Meet Some of my Favorite People: Oliver Catlin from Banned Substances Control Group, Inc. (BSCG), Loren Israelsen of the United Natural Products Alliance (UNPA), and Trish Flaster (you met in my post from yesterday)… and there were several more of my favs all gathered this morning at the Supplyside UNPA Annual Members Meeting.
The meeting delivered critical updates on regulatory landscapes, political shifts, and trade challenges facing the natural products industry. We heard Loren outline the battles ahead (and they always seem to come!), from GRAS pathway reforms to tariff impacts on botanical supply chains. His decades of leadership shepherding DSHEA and defending industry integrity continue to be a north star for all of us navigating these turbulent waters.
One of the highlights was diving into the fascinating connection between GLP-1, bitter receptors, and herbs: a topic near and dear to my heart (learn more from a vid I made last year, link in comments of the LinkedIn post).
We participated in a fun tasting exercise to determine who among us were Non-tasters, Tasters, and Supertasters. This wasn’t just a playful activity: it underscores how our individual bitter taste receptor genetics influence our responses to medicinal plants and their bioactive compounds.
The relationship between plants, our bitter taste receptors, and other signaling compounds in the gut speaks to a topic I’ll be exploring extensively this coming year: Complexity Science and Botanicals.
Rather than viewing herbs as isolated “active ingredients,” complexity science recognizes that medicinal plants are complex adaptive systems, chemical orchestras that interact synergistically with our equally complex human biology. This perspective honors traditional herbal wisdom while advancing our scientific understanding of how whole plant medicines work in ways that reductionist models simply cannot capture.
I also want to spotlight Oliver Catlin as one of the most knowledgeable figures in analytical testing of ingredients in the industry. Under his leadership, BSCG has expanded beyond sports anti-doping to become a leader in supplement safety and quality verification, testing for nearly 500 substances, far more than any other certification provider.
And Loren…always out there on the front lines, keeping the industry informed about regulatory storms on the horizon. His work ensuring that supplement companies can continue to innovate while maintaining the highest standards of quality and safety is invaluable to this entire community.
These global exchanges at SupplySide remind me why this work matters: we’re not just trading ingredients, we’re safeguarding an industry built on science, integrity, and the health of millions.
To See this post and its comments on LinkedIn, follow this link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kerry-hughes-941353_day-3-supplyside-global-meet-some-of-my-share-7389357136021110784-N3_p?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAANEoEBzLdbgS9fjLoyZvrkZbXD8Nj5SFM