Can you tell us a little bit about the company?
We started as a family company back in 2002. Our objective was producing health ingredients here in Argentina, where we’re based, that could replace synthetic versions or create whole new categories of options.
That sounds like an exciting prospect. Why did you begin with tocopherols?
Argentina is rich in soybean oil, which is one of the most common sources of tocopherols in the Americas--the others are canola and sunflower. So quickly we saw opportunities to differentiate ourselves by creating a product that used non-GMO and non-soy ingredients.
And how did that lead you to the non-GMO canola oil version we’re using in Ritual?
As we started thinking about how many people now have soy allergies or concerns about eating soy, we realized there were other products to be made. And this sparked a whole new line of thinking. Even though they’re often called vitamin E on ingredient labels, all tocopherols aren’t alike. Each variant has some degree of pure vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol). And each variant also has some degree of broad antioxidant protection (beta, gamma, or delta-tocopherol). Soy tocopherol is about 15% pure vitamin E. But non-GMO canola oil is up to 32% pure vitamin E, so it offers a lot more.*
We’d love to hear more about the source and the manufacturing process.
Our product is non-GMO and non-soy. Our manufacturing process is clean and simple—it’s physical separation. We get the raw material out, and then we bring it to our plant. There, we do a number of further distillation processes and some basic reactions to take out some of the other components until we get a clean version of the product.
In other words, it’s very natural. Is that how you’d summarize your philosophy?
We do not alter the composition of our finished products from the plant that it’s sourced from. So yes, for us, this is essential to our brand, start-to-finish.*
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Dr. Mastaneh Sharafi
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