Review of: NewChapter Turmeric Force

It would seem impossible to come up with a turmeric supplement that really offers anything new. After all, turmeric is turmeric and other than varying the amount per capsule isn't it all the same? Not when you look at NewChapter Turmeric Force.

Just about everyone would benefit from a turmeric supplement, because relatively few of us cook with it. I normally don't use a turmeric supplement because I normally use turmeric in my cooking, so I consume it all the time. But this summer, I developed extensive inflammation due to some injuries and needed a way to fight that. Turmeric is known for its anti-inflammatory properties (along with many other benefits).

So I bought a bottle at my local grocery store. But these cost a lot for the amount of turmeric you get. A friend put me on to another brand available online, and that really lowered my per unit cost. So I thought that was the end of the story. Then I discovered NewChapter Turmeric Force. And it's not all about just getting the lowest cost per unit.

This is a liquid gel capsule, and the turmeric is mixed with extra-virgin olive oil, maltodextrin, and beeswax. The capsule itself is made from hypromelluose. The turmeric comes as two separate ingredients. One is "supercritical extract" from organic turmeric rhizome. The other is listed as "Turmeric (rhizome hydroethanolic extract). It appears that one extract uses an organic method (CO2 extraction) while the other uses a water-alcohol mixture (maybe that's also organic?).

Each capsule delivers 400 mg, 80 of which is derived with the organic (non-alcohol) method. That's according to the nutrition panel, but elsewhere on the box it says that with the full spectrum extracts one capsule contains 3,960 mg of turmeric. The capsule seems about 50% larger than a 1000 mg capsule from another manufacturer, so I really doubt it has 4 times the turmeric in it jammed in there with the olive oil and beeswax.

Something else is going on, and my guess is it's an efficacy thing. You would need 3,960 mg of turmeric via standard capsules to get the same effect as from one of these capsules. I did not contact the company to verify this.

This seems like an enormous difference, but we can see the same math at work with other supplements. For example, taking a D3 gel capsule renders only a fraction (I don't have the exact number, but I recall a 10:1 ratio) of the usable Vitamin D you get from the same amount taken in a sublingual spray. Another benchmark is the FundAminos supplement, which is 5 times as effective as the same amount of protein powder.

And there's the old joke that it takes 10 times as many government workers to do the same job as one private sector worker. While true in many cases, it is often decidedly untrue. It depends upon the agency and the workers involved. But the joke conveys the same idea.

NewChapter markets this as holistic, meaning the company uses the whole food. Thus you get not only the turmeric but the phytochemicals that you would get if you harvested the plant yourself and just ate it. Since turmeric is, despite the FDA's nonsensical protests to the contrary, a powerful anti-carcinogen (and the AMA-approved medical literature documents this), it follows that this whole food approach is of additional benefit.

Oddly enough, the box makes actual health claims even though the FDA, with its typical "headupbuttitis serve big Pharma" mentality likes to pretend reality is optional and has decreed turmeric is just a spice or supplement. Similar to how it's illegal, thanks to the FDA, to refer to Stevia as a sweetener even though it's something like 300 times sweeter than sugar. Maybe if everyone in the FDA simply quit their jobs and chose something useful to do with their lives, we'd all be better off.

The health claims include the inflammation response (also heavily documented) and support of cardio and liver health (I'm not aware if the AMA-approved literature documents these also). It leaves out a few things, such as the fact that in India turmeric has been used as an antiseptic for wounds for over 7,000 years. Or that peer-reviewed oncology papers have shown that when you combine turmeric with black pepper, the anti-cancer effects actually multiply rather than merely add. But with the FDA not wanting real science to appear on turmeric labels I guess they didn't dare include this helpful information.

The packaging also says it's 100% vegetarian, but I don't know of any turmeric supplements that contain animal products.

Just to bring you full-circle on my reason for supplementing, turmeric greatly reduced the inflammation and the injuries are healing nicely. But, of course, it wasn't the turmeric because according to the reality-distortion experts at the FDA--medical labs don't know what they're talking about, biochemists are sadly mistaken, and 7,000 years of empirical evidence (people in India have used it as medicine, quite effectively, for all that time) is all wrong.

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