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Richard Merriam can talk about the future because he has seen the past. As the founder and CEO of GCI Nutrients, Inc., Merriam was there at the early days of the modern natural products industry, and helped it grow and develop into worldwide importance. His experience gives him a unique perspective on the business and the opportunities that lie ahead.
Question: How did you get started in this industry?
Answer: In 1931, my father and grandfather had opened one of the first natural-food grocery stores in San Francisco on Talbert Street. Later, they started Landstrom Distributors. Then in 1970, GCI Nutrients was started as a trucking company, shipping ingredients throughout California, New York, Tennessee and Texas.
Our business kept accelerating, and we eventually opened offices in Canada, Brazil, India, China and Europe, along the way building strong relationships with our customers and suppliers, some of which we still have to this day. Relationships are the key in finding the very best ingredients, of the highest purity, quality and bioavailability.
Question: How did the industry move into the mainstream?
Answer: I don’t know if the industry moved into the mainstream, or the mainstream just caught up with the industry!
Consumers today are better informed about their health, nutrition and food than ever before. The internet was a paradigm shift, but when we began, information moved much more glacially than today.
And there was little scientific support for some of the claims being made. So, in 1995 we produced a book called Your Guide to Standardized Herbal Products, a detailed reference guide. It was the first book to establish specific scientific standards for herbals. It helped educate the public to make more informed decisions, but it also changed the entire supplement market, adding credibility and value by supporting nutritional claims with evidence. We were finally linking science with the natural-food movement.
Question: Was that the impetus for the NutriPhama Coalition?
Answer: Yes, the NutriPharma Coalition is designed to bring the same scientific validation to natural-ingredient nutraceutical solutions as there is for synthetic-chemical pharmaceutical solutions.
We are conducting clinical trials with Dr. Jit Nag and Nag Research Laboratories, Inc., in Fremont, CA. We have identified numerous health conditions that might be improved with nutraceuticals, and we are testing each of these conditions and publishing the results in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
And we’re filing domestic and international patents on formulations to create proprietary products that compare favorably with pharmaceuticals in terms of effectiveness and safety.
The objective is to create proof-of-concept products that work as well as drugs, or even better, and at lower cost.
We’re also seeing that nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals can work synergistically to produce a better outcome for the individual. We’re working on one formulation that appears to be just as effective at lowering blood sugar as the leading prescribed medication, but when the pharmaceutical and the nutraceutical are given together, the result is even more dramatic than either product alone.
So just like we wrote the book on the standards for the industry 30 years ago, we’re starting to create new standards for the industry going forward.
Question: Where do you think our industry will be in the future?
Answer: Artificial Intelligence—AI—is opening the door to an amazing future in a lot of areas. At the same time, information and interest are converging with technology. The internet has put all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. And interest in personal health is exploding. People are taking responsibility for their own well-being, knowing they can avoid or mitigate certain health conditions and diseases. Our GCI Nutrients Scientific Team is evaluating AI as the next logical step in our ability to link proprietary natural-ingredient nutraceutical formulations to specific human conditions with scientific evidence-based certainty. AI can help do that by being able to access, analyze and synthesize the details of every bit of clinical research and information ever produced, far beyond what an individual practitioner or even team could perform. That will help dig out the nuggets of validity in a sea of data to provide unique insight and guidance to creating innovative and effective formulations, whether nutraceutical or pharmaceutical or a synergistic combination. That’s a very exciting and beneficial future for our industry and, frankly, for humanity.
Richard Merriam can talk about the future because he has seen the past. As the founder and CEO of GCI Nutrients, Inc., Merriam was there at the early days of the modern natural products industry, and helped it grow and develop into worldwide importance. His experience gives him a unique perspective on the business and the opportunities that lie ahead.
Question: How did you get started in this industry?
Answer: In 1931, my father and grandfather had opened one of the first natural-food grocery stores in San Francisco on Talbert Street. Later, they started Landstrom Distributors. Then in 1970, GCI Nutrients was started as a trucking company, shipping ingredients throughout California, New York, Tennessee and Texas.
Our business kept accelerating, and we eventually opened offices in Canada, Brazil, India, China and Europe, along the way building strong relationships with our customers and suppliers, some of which we still have to this day. Relationships are the key in finding the very best ingredients, of the highest purity, quality and bioavailability.
Question: How did the industry move into the mainstream?
Answer: I don’t know if the industry moved into the mainstream, or the mainstream just caught up with the industry!
Consumers today are better informed about their health, nutrition and food than ever before. The internet was a paradigm shift, but when we began, information moved much more glacially than today.
And there was little scientific support for some of the claims being made. So, in 1995 we produced a book called Your Guide to Standardized Herbal Products, a detailed reference guide. It was the first book to establish specific scientific standards for herbals. It helped educate the public to make more informed decisions, but it also changed the entire supplement market, adding credibility and value by supporting nutritional claims with evidence. We were finally linking science with the natural-food movement.
Question: Was that the impetus for the NutriPhama Coalition?
Answer: Yes, the NutriPharma Coalition is designed to bring the same scientific validation to natural-ingredient nutraceutical solutions as there is for synthetic-chemical pharmaceutical solutions.
We are conducting clinical trials with Dr. Jit Nag and Nag Research Laboratories, Inc., in Fremont, CA. We have identified numerous health conditions that might be improved with nutraceuticals, and we are testing each of these conditions and publishing the results in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
And we’re filing domestic and international patents on formulations to create proprietary products that compare favorably with pharmaceuticals in terms of effectiveness and safety.
The objective is to create proof-of-concept products that work as well as drugs, or even better, and at lower cost.
We’re also seeing that nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals can work synergistically to produce a better outcome for the individual. We’re working on one formulation that appears to be just as effective at lowering blood sugar as the leading prescribed medication, but when the pharmaceutical and the nutraceutical are given together, the result is even more dramatic than either product alone.
So just like we wrote the book on the standards for the industry 30 years ago, we’re starting to create new standards for the industry going forward.
Question: Where do you think our industry will be in the future?
Answer: Artificial Intelligence—AI—is opening the door to an amazing future in a lot of areas. At the same time, information and interest are converging with technology. The internet has put all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. And interest in personal health is exploding. People are taking responsibility for their own well-being, knowing they can avoid or mitigate certain health conditions and diseases. Our GCI Nutrients Scientific Team is evaluating AI as the next logical step in our ability to link proprietary natural-ingredient nutraceutical formulations to specific human conditions with scientific evidence-based certainty. AI can help do that by being able to access, analyze and synthesize the details of every bit of clinical research and information ever produced, far beyond what an individual practitioner or even team could perform. That will help dig out the nuggets of validity in a sea of data to provide unique insight and guidance to creating innovative and effective formulations, whether nutraceutical or pharmaceutical or a synergistic combination. That’s a very exciting and beneficial future for our industry and, frankly, for humanity.
