NaturPro Scientific

NaturPro Scientific Solve the mysteries of natural products.

In 2025, we’re celebrating 10 years as the go-to experts in strategy and ex*****on of R&D, regulatory and QA/QC for whatever’s in supplements 💊 health foods 🍎 cosmetics 🧴 botanicals 🌿 ingredients 🍚and more

What’s the problem with ashwagandha?Turns out, nothing — as long as you’re following GMP’s and accurately labeling and t...
02/26/2026

What’s the problem with ashwagandha?

Turns out, nothing — as long as you’re following GMP’s and accurately labeling and testing your product.

Ashwagandha has been relied on to support human health for thousands of years. Recently, it has become one of the most widely used botanicals in global health and wellness.

Yet the science, safety interpretation, analytical methods, and regulatory dialogue surrounding it remains sometimes misleading.

Myself, Trish Flaster, and several other key stakeholders believe this valuable, safe and effective plant deserves better.

So, after about a year of work of intensive review, based on a foundation of hundreds of published studies, the Ashwagandha Standards Alliance is now formed.

Here’s what we’re promoting:

• Evidence-based safety grounded in the full body of toxicological and clinical data

• Harmonized, validated analytical standards for strength, purity, and potency

• Transparent labeling and traceable sourcing practices

• Clear communication for regulators, clinicians, industry, and the public

This group is not a trade association or a marketing coalition. It is a scientifically anchored, globally credible initiative to review and communicate scientifically rigorous standards for one of the world’s most important botanicals.

We are seeking to advance the global scientific integrity, safety assurance, and analytical standardization of Withania somnifera products through collaborative research, validated methodologies, and transparent quality practices.

Our vision is a consistent understanding of quality and transparency for ashwagandha — communicated consistently across markets.

Ashwagandha deserves standards that meet its global use — and usefulness for consumers.

If you are committed to rigor, openness, and long-term stewardship of ashwagandha, we invite you to follow the Ashwagandha Standards Alliance page on LinkedIn, and join the conversation.

We’ll be at Natural Products Expo in Anaheim next week to introduce the Alliance, so DM me to schedule a chat.

Let’s build durable standards for ashwagandha — together.

You might think your n=1 story is artful persuasion, but I might think you’re just pi***ng in my Cheerios. Here’s why.Be...
02/12/2026

You might think your n=1 story is artful persuasion, but I might think you’re just pi***ng in my Cheerios.

Here’s why.

Because when I’m reading your story, it’s not about you — it’s about me.

When I read or hear you saying that keto healed your issue, or magnesium fixed your anxiety, it might sound like data to you.

But to me, that’s just your autobiography—filtered through your body, your history, your season of stress, sleep, deficiency, genetics, and inflammation.

And I’ve got my own issues to deal with that are different than yours.

So of course you will feel transformed, while I feel nothing.

Because our biology and our lived experiences were never identical to begin with.

—-

We accept this variability in life, in politics and religion — or at least many of us do.

Different upbringing, fears, and hopes shape how two people can see the same evidence—a policy, a scripture, a supplement—and arrive at completely different certainty.

Your interpretation isn’t happening in the data. It’s happening inside you.

Science, too, also illuminates this uncomfortable truth: your n=1 sounds important to you, but tells the rest of us almost nothing.

No control. No generalizability to me or others. No way to know what would have happened without.

And yet emotionally for you, n=1 feels like healthy evangelism, like everything.

But your lived experience doesn’t outrank my interest in statistics — that is, how that might apply to me or to other people.

That’s why anecdotes on lifestyles, diets, supplements, politics, and religion all start to rhyme in the head of rational people sometimes.

—-

Anecdotes still matter—they’re signals and starting points.

But when anecdotes become sales which become doctrine, that’s when risk — and selfishness — hides in plain sight.

(Especially in diet and supplements, where individual variability is enormous, and certainty is sometimes marketed faster than evidence.)

Real trust lives in the difficult middle: respecting individual experience without abandoning science and rigor.

Because I prefer milk in my Cheerios, thank you very much.

February sunbeam + dog
02/11/2026

February sunbeam + dog

Iron is a fundamental micronutrient essential for oxygen transport, enzymatic activity, and metabolic homeostasis. Yet i...
01/20/2026

Iron is a fundamental micronutrient essential for oxygen transport, enzymatic activity, and metabolic homeostasis.

Yet it remains the most deficient nutrient in the world, with more than 2 billion people estimated with iron deficiency anemia.

In the diet, animal foods provide iron primarily as heme iron. Dietary heme iron is absorbed through the active transport pathways catalyzed by heme oxygenase in the intestinal enterocyte. This form of heme differs in its bioavailability, absorption mechanisms, and tolerability compared to non-heme forms of iron, including iron salts and chelates.

Adding more heme iron to a diet, including through iron supplements, may help to reduce the prevalence of iron deficiency.

Future research should focus on research of heme iron supplementation strategies to enhance absorption efficiency, gut microbiome health, and safety, ensuring optimal iron status across diverse populations.

I don’t usually sell supplements. But when I do, it’s after ten years of R&D, patents, clinical studies, production, qua...
01/19/2026

I don’t usually sell supplements.

But when I do, it’s after ten years of R&D, patents, clinical studies, production, quality control and market testing.

Three ingredients. One patented, synergistic combination. And thousands of happy dogs and cats.

Just Google PCQ Pet. Or check it out on Chewy

Thanks and deep appreciation to my friend and fellow animal lover, Dr. Geoff Pfeifer for staying the course.

All the talk about “shills” and false science due to conflicts of interest is, well, bull-shillt. When people don’t like...
01/13/2026

All the talk about “shills” and false science due to conflicts of interest is, well, bull-shillt.

When people don’t like scientific results, the most convenient (read: lazy) thing to claim is pollution by industry money.

And they remain in their La-Z-Boy for the next claim — that if industry stepped away, we’d get “purer” science.

I’m sorry to report that this couch-potato way of thinking about COI collapses under examination.

——

Today, industry funds roughly two-thirds of U.S. health R&D, representing around $250 billion.

Industry pays for early ideas, late-stage clinical trials, product development, regulatory science, manufacturing scale-up, quality assurance, and safety monitoring.

But let’s imagine industry funding somehow disappeared. And the government magically budgeted to replace all of it.

Taxpayer funding wouldn’t “clean things up”. Unless that means slower timelines, more failures, and even more politicized, bureaucratic decision-making.

We’d inherit $1,600 per average taxpayer in new debt — not couch-cushion change.

—

Industry funding is essential to putting government-funded science into practice. Which brings us to the second armchair complaint:

“Academics shouldn’t take industry money — it’s a conflict of interest.”

Most of the time, the money we’re talking about are relatively small payments to cover travel expenses, translate and present findings, and answer technical questions.

Few people in academia are paid for more than a reasonable amount for their time and expense to then explain what it means, and what’s next.

Someone has to do it - and neither universities nor government pay for that part.

Expecting academics to be the bridge between science and industry for free is both impractical and unethical.

For anyone wondering how the new Dietary Guidelines compare to the old, here’s a chart from Marion Nestle at FoodPolitic...
01/10/2026

For anyone wondering how the new Dietary Guidelines compare to the old, here’s a chart from Marion Nestle at FoodPolitics.com.

A cogent thing I missed in my earlier brief review - the new guidelines are a lot less quantitative than before.

Cups of fruits and vegetables turned to servings — yet fruits and vegetables don’t come labeled with serving sizes.

Is a serving 100 grams or a handful? It all depends, and no one really knows.

No limits on fat intake - which at 9 calories per gram can add up to, well, unwanted fat.

Had there been a Registered Dietitian on the expert panel, perhaps these oversights wouldn’t have been made.

(Shout out to all the RD’s who have to now parse through this, and then educate your patients with another change to the guidelines!)

-—

Article “The MAHA 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines have arrived: Cheerful, Muddled, Contradictory, Ideological, Retro”.

Link: https://lnkd.in/e8qm-3DE

In 2025, scientists in Naples, Italy figured out how to boil the perfect egg.Boiled eggs are a cooking problem, because ...
01/01/2026

In 2025, scientists in Naples, Italy figured out how to boil the perfect egg.

Boiled eggs are a cooking problem, because they have two parts (white and yolk) which cook at different temperatures.

Hard-boiled eggs are overcooked, resulting in rubbery whites and chalky yolk.

Soft-boiled results in a perfect white, but undercooked yolk.

And sous vide? Nice yolk with undercooked white.

To address the problem, Di Lorenzo and colleagues used complex math, and then proved the optimal conditions in practice.

Periodic cooking — cycling between hot and warm water — allows both white and yolk to reach their ideal state.

Cooking time? 32 minutes.

—-

Most scientific debates today are framed like cooking arguments. Turn the heat up on one variable and look for fast results.

But real systems — food, health, biology — don’t optimize under a single variable, but under constraints and cycles dictated by nature.

And complex systems don’t yield to shortcuts. The breakthrough is made when learning not to rush the process.

—-

This work has a practical lesson for scrambled eggs and omelettes too.

Experienced cooks already know that there’s an extremely short window between raw and overcooked eggs.

So you have to pay attention, and take the pan off the burner as needed to prevent those overcooked, browned, sulfurous, crusty eggs.

(That is, unless you’re taking 32 minutes on the lowest heat. And who wants to wait that long?)

——

Good eggs, like good things, don’t come to those who wait.

They come to those who understand when to wait, and when to turn on the heat.

Ref: Di Lorenzo, E., Romano, F., Ciriaco, L. et al. Periodic cooking of eggs. Commun Eng 4, 5 (2025). https://lnkd.in/eAx3JF9V

Open Access: https://lnkd.in/e5rMxJCZ

This year, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn parsing a seemingly endless bamboozle on food, supplements, and health.It w...
01/01/2026

This year, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn parsing a seemingly endless bamboozle on food, supplements, and health.

It wasn’t about specific ingredients, villains, or easy fixes, but about the same uncomfortable idea.

That is, most of our debates are framed in a way that hides important truth.

Like — we argue about “ultrafied” food processing while ignoring portion size.

We argue about human behavior while ignoring systems and their incentives.

And we argue about science and regulations while ignoring the underlying realities.

——

Throughout 2025, my posts explored things like:

🚩Why food systems can’t be understood without economics.

🚩What toxicology actually measures (and what it doesn’t).

🚩Why supplements are misunderstood.

🚩And how history helps us see today more clearly.

I wasn’t trying to defend an industry or attack one.

I was trying to restore context, and hopefully, some semblance of sanity for my friends in this, the craziest of times.

Because real progress doesn’t come from outrage — it comes from understanding systems well enough to change them.

—-

If anything, this year reinforced that the most valuable work right now is in understanding and communicating the complexity of our world without flattening it.

So thanks to everyone who read, challenged, disagreed thoughtfully, or shared the conversation.

Now, onward to 2026, with better questions.

And hopefully, better answers.

Because we’re all in the same boat.

The Boston Tea Party wasn’t about tea, just like today’s turmeric extract tariffs aren’t about turmeric.In 1773, colonis...
12/31/2025

The Boston Tea Party wasn’t about tea, just like today’s turmeric extract tariffs aren’t about turmeric.

In 1773, colonists weren’t protesting a luxury beverage.

They were protesting a system where a distant authority used tax income to oppress its citizens.

(The revenue went to support the British troops).

Sound familiar?

—-

Whole turmeric (as spice) now escapes tariffs. But turmeric extract — the standardized, clinically proven capsules used for health — do not.

Turmeric extracts are not just dried, milled roots.

They are the result of extensive and capital-intensive infrastructure located overseas.

Just like tea in the 1700s, turmeric extract is embedded in daily consumer products, and cannot be produced domestically.

This means higher costs, compressed margins, quieter innovation, and higher prices for everyone in the chain.

To steady retail prices, we are likely to see more turmeric supplements that are less effective because they are under-dosed.

There’s no redcoats in my world. But lots of red faces.

——-

The colonists eventually threw tea into the harbor because tariffs had become a symbol of disenfranchisement.

Today’s tariffs are also disenfranchising, but there’s a couple key differences:

First, they are effectively taxing prevention and wellness.

Second, they make the most effective forms of turmeric (extracts) far more expensive than the least effective ones (straight powder).

The Boston Tea Party was the moment people realized that uneven government control of trade equates to control of our daily lives.

We’re having a moment too. The only difference is that now we’re talking capsules, not teacups.

I don’t set long-term goals or keep track of accomplishments. Except for end-of-year, when I see everyone else posting t...
12/30/2025

I don’t set long-term goals or keep track of accomplishments.

Except for end-of-year, when I see everyone else posting theirs.

According to my memory, here’s a few things NaturPro Scientific LLC completed this year…

🥳 Sixty-twelve safety and regulatory assessments (plus or minus. I lost count).

🤓 Co-authored the most comprehensive review paper on dietary heme iron to date with Douglas Kalman PhD RD and Susan Hewlings.

🔥 Contributed to seven clinical studies (including design, analysis, writing/editing and/or review on behalf of sponsors).

😳 Led responses to nine FDA actions (including warning letters, 483’s, recalls)

🫣 116 free consultations. Dozens of mortgages/pensions/marriages saved.

🌎 Started the Food-Planet Web podcast with Judy Kim and David H. Nelson — check it out! https://lnkd.in/e4ab8sUn

🤭 Cleaned my office twice. (new record).

😁 Joined a USDA grant stakeholder committee supporting economic development of a drought-resistant food and medicinal crop (more to come soon).

🤯 282 LinkedIn posts and 1.1 trillion comments and likes.

🤗 Started Fearless Naturals USA — the first virtual supplier for fully traceable natural ingredients.

⚾️ Coach-cheerleader for 17 Little League baseball games.

🙂 Spoke truth in the face of anti-science fascist fearmongerers.

🥹Partnered with more of my favorite experts. (You know who you are).

🤟Put the final touches on a handful of publications due out in 2026.

And the best of all…

🐕 Took Scooby on 308 trips to the dog park /woods.

Scooby says woof (thank you) for a great year!

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About NaturPro:

NaturPro Scientific, LLC, is a boutique natural products scientific consulting firm offering more than 30 years of experience and solutions supporting the development of innovative and functional products and ingredients that promote human health. NaturPro provides essential seed-to-shelf guidance covering innovation, research, production, supplier verification, quality assurance and regulatory compliance. NaturPro supports a range of startups, midsize and Fortune-50 corporations in the dietary supplement, food and beverage, and other regulated industries.

We Are Active Members of: --American Botanical Council --American Herbal Products Association (Standards, Raw Materials, Laboratory and Cannabis Committees) --AOAC International (Ethanol in Kombucha Expert Panel) --ASTM International (D.037 Cannabis Committee) --International Society of Sports Nutrition --U.S. H**p Roundtable (Technical Committee)

Recent Publications:


  • Determination of Ethanol Content in Kombucha Products by Gas Chromatography with Flame Ionization Detection: A Multilaboratory Study. Liu Y, Chan M, Ebersole B, Sy H, Brown PN. J AOAC Int. 2018 Sep 18. doi: 10.5740/jaoacint.18-0190.