Garden of Life : Featured Products

Garden Of Life

The company, founded by Rubin in mid-2000, today has 155 employees. Its 42 different products are in 135 Whole Foods stores and 134 Vitamin Shoppe stores in the US, and are available via the Internet in 12 countries. The products range from codliver oil to enzyme supplements to goat's milk protein supplements--and, of course, Primal Defense, Garden of Life's flagship HSO supplement. "Our message is that our products will either help you get well or avoid disease," Rubin says.

Primal Defense, 90 Caps

Primal Defense is the only probiotic that contains HSOsTM (Homeostatic Soil Organisms) SBOs (Soil Based Organisms), grown in a base of nutrient dense Superfoods, contains naturally occurring "Live Enzymes

Perfect Food, Powder,300gm

Perfect Food Powder: Perfect Food is a highly absorbable, highly concentrated whole food with each serving providing the nutritional equivalent of 5-10 servings of vegetables.

The nutritional supplement market where Garden of Life is finding its niche is huge, according to the trade publication Nutrition Business Journal. "We really want to branch out into a total health and wellness company," says CEO Robert Craven (Rubin remains as founder), who notes that 60 percent to 70 percent of the population currently takes a nutritional supplement, the vast majority of which are vitamins and minerals.

Garden of Life Products

So, what's the difference between Garden of Life's multivitamin and those Centrum tablets you've been popping every day for years? "We've got what we call a 'living' multi," Craven says. "Most people don't understand that the vitamins that they take are isolated, very cultured. Our vitamins are based on organic whole foods and whole food complexes. We ferment the product and dry it at an extremely low temperature which allows us to keep those living organisms alive in the product."

Craven says the company's growth strategy includes a major advertising campaign and investing "a lot of money" schooling employees of the stores in which Garden of Life products are sold. As for the products themselves, most of the materials they're made from are sourced directly from a farm in Utah, where fermentation and drying takes place. "The rest of the raw materials come from all over the world," Craven says. "We get mushrooms, for example, from the Orient."