Standard Process Ingredients
A line-by-line look at what's inside Standard Process whole-food supplements (brand-wide review hub), including active components and excipients.
The simple version: Standard Process gets nutrients from concentrated whole foods instead of from synthetic isolates. That's the philosophical difference between this catalog and what you'd buy at NOW or Nature Made. Whether that matters for what you're trying to do depends on your situation.
Active Ingredients
The recurring ingredient categories across the catalog, in plain terms:
- Whole-food concentrates — dried, ground, and processed bovine adrenal, bovine liver, bovine kidney; beet, carrot, alfalfa, pea vine, oat flour, brussels sprouts, kale. These show up across Catalyn, Cataplex, A-F Betafood, and most of the broad-spectrum stuff
- PMG (protomorphogen) extracts — proprietary extracts from animal organ nuclear material; the SKUs ending in PMG (Thytrophin, Drenatrophin, Cardiotrophin, Ovatrophin) are unique to this brand and don't have direct equivalents anywhere else
- Glandulars — dried whole-organ products without the protomorphogen processing. Drenamin is adrenal-based. Symplex F is an ovarian-adrenal-pituitary blend; Symplex M is the testicular version
- MediHerb — the Australian-sourced herbal sub-line they picked up in 2001. Andrographis Complex, Boswellia Complex, Echinacea Premium, Bacopa Complex, ResCo, Phytolyn. Genuinely good herbal manufacturing, on par with the best practitioner-channel herbal brands
- Targeted whole-food formulas — Allerplex for respiratory stuff, Antronex (calf liver fat extract, used as a natural antihistamine), Arginex (beet leaf for kidney support), Cholacol (bovine bile for gallbladder)
- Multi-vitamins — Catalyn is the 1929 flagship and the one product nobody really has a substitute for; Cyrofood is the raw concentrated greens; Bio-Dent and Trace Minerals-B12 cover the rest of the broad-spectrum slot
- Cleanse — the 21-Day Purification Program (SP Cleanse, SP Complete shake, Whole Food Fiber, Gastro-Fiber) and the standalone SP Detox Balance
- Pediatric — Catalyn Chewable, Tuna Omega-3 Chewable, Calcifood for kids
Other Ingredients (Excipients)
Standard Process's inactive ingredient lists are short and clean by supplement industry standards. Most tablets use honey or food-grade vegetable-source calcium stearate as a binder instead of magnesium stearate. No synthetic colorants. No titanium dioxide. No shellac. No gluten in most SKUs. Capsules are either gelatin or vegetable cellulose depending on the product. Soy, corn, and wheat are absent from most formulas but show up in a small handful of legacy ones — the company publishes the full per-product allergen table in the practitioner reference, which most supplement brands won't do. Bovine tissue in the glandulars and PMG products comes from New Zealand BSE-free certified herds; they'll share the country-of-origin and BSE paperwork if you ask.
Allergens and Sensitivities
Most of the multi-vitamins and broad-spectrum stuff is gluten-free, soy-free, and dairy-free. A small number of legacy SKUs carry soy or whey — check the per-product allergen table. Glandulars and PMG products contain bovine tissue and aren't appropriate for vegetarians, vegans, or anyone with a beef allergy or religious dietary restriction around bovine products. The MediHerb plant-based formulas carry the standard herb-class cross-reactivity considerations — ragweed family, Asteraceae. The pediatric chewables sweeten with honey or fruit juice rather than synthetic sweeteners or sugar alcohols. NSF Certified for Sport marks aren't on most SKUs — practitioner-channel positioning rather than athlete-targeted — so if you're a competitive athlete subject to drug testing, verify specific products with your compliance person.
Sourcing and Quality Notes
The 420-acre Palmyra Wisconsin farm is real, organic-certified, and you can actually tour it. The company grows beets, carrots, alfalfa, peas, oats, brussels sprouts, kale, buckwheat, and a rotating set of seasonal crops there. Harvest-to-processing happens 'in hours, not days,' which is the operational reason the whole-food concentrates keep more enzyme activity and cofactor content than concentrates made from dried-and-shipped raw material. The bovine tissue for the glandulars and PMG products comes from New Zealand certified BSE-free herds. The MediHerb sub-line carries HPLC chromatography paperwork that meets pharmaceutical botanical specifications — stronger than what most retail-channel herbal brands publish. For the per-SKU supply-chain detail, the full Standard Process write-up at Dr. Bell Health goes deeper. A practitioner's evaluation of Standard Process's sourcing standards is included in this the full Standard Process write-up at Dr. Bell Health.
How Ingredients Compare to Similar Products
Where Standard Process sits in the supplement landscape: versus practitioner-channel competitors like Thorne, Pure Encapsulations, Designs for Health, Apex Energetics, and Biotics Research — Standard Process is the oldest, the only one with the farm, and the only one with the glandulars and PMG. Thorne and Pure Encapsulations are typically cheaper and lead with bioidentical isolated nutrients (methyl-B12, K2 MK-7); Apex and Biotics sit closer to the whole-food philosophy. Versus retail brands like Garden of Life and MegaFood — the sourcing is more transparent and the excipient lists cleaner, but you pay more and you can only buy through a practitioner. Versus NOW and Nature Made — different philosophy entirely; those brands give you high-dose isolated synthetics at retail price. The 21-Day Purification Program lines up against Thorne's Mediclear and the Designs for Health PaleoCleanse; Standard Process's version is the most labor-intensive of the three and the most expensive.
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This site provides educational information about Standard Process whole-food supplements (brand-wide review hub) and similar nutraceutical products. It is not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting or stopping any supplement. Standard Process is a registered trademark of Standard Process; this site is independent and not affiliated with Standard Process.