Natural Foods Safety & Testing
Real food that’s naturally better for you
At NOW® we believe that natural foods are safer and better for you than foods made with ingredients not found in nature. Much of the food found in supermarkets today isn’t really food at all; just highly processed and refined ingredients masquerading as real food. We focus on offering wholesome natural and organic foods that are lower in sodium and sugar with ingredients you’ll recognize.
Natural food testing
We’re proud to stand behind the quality of our products, which is why we perform more than 16,000 analyses and tests per month on all NOW products, including our natural foods. We test incoming raw materials and ingredients, in-process ingredients and finished products to meet federal cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) standards.
NOW tests our natural foods for identity, purity and composition. We’re one of the few manufacturers in the industry to test our cooking oils for these attributes by reviewing each oil’s unique properties and testing the fatty acid content. In addition, we test all of our food products for adulterants such as pesticides, fungicides, and other agricultural chemicals, and we perform sensory tests to ensure they meet our quality and freshness standards, and yours. Fresh coconut oil should smell and taste like fresh coconuts. If it doesn’t, we won’t sell it.
Our robust testing resources and capabilities ensure that all NOW natural food products are pure, fresh, tasty, and safe for consumption.
No GMOs or irradiation
NOW is committed to using only natural and non-GMO ingredients in our foods. We believe that GMOs are not natural, and we support increased farming of non-GMO crops, and even a ban on GMO crops for human consumption and animal feed.
In addition, NOW does not allow the use of irradiated ingredients in any of our products. Food irradiation is a modern manufacturing method that uses specific levels of ionizing radiation to prevent spoilage and kill potential pathogens. This unnatural process irreparably damages DNA and cellular membranes and interrupts enzymatic pathways. Studies on the safety of irradiation are inconclusive and NOW will not allow irradiated ingredients in any of our products. We use sophisticated analytical instrumentation to determine if an ingredient has been irradiated.
From sourcing to shipping, we take the safety of our natural food products very seriously, and we test and test again to ensure the products we produce are products we’d give to our own families.
Our non-GMO commitment.