Vitamin C that grew on a tree

Most of the world's vitamin C is made in factories, from corn sugar. It is the same molecule as the vitamin C in an orange, and if the argument were purely about molecules it would be a good one.

The vitamin C in our scoop comes from the acerola cherry, a small red fruit from Brazil and the Caribbean with around thirty times the vitamin C of an orange, gram for gram. It is about the richest natural source there is. When you eat a fruit you do not get one molecule on its own. You get it with the flavonoids and the rest of what the plant grew alongside it, and we believe that company is a big part of why fruit does for us what a tablet does not.

Vitamin C contributes to the normal function of the immune system, to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin, and it increases iron absorption, which is a useful thing to have in the same scoop as liver and spleen. We also believe most of us burn through it faster than we think. Stress, sugar, a couple of drinks and a bad night all use it up, and the body cannot make its own.

This one is the clearest example of the question we asked about every ingredient: why this, when there is something cheaper. Almost every time, the cheaper thing had been made rather than grown.