NOW’s Testing Results of Astaxanthin Products August 2023

Recently NOW decided to test the category of Astaxanthin products after a consumer contacted us and suggested problems in labeling and potencies.

The consumer purchased a 24 mg product on Amazon and believed the product was mislabeled based on the oil color and measured weight inside the softgel. In addition, 24 mg of Astaxanthin is a very high potency for this product and prices advertised seemed too good to be true. This is the 15^th round of testing by NOW overall and started in 2017 when we first tested suspicious supplement products.

Astaxanthin is a reddish carotenoid antioxidant naturally derived from algae such as Haematococcus pluvialis. It can also be made synthetically. The food industry uses astaxanthin as a food colorant in salmon feed to give the fish a richer color. Astaxanthin as a supplement has become very popular and continues to grow. Potencies have increased over the years and we found three brands being sold today on Amazon at 24 mg. Astaxanthin is typically sold by producers at 1%-10% levels. This means that a 10% oil will require 100 mg Astaxanthin algae in a softgel to get 10 mg label claim of Astaxanthin. Most Astaxanthin is sold in a liquid, oil-soluble form, which is packaged in softgels. Astaxanthin powders are more costly per gram but still available.

We purchased two bottles of each product from 22 brands (including NOW) on both Amazon and Walmart.com. It was obvious even before testing that many brands were mislabeling potency claims on the front label panel vs. the side panel. Two tests were performed to assess the quality of each brand: HPTLC and HPLC. HPTLC (high-performance thin-layer chromatography), was used for identification of astaxanthin as coming from Haematococcus pluvialis algae. HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography) was used to quantify the amount of astaxanthin in tested products. NOW in-house labs tested astaxanthin by both techniques.

Externally, NOW sent one unopened bottle of each brand to Alkemist Labs to provide an independent report on the same products. HPTLC was performed by both NOW’s in-house lab and Alkemist Labs, an industry-leading botanical identification contract laboratory for the identification of Astaxanthin.

Below are highlights of this testing group, as well as detailed assay results:

• The products chosen were purchased from both Amazon and Walmart.com at the end of April 2023. These brands were picked because they are less known and sold almost entirely on these platforms. We have avoided testing health food store brands or practitioner brands as being less suspect.

• NOW has tested some of the same brands previously in other categories and found many problems. aSquared brand has failed seven different product testing and has the worst record for potencies tested among all brands. This includes CoQ10 being tested four different times from 2017-2022 and always testing below 50% of label claims. We Like Vitamins is another repeat offender by failing six different tests and each of this brand’s potencies were less than 33% of label claim! We Like Vitamins did pass two earlier tests but also showed zero potency of both Bromelain and Phosphatidyl Serine in previous tests.

• About one-third of brands tested here are new, first-time in our testing program. TerraVita has a drastic label error by claiming 450 mg “Astaxanthin Algae” per dry capsule. aSquared brand mislabels the supplements facts panel by stating “Astaxanthin 10 mg…yielding 5% potency”. This is very deceptive since the name of the product and Amazon’s description both clearly state “Max Strength 10 mg”. We Like Vitamins does the same labeling trick but is more deceptive by adding “10% potency yield” in a small, barely legible font. Later we found We Like Vitamins side panel to list the “10% potency yield” in normal font and another listing showed no “10% potency yield” on the label of their same product.

• 14 out of 22 samples failed potency testing and 13 out of the 14 failures contained less than 1 mg of astaxanthin. Each of the 24 mg products failed very badly and the only gummy tested contained less than 1% of astaxanthin.