Why We Don’t Standardize Our Botanicals
(And Why That’s a Good Thing!)
Viana Muller, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, Whole World Botanicals
If you’ve ever evaluated herbal supplements, you’ve likely encountered claims such as “standardized to 15% total alkaloids” or “guaranteed potency.” These statements suggest analytical precision and pharmacologic rigor. It’s reasonable, then, to ask why Whole World Botanicals does not rely on this approach.
The botanical supplement marketplace is filled with hundreds of thousands of products, many of which are similar single-herb offerings. This creates a fundamental challenge: how can you evaluate which product is both high-quality and effective?
Many manufacturers use “standardization” as their key selling point. Standardization refers to the process of quantifying a specific phytochemical and adjusting the supplement to contain a defined concentration of that compound. Products standardized to higher levels of a designated “active” component are often positioned as more potent and consistent, implying greater effectiveness. The price often reinforces this perception, and you’ll often pay a premium for standardized extracts.
However, this framework rests on a critical assumption: that a single phytochemical serves as a reliable proxy for the biological activity of the whole plant. In practice, standardization, while analytically convenient, does not provide an accurate measure of potency or therapeutic effect.
Plants Are NOT Pharmaceuticals
Here’s the thing about botanicals: they are wildly, beautifully complex. A single medicinal plant contains hundreds of naturally occurring compounds—alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenes, polysaccharides, glycosides, tannins, saponins, and more. These compounds didn’t evolve in isolation. They evolved together—and they work together.
Herbalists and traditional medicine practitioners have understood this for millennia. The healing power of a plant comes from the whole picture—all those compounds interacting in ways scientists are still working to understand fully.
When you standardize a botanical supplement, you’re essentially saying: “We’ve decided this one compound is the active ingredient, and we’re going to guarantee a fixed percentage of it in every serving.” To hit that target, manufacturers often concentrate some parts of the plant while diluting or discarding others.
You end up with something that looks uniform on a lab report—but no longer resembles the plant that traditional healers have worked with for generations.
Fixating on a single compound can actually undo the balance the plant spent millennia developing!
The “Active Ingredient” Problem
Standardization assumes we know which compound in a plant is responsible for its therapeutic effects. But in reality, it is rarely just one compound. This is a key difference between pharmaceuticals and botanicals.
When pharmaceutical companies develop drugs from plants—a process that accounts for roughly 25% of all drugs—their first step is to isolate what they believe is the “active ingredient.” Once isolated and concentrated, however, that compound often becomes significantly more toxic.
Much of the work in drug development—known as pharmacognosy—is then focused on reducing that toxicity to acceptable levels by modifying the compound in the laboratory. But despite this tinkering—which also makes the drug patentable— many compounds never make it to market because they are simply too toxic.
(You can hear echoes of this in drug commercials, which routinely warn of serious side effects such as liver damage, cancer risk, heart attack, stroke, or even death!)
Meanwhile, research continues to show that compounds in botanicals that were once considered “inactive” actually play important roles—either independently or by enhancing the effects of other constituents.
Take Cat’s Claw, one of our foundational botanicals. This Amazonian vine contains a rich array of oxindole alkaloids, quinovic acid glycosides, and other compounds that work together. If we standardized to just one alkaloid type, we would miss the broader spectrum of activity—and potentially lose the synergy that gives the plant its effectiveness.
Nature established these balances long before we had the tools to analyze them. We believe there’s value in respecting that.
Artificially increasing a single compound—sometimes called “spiking”—has no clear evidence of improving effectiveness. At best, it confirms the level of the presence of a compound, which may protect the consumer against blatant fraud by a company. At worst, it becomes a sketchy marketing tactic rather than a meaningful measure of quality.
What We Do Instead
Rather than standardizing, Whole World Botanicals focuses on what we believe actually matters:
- Quality: Single source, indigenous, organic and wildcrafted botanicals
- Origin: Sourced from the Peruvian high Andes and Amazon
- Potency: 1:1 or 2:1 – therapeutic-grade potency
- Ethical partnerships: Relationships with Indigenous growers and harvesters who grow and harvest plants in traditional ways, with great reverence
- Post-harvest handling: Careful drying, preparation, and storage to preserve key compounds No excipients/ flow agents used in products.
The result is that our botanical products reflect botanicals as nature made them.
The Potency Issue
Rather than relying on the standardization of a single constituent, a more meaningful measure of potency is the amount (weight) of the raw botanical used to produce an extract.
For example, our Royal Chanca Piedra Liquid Extract is standardized to a 1:1 ratio. This means the final product contains equal parts herb and liquid extraction medium by weight—indicating a highly concentrated extract.
By contrast, many other products use ratios like 1:2 or 1:4, meaning the final product contains twice — or even four times — as much liquid as plant material. Most companies, however, provide no clear potency measure or guarantee on the label, leaving you to guess when choosing a new product!
Why Does Our Royal Camu Get Standardized?
Our Royal Camu – which comes from Camu-Camu (Myrciaria dubia) fruit – is an exception for a specific reason: its extraordinarily high natural vitamin C content. It is one of the richest whole-food sources of vitamin C available.
In this case, standardization does serve a meaningful purpose. It allows you to know exactly how much vitamin C you are getting from a whole-food source—something both practical and transparent.
When standardization provides clarity without compromising the plant’s integrity, we support it. But for most botanicals, whose benefits come from their complex, interconnected chemistry, reducing them to a single marker misses the point entirely!
The Root of the Issue
We know “standardized” sounds more reliable. But at Whole World Botanicals, we believe reliability comes from quality sourcing, careful processing, ethical partnerships, and respect for the wholeness of the botanical—not from manipulating chemistry to hit a number on a label.
Botanicals have supported human health for millennia, long before anyone could isolate a single compound. We believe there’s wisdom in that—and we’re committed to honoring it.
That’s the Whole World Botanicals approach. And we wouldn’t have it any other way!
