When trying to create a list of the best vegan iron supplements, I came across an iron supplement sold by Nature Made.
While some of their supplements are vegan friendly, this one wasn’t clearly labeled as such.
So I contacted them asking for clarification, since at first glance it looked like their iron supplement might be vegan-friendly.
Here’s Nature Made’s Customer Support Reply
A few days later, I got this email back:
Click the image to see the full-sized version.
The most important part is this line:
Our Iron 65 mg tablets do not contain any ingredients from an animal source, therefore, they are vegan friendly. We hope you find this information useful.
As of now, Nature Made’s iron supplement is vegan.
It likely will be in the future as well, but it is possible that they change their formulation, so I can’t guarantee it.
I’d like to see them add a clear label to their products, but that’s up to them.
Ingredients in Nature Made Iron Tablets
If you’d like to check if there’s any changes in this product that I haven’t noticed yet, check out the Nature Made website.
For now, the ingredients in this product are:
- Cellulose gel – Always plant based and vegan
- Dibasic calcium phosphate – A product typically derived from rocks or made in a lab.
- Croscarmellose sodium – A salt, I wouldn’t be worried about it coming from an animal source.
- Hypromellose – A synthetic polymer (i.e. plastic) that is vegan-friendly.
- Color Added – Depending on your views, food coloring added may or may not be vegan.
- Magnesium stearate – Magnesium stearate isn’t always vegan because it can come from plant or animal sources. In this case, it’s clear that Nature Made uses the plant version based on their customer service response.
- Polyethylene glycol – Derived from petroleum (gross, but vegan).
- Triethyl citrate – A form of citric acid, which comes from citrus fruits.
- Polysorbate 80 – A stabilizer that’s made synthetically in a lab, no animal products are involved to make it.
So despite the customer service reply from before, some vegans may still not consider Nature Made’s iron tablets to be vegan because they contain artificial colors. The concern with those is not containing animal products, but animal testing.
Personally, I would prefer to stick to a product that’s made specifically for vegans, they’re not too hard to find these days.
Nature Made Iron 65 mg tablets contain Magnesium Stearate which is a common filler in vitamin supplements normally derived from pork. Hopefully they will remove it or have since we purchased this bottle for my non-vegan husband.
“2. Magnesium Stearate
Another filler you’ll often see listed in the ingredient list is magnesium stearate, which is normally pork-derived. It’s used as a lubricant on the coating of supplements or included as a filler. Magnesium stearate come from stearic acid, which is is a fatty acid usually found in pork, butter, chicken, beef, fish, and milk. It’s also found in cocoa and grains. Be sure to purchase exclusively vegan supplements so you can be assured you’re not taking in animal fats used to make this ingredient. Usually, if a supplement contains a vegetarian/vegan source of magnesium stereate, it will say so on the label.”
So beware…
That’s correct Jen, if you see magnesium stearate, it’s usually from pork, but it can be from non-animal sources as well.
Nature Made says their iron has no animal products, so at this point it comes down to whether or not you trust them.