle]

0:15:50.9 KK: It's so... That's great. Actually, a girlfriend of mine just had a baby and she just texted me yesterday saying, "Oh my gosh, she has colic and I am not sleeping." So I'm gonna tell her that exactly. Thank you for that information. That's great.

0:16:02.9 AV: Colic is a lot about the nervous system. And I just always remind moms and dads. You gotta remind dads 'cause they're just like, "This baby is crying on purpose to get attention." You know? It's like...

0:16:16.7 KK: Right.

0:16:19.2 AV: It's the nervous system, and baby was in this gravity-free warm environment, they didn't have to digest food, they didn't have to pass bowel movements, their temperature never changed, they always got food on demand. Everything was consistent. The worst thing that would happen is mom's tummy would grumble, right? And so it's just they go from that to being hot, cold, rough blankets, tags, wet diapers, bowel movements, the gut moving, noises, lights. The nervous system is overwhelmed, so especially new babies, it's a lot in the nervous system, and we know now about the gut-brain access. And that when the brain gets overstimulated, it sends these messages down the road to the gut, and the gut receives them and amplifies the messages. They go back to the brain amplified. And so you send a message of stress from the brain to the gut and the gut's like, "Oh, okay. I'm a little stressed out." You get that gut feeling, and then the gut sends a message back to the brain like, "We're a little stressed out." And the brain gets more stressed. It creates a vicious cycle.

0:17:31.1 AV: And if a baby just is suddenly surprised by a noise or light or irritated by a rough blanket or a wet diaper, and that little bit of fussing that they do, they take in air, and then gas starts, and then the whole thing... The whole ball starts rolling. So it's a combination of gut and nervous system, colic is.

0:17:57.8 KK: Oh, I've never really heard it explained that way. Thank you, that's really interesting, and I'm gonna go right to my friend and let her know [chuckle] about what you guys have. This is great, interesting information, Amber. We have to take a quick break, just a moment. Don't go anywhere. More as soon as we come back.

[music]

0:18:15.3 KK: Welcome back to the Mother's Market Podcast. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching "mother's market" or download the show from our website, www.mothersmarket.com. Click the link for podcast and listen to past shows. Plus download our healthy recipes and money savings coupons, all available at www.mothersmarket.com.

0:18:36.0 KK: And now, back to our interview with the Garden of Life's national educator, Amber Lynn Vitale. And we're talking about what supplements can enhance your child's diet. This has been so interesting, and I discussed earlier, I wish I had known this sooner, but there's always the next phase with grandkids coming along, one day. But talk a little bit about, Amber, what bioavailability means, for those people that may not be familiar with that.

0:19:00.3 AV: So bioavailability has to do with how your cells might utilise a substance, a supplement, or a vitamin, or a mineral or something like that. And so first, we have to talk about digestion and absorption. So anything that you take in through the mouth, you have to digest it. If you can't digest it, it's just gonna be eliminated through your bowels or become a toxin. In ayurvedic medicine, we say, "What you cannot digest becomes toxic and you tend to accumulate it somewhere." Your body's like, "I don't know what to do with this." And it just kinda tucks it away somewhere. You can't actually eliminate anything through your kidneys if you didn't absorb it into your bloodstream. So absorption means it leaves your gut and goes into your bloodstream. So things that you eliminate through your bowels stayed in the gut. Things you eliminate through your kidneys got in the bloodstream, and hopefully, things that got in your bloodstream that were bioavailable got into your cells and were used by your cells. We can also call it "assimilation," they get assimilated into your own physical structures and they might be absorbed into a cell, they might be utilised in the space between cells, it just really depends on exactly what we're talking about.

0:20:12.7 AV: But I think that might have been in reference to DHA. And when we talk about Omega-3s, like flax and chia seeds are full of alpha-linolenic acid, which has some actions in your body as it is, but it also has to be converted into bioavailable Omega-3s like EPA, BPA and DHA, which are precursors for very important things, including, get this, big topic, endocannabinoids, okay? And then resolvers of inflammation in the body. So in fact, your baby, your infant has an endocannabinoid system, not because your baby wants to take in cannabis, but because it has a system that was named after compounds in cannabis. And that system governs the nervous and the endocrine and the immune system. So it's very, very important to nourish it, and this is where DHA is very important.

0:21:10.8 KK: That's great information, Amber. Thanks, and I think my favourite thing that you said is, "What you cannot digest becomes toxic." And then that whole explanation, so I appreciate that. What about...

0:21:20.4 AV: Which is why gripe water is so important for babies, 'cause if they're not digesting, they're not gonna get the nutrients.

0:21:25.7 KK: Aha. Okay. Connecting there, the gripe water, interesting. You mentioned it just a little bit ago, but I wanted you to explain it a little further, and that is the gummies and dental health in children. Is there too much sugar in there? What do you think about that?

0:21:41.8 AV: Oh my goodness, kids and sugar. Yeah. So yes. I mean, we know that even maybe, especially those of us parents who are stricter about our diets, our kids are gonna be fascinated with sugar. My kids bring home things sometimes, I just look at them and I'm like, "Who is your mother? What is that?"

[chuckle]

0:22:01.2 AV: Like, exactly. We're fascinated by it. So I tell my kids, "You've only got one set of teeth. You don't want dentures early. Take care of them." A lot of... Even in our health food stores, gummies that are designed for kids have still sugar in them, and it's like, "Wow, okay. I'm gonna let them have their sugar, I'm gonna let them brush their teeth, but when it comes to something that is supporting their health and their immune system, I don't really want it to have that." And I also wanna give them something that I can give them on the way out the door, on their way to pre-school, school, sports, and I want to give them something that maybe I can give them right before bed 'cause they forgot it the rest of the day. So whether we're talking about a probiotic or a D3, if we can do this in a gummy that is fun for them, that they wanna take it, they're asking for it, or when they're older, like my kids, they just... I put it up in the bathroom and they just take it themselves, and it doesn't damage their teeth, that is the best of all worlds.

0:23:00.9 KK: Interesting, so that's that... Oh yeah, monk fruit. Yeah. Hey, can you talk to me a little bit about monk fruit? Because I've seen it in so many different areas, but if you're trying to really kick the sugar habit, that is a great alternative.

0:23:15.2 AV: Right. So monk fruit, luo han guo, which is in Chinese medicine, it's a fruit. And in the way that licorice or stevia has a compound that binds to your sweet taste buds, sweet tasting taste receptors, it tells your brain that it's sweet, but it doesn't actually have a caloric content or feed microbes, bad microbes, the way that sugar does. And so the thing about monk fruit is that it's one of these things that if you just used it raw, it would taste good in a Chinese dish, but it might not taste good in your strawberry-flavoured gummy. And so for years, it's been extracted with all kinds of chemicals and solvents to try to get rid of these bitter components and weird components that we're not used to. Now, technology is such that you can actually have water or glycerine extracts and come out with certified organic monk fruit extracts that actually taste really good. So with a long time to use it, and people asked for it for a long time, and we didn't use it until we were sure. In our kids' line of gummies... I mean, I can't stay away from them. So you wanna talk about being a grandparent and giving these candies to your grandkids, but you eat them too when they're not there, this is what it's gonna be.

0:24:36.6 KK: Ooh, I heard it here first, right? We all did, so that's good. [chuckle] Thank you, that's great. You talked also a little bit about flax oil and EPA, DHA, and the kids plant Omega, but isn't flax oil enough?

0:24:53.9 AV: Right. So like I said, flax oil's great, and more of us should have it in our diet. We should have chia, we should have flax oil, we should eat walnuts, we should have hemp seeds, we should... These should be in a plant-based diet, even if you're an omnivore or I'd call myself an "opportunivore." You know, I'll eat anything tasty and healthy and comes from a clean source, right? So you have all these great plant sources of omega-3s, but as I said, getting to that bioavailable DHA from flax seed is almost a guaranteed no for most people. Even a good, really diligent vegan or vegetarian isn't making much DHA out of their flax, and they have to consume so much of that kind of a flat source that there may be downsides to that, like high Omega-6 intake, which can be more inflammatory, can be shunted down that pathway. And so like our plant Omega in the kids line for toddlers and pre-teens, we want them to have flax oil, it's really good, it has a lot of other great benefits, but we wanna make sure they get enough of the bioavailable EPA and DHA to go to work in their bodies and support their endocannabinoid system, support their inflammatory response, their immune system, and growth and development and brain function. And so we kinda did a best of all worlds.

0:26:19.5 AV: You know, vegan, it's from flax, but also from algae, the EPA and the DHA, a really good flavor, so there's no complaints on it and it's super clean and parents are happy. So it's really a good... It's not even a compromise. It's the best of all worlds for that one.

0:26:39.8 KK: It's interesting. Okay, great, thank you. In the probiotic, is 3 billion CFU too much or too little, or is it just right, and why?

0:26:51.6 AV: Yeah, it's tricky with probiotics, and it also depends on what strains of microorganisms you're using. And I think most of us are used to lactobacillus organisms, like lactobacillus acidophilus, lactobacillus helveticus, and bifidobacterium, longum. Bifidobacterium breve, lactis, these are all things we might be used to seeing in yogurts, and in kefir, and in our probiotic supplements. Our kids' probiotic gummy contains two organisms that are called "soil-based organisms." They are probiotics we get from eating out of healthy gardens, and eating out of healthy soil, and eating dirt. When I was four, we lived on a truck farm in Oregon and I was in the garden. My mom says I would go through 13 pairs of Oshkosh every day in the garden, in the pig pen, eating green tomatoes with dirt and worms on them, and pulling carrots up and munching on them. And thank goodness, 'cause I still have allergies. And if I hadn't done that, I can't imagine what I would have. But this is something that humans have always done. You were not a hunter gatherer going out and pulling up some root vegetable and then finding some chlorinated water and soap to scrub it off. That's not how we did things as humans.

0:28:14.7 AV: So there are organisms that our bodies need to inform the immune system and create the right environment that we don't get anymore, and this probiotic gummy for kids has 3 billion CFU of those kinds of organisms. We've never put it before in a kids line, and it's exactly what they need, and the clinical research proves that.

0:28:33.8 KK: Wow, it does sound like too much, but yeah, you guys have done the research. So interesting. And I... Yeah, we all ate dirt, right? I guess, it's good to come in... [chuckle] Your mom must have spent lots of time with you in the bathtub cleaning up after those days.

0:28:49.2 AV: Somebody did, that's for sure. [chuckle]

0:28:50.2 KK: Yeah, right. What about your best advice on the top three supplements you would give your kids and what would they be?

0:28:58.8 AV: Oh, that's a great question. Well, it's the same for adults as it is for kids, everybody needs a probiotic.

0:29:05.1 KK: Okay.

0:29:05.8 AV: We need what we don't get from our diet anymore. Breastfed babies may not need a probiotic if mom gets one, okay? And so later, once they move to solid food, unless mom is literally fermenting foods in her own counter at home and giving them to the baby, baby probably needs a probiotic. All kids need a probiotic. So number one, probiotics. Number two, vitamin D3. I know you're in Southern California, but even there, because of sunscreen and people covering up, so many people are low in D3, it makes the difference for immune health and so many other things, it's really a pro-hormone. And if we don't have it, we have a lot of other health problems. It's associated with so many health problems, it's not even funny.

0:29:49.8 KK: Wow.

0:29:52.2 AV: Practically everyone is deficient in D3, and the third is those Omega-3s. So that EPA, DHA, DPA combinations, whether it's from algae or from fish, or both, this is another thing that most people don't have in their diet. Kids, especially, my daughter pushes her fish around. You make her eat a little bit, she'd much rather munch on a soft gel.

0:30:15.1 KK: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting too. Yeah, you had mentioned that a little bit earlier, and I guess the correlation of the vitamin D3 playing right into your immune health, but pro-hormone, that's really kind of a wakeup call there too, to just see how that ties together, how they correlate.

0:30:32.3 AV: And adults who are on statin drugs for high cholesterol, will have such lower cholesterol that they may not be able to make vitamin D3 from sunshine. And so that becomes a huge deficiency in adults much more than kids. Kids who go to pre-school or school early and come home late, aren't out in the sun and they're not gonna make D3 either.

0:30:55.6 KK: The way our world has changed, so it's good that you know how to... We know to supplement them.

0:31:00.9 AV: Hey, I'd rather people eat good food and go out in the sunshine and play, and be communal, and get hugs, and have fun. That is my choice. I'm always food first, lifestyle first. We have supplements for when people don't have access to that, and that's what they're for.

0:31:16.8 KK: That's great, and you're preaching to the choir, by the way. I think we all are feeling that, right? [chuckle] Gotta live life. But why is non-GMO project verification even more important in a plant Omega-3?

0:31:30.8 AV: It is more important in a plant Omega 3 than a fish oil because algae has to be farmed, it has to be grown in tanks, and they have to receive sugar, starches, proteins, and those traditionally, whether you're growing algae, or a probiotic, or a probiotic to make an enzyme, or it typically contains GM-sourced food like corn sugars, corn syrups, beet sugars, soy amino acids. So those are all genetically modified crops, and that industrial has been the most common source. Only non-GMO project says, "Let me go back to your corn that you're using for your corn syrup and see if your corn was actually not genetically modified. Or let's just make sure you're not using corn at all," for example. And so anything that is farmed and has a growth medium, you have to be really conscientious. So it's important on our probiotics, it's important on our enzymes for all the same reasons. Fish oil's typically wild caught, so the fish aren't eating genetically modified ingredients, but we still need it because we need to look at the tocopherols, the vitamin E, what that's from.

0:32:42.0 AV: Traditionally from soy, we use sunflower oil, which is not a genetically modified crop, and then your soft gels, too, can be full of GM contamination. Testing the final product won't tell you that. And only non-GMO project goes all the way back in the supply chain to every single ingredient and the source of it.

0:33:01.9 KK: Wow, this is great information, Amber. Thank you. I've just learned a lot. I'm writing notes on the side here. [chuckle] Thank you so much for your time and some really great advice, and we really appreciate your knowledge, and also look forward to having you on the next time. You can get more information, and the website is gardenoflife.com, and we look forward to your next visit.

0:33:19.0 AV: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Kim, I really appreciate your time.

0:33:22.6 KK: Thank you.

[music]

0:33:28.2 KK: If you wanna learn more health information, check out www.mothersmarket.com. Get delicious recipes and health guidelines to keep your body in great shape. Thanks for listening to the Mother's Market podcast and for shopping at Mother's Market.

0:33:43.7 S1: The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of Mother's Market & Kitchen. Mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

[music]