Recent research places K2 alongside the holy trinity of bone health—calcium, magnesium and vitamin D. The MK 7 form has been shown to facilitate calcium deposition in the bones, helping to keep excess calcium out of the blood, where it is associated with negative affects such as plaque deposition. The issue has been that while the results in the body are good, the results in a tablet are less so. The ingredients don’t always play nice together.
So Kappa Bioscience, the manufacturer of the K2Vital, a menaquinone 7 (MK7) ingredient that is distributed by XSTO Solutions, moved toward a microencapsulation system to improve the ingredient’s stability.
“What we’ve just recently concluded is that some forms of calcium and some forms of magnesium have been breaking down the vitamin K2. This is not just our K2, it was true of other forms we’ve tested,” XSTO vice president Dan Murray told NutraIngredients-USA. “We think what the calcium and magnesium are doing is physically breaking the chain of the molecule.”
Meeting label claims
Murray said the company was recommending a certain amount of overage to meet label claims with the original form of the ingredient. The trouble was, that process was less precise than could be hoped, because there was no discernable pattern for the calcium/magnesium interaction.
“We are not seeing any pattern in the form of the minerals and the source of the minerals. There is no rhyme or reason with the affect on K2. We’ve tested hundreds of samples,” Murray said.
The new beadlet technology, commonly used on fat soluable ingredients, protects the vitamin molecules, making them stable regardless of what else is in the tablet.
“It puts a much stronger shield between the actual vitamins and the rigors of processing,” Murray said.
The result will be an ingredient that will help formulators more reliably meet label claims for only a little more money, he said. Overages can be reduced to as little as 5%.
“It does cost a little more to produce,” Murray said. “But we are talking about very small amounts. If you saying 45 mg of vitamin mk7, it should honestly test out to that.”
The ingredient will formally by launched by XSTO and Kappa at the Supply Side West show in Las Vegas later this week.