Garden of Life states that they are the #1 Brand in the natural products industry. We are not sure what to say about this self-given award, but it is what they claim. Garden of Life focuses on the science of whole food, having clean products for health, and traceability. Garden of Life has several certifications and is a sustainable company. They also have created a Food Safety Project where they are striving to ensure the quality and safety of their products.
Website Navigation
The homepage of the Garden of Life website is pretty easy to understand. However, the organization of it isn’t the best. They have posts from their blog towards the top, we are more interested in seeing exactly what they are offering. They have a link to “see what makes us different” but it is almost at the very bottom where someone might not even scroll to. If they are actually that different, this should be that top so that we can find that information more easily.
There is a section on their website called Why GoL and it was the most helpful and informational one that we found. The page is a little hard to navigate because there are 17 categories on this page, but only 6 are visible at a time and there are no arrows or anything to show you that there are more categories. We liked looking through these categories because they have a detailed breakdown of their testing, sourcing, the farms they use, and each of their certifications. We also like their visuals of following an ingredient through the process of growing it until it becomes part of their product. We think it would be good to add the “how it is made” process to the home page because it is kind of hidden on the company page.
We do like that they have a blog and a recipe section. However, the layout of the blog isn’t good. It has lots of tags that end up distracting us from the actual title and focus of the blog. The recipe idea is good as they share healthy recipes but they use a variety of their products. We don’t want to have to buy all of those products just to make a recipe.
If you click on the Shop section of the homepage it takes you to a completely different version of their website that focuses on their products and doesn’t show as much about their company. This is the most major issue with their website because depending on where you click from, the website will take you to a different version/design of the website. This makes it hard to navigate and can be confusing to remember how to get back to where you were before.
With the shop section, there are some products that have reviews. However, there are not very many reviews and they also aren’t current. Reviews can make a big difference in customers purchasing decisions.
The Garden of Life website converts pretty well on mobile but has the same issue with different website versions. The website is almost the exact some other than it gets rid of the Shop tab in the mani sections of the website.
Catalog
To put it simply, Garden of Life has an overwhelming amount of products. Overall they have 352 products. Wowza. We thought that since we were specifically looking for vitamins that it would be easier to narrow down but even then we still had 75 options. We then thought that going a step further to just multivitamins would help but that had 45 options itself. The product we went with was Vitamin Code Family Multivitamin.
Because they have so many products they are probably pushing a lot of potential customers away. They don’t really have any guide or quiz to know which products you should be taking. Deciding between 352 products would be very difficult if you were new to the vitamin and supplement world.
Packaging Information
As mentioned before, Garden of Life has a lot of products. We looked into this and a lot of the ingredients in their products are super similar. They basically have the same ingredients at slightly varying amounts.
The supplement fact label includes a breakdown of the vitamins you get from taking the product as well as what is in the Raw Organic Fruit and Vegetable Blend, Raw Probiotic Blend, and Raw Antioxidant Immune Support Complex. They state that it is a raw whole food supplement with live probiotics and enzymes, 23 organically grown fruits and veggies, and includes no binders or fillers.
The product states that it is a dietary supplement that is NSF Certified Gluten-Free, Verified Non-GMO Project, Kosher Certified, and is in vegetarian capsules. We thought it was interesting that they are Certified Vegan but this product states it is in vegetarian capsules. Why would they use or say these capsules are vegetarian when they are Certified Vegan?
This product claims to be nutrient support for active adults, nutrient support for active and growing teens and children, mental energy, physical energy, and has live probiotics and enzymes for healthy digestion. They state, “Vitamin Code Family is a comprehensive whole food multi-nutrient formula formulated to meet the needs of adults, teens and kids age 6 and over, providing nourishment the family needs to maintain optimal health and well-being.”
We thought it was strange that they say this product is safe for children but on the packaging, it states, “Keep out of reach of children.” If this was safe for children and made of 100% whole real food, there wouldn’t be an issue with children getting into it. This is probably due to there being iron in the product, but maybe they shouldn’t advertise it as safe for children if the iron could be an issue.
With the overall packaging of the product we liked that they state they are part of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, they buy 100% Certified Renewable Energy, and the boxes are printed with vegetable-based inks on 100% recyclable material. They also included an expiration date which we like to see so we can know how long we have to take this product or if we could stock up on it. The bottle the actual Garden of Life product comes in is glass which makes it feel higher quality. Glass is nice for adding a quality feel but can also be broken more easily, especially if children are also taking this.
Customer Service
Let’s just say that we were not satisfied with the customer service, or the lack of customer service, we received from Garden of Life. On the contact page of their website, there are two ways to get help from their Support Center Team. You can email them and they will respond as soon as possible or you can call them Monday-Friday at the hours listed under the department you need to contact.
We chose to email them as well as message them on Instagram (they also have a Facebook with decent engagement and a Twitter). Hello, we live in a digital and busy world, these are the obvious methods of communication. We messaged them on Instagram and sent them an email. A week later we had never heard anything back, so we followed up on both Instagram and Email. They ended up emailing us back with a fairly good response. They also answered on Instagram as well but they told me by law they were not able to recommend any products to me. So by law, they don’t want us to take their products?
They have a typical 30-day return policy stated as “If you are not satisfied with your purchase, you can return an item within 30 days of purchase. All refunds are applied to the original method of payment. To return an item, contact Customer Service. In order to assist you, we will need your name, order number and the item number of the product you’d like to return.
Please do not return items to our corporate address. Any items returned to our corporate office will not be refunded.”
Garden of Life states to make sure you send it to the right address or you will not be refunded, but they don’t actually give you an address to send it to. Below this policy is a question stated as “eCommerce – I want to return a product where should I send them?” The answer is not helpful at all as it says, “Please contact Customer Service to get an RMA number before sending back any products. Any products returned without an RMA number will not be refunded.” While this makes sense that they need to inform their customers of what they need to do in order to return, they should also include an address somewhere.
Quality
Garden of Life states that raw means “no high heat, synthetic binders, fillers, artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors or additives commonly used in tablets.” They also state that whole food is “RAW Food-Created Nutrients are blended in a base of organically grown fruits and vegetables together with food cofactors.”
Looking on the Garden of Life website we found the process their ingredients go through and we thought that was a good visual. Then we contacted them asking how their ingredients were processed and they gave us a different answer. We also found a response on Amazon with a slightly different answer.
According to their website, the ingredient is grown, sun-dried and harvested, separated and washed, tested, made into powder form, tested, sent to the manufacturer, tested, blended into the formula, tested, bottled, and tested again.
According to what they emailed us the Fruits and Vegetables are juice and freeze-dried in a way to maintain as much of the nutrient content possible. They also said they have a Raw Food Created process that utilizes isolated vitamins or minerals that are then fed to yeast or probiotics.
According to an Amazon response in the questions section from Garden of Life Manufacturuer:
“The vitamins and minerals included in our Vitamin Code formulas are delivered in a whole food form as RAW Food-Created Nutrients. The vitamins and minerals are produced through a fermentation process prior to going through Grows process as described below.
We ‘grow’ the vitamins via our proprietary dual cultivation process using yeast and probiotics. This process utilizes a single isolated vitamin or mineral that is fed to the yeast or probiotic. A specific peptide designed for that particular nutrient is then introduced in order to allow the nutrient to be metabolized (or absorbed) through the yeasts cell wall.
This process mimics nature, just like when a plant takes an inorganic mineral salt that is naturally occurring in the soil (selenium for example) and absorbs it into its roots, the plant becomes rich in selenium. This process is conducted with two distinct organisms â” S. cerevisiae (bakerâs yeast) and L. bulgaricus (probiotic culture used in traditional yogurt recipes which are non-dairy). RAW Food-Created Nutrients are delivered ‘body ready’.”
So which is true? Are their products sundried or are they juiced and freeze-dried? Do they feed isolated ingredients to yeast? If they use both methods depending on the product, some clarification would be very helpful.
They also try to make their RAW Food-Created process sound natural, but it is far from that. They take a vitamin or mineral and feed it to yeast or probiotics, this is not 100% whole food or natural.
Garden of Life states that “Whole food means Raw Food-Created Nutrients are blended in a base of 23 fruits and vegetables together with food cofactors.” In their processing, they use no high heat, synthetic binders, fillers, artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors, or additives. While these things listed are a good way to ensure nutrients are preserved, the way they process their vitamins is not natural.
For the whole food that they do use in their products, they don’t use the whole entire fruit or vegetable. They only use just the fruit, root, leaf, bulb, or stalk. Shouldn’t a whole food supplement use whole food?
An aspect of quality that Garden of Life is succeeding at is having lots of certifications that are recognized. They are USDA Organic, Non-GMO Verified, Certified Vegan, Certified Gluten-Free, NSF Gluten-Free, U Kosher, Star-K Kosher, NSF Certified for Sport, Informed-Choice, Certified B-Corp, LEED Gold, and Green-e Energy.
A different take on the quality of Garden of Life is how they give back. They have a section on their website where they show different charities that they work with. They have worked with Special Olympics-Palm Beach County, Vitamin Angels, SOS Children’s Villages International, Women Heart, and National Parkinson Foundation. We really like companies that donate and help out as it shows that they care. On the box of the item, it says, “THANK YOU! By purchasing this Vitamin Code product, you are helping us pay the nutrition forward to children and their parents at risk of malnutrition and disease.”
Product
We wanted to taste this product to know how natural it tasted. We opened the capsule (which some people who have a hard time swallowing capsules would have to do anyway) to get a better idea of the taste. The smell and taste of the capsules reminded us of cat food. Maybe if it is safe for the family, it’s safe for the cat too? If you are trying to get your children to take them we imagine you will have a hard time. The capsule would be too big for most kids to swallow and chewing them up would taste terrible.
For an adult, the capsule seems like a decent size that would be fairly easy to swallow.
Price/Month
The Garden of Life Vitamin Code Family Multivitamin is $36.79 for a 30 day supply. We did find that you could get it on Amazon for $31.80.
The shipping options are Free UPS Ground (2-5 days) for $0 or UPS Ground (2-5 days) for $4.99. Umm, what? We can pay for the same shipping speed we could get for free?
Experience
Cute Cactus and Jolly Green Giant took this product for 10 days. As they took it, they continued to live their normal lifestyle with no changes. Cute Cactus gagged from the smell every day that she took it. During these 10 days, neither of them felt any different. They did not experience any benefits or drawbacks while taking this product.
Recommendation
While this Garden of Life product might seem interesting because your family can take it, we would pass. The quality of this product just simply isn’t great. They aren’t clear in exactly how they get their products and we have a hard time trusting them.
Contributors to this review: Jolly Green Giant and Cute Cactus
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