claudel, do you happen to recall if Sisu is the other brand that sells ester-C? I'm not familiar with the other brands you mentioned. How do I know if I'm getting the real ester-C?
'The Vitamin C Foundation' (about which I know nothing) says that ester-C isn't the best source. I'm not qualified to make a judgement. What do you think?
1) Ester-C is called Ester-C. Anything not called Ester-C isn't. That's the easy part. At this stage of the game, the American Health brand (a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical firm that developed and patented ester-C) is the brand to stick with, primarily for the price consideration. Solgar, which now appears to be the only other brand licensed to sell the product, is a long-established supplement manufacturer; it is held in extraordinarily high esteem for its superior quality control and manufacturing standards by many nutritional consultants and so-called alternative practitioners—otherwise dismissively known to the mainstream as health nuts (count me among the nuts, please). The downside of Solgar products is price: i.e., high to very high. Other equally esteemed supplement suppliers—Doctor's Best, Jarrow, Natrol, NOW, TwinLab—sell the same or similar products for much, much less. Yet I have a friend with numerous nutritional sensitivities who can take only Solgar's B-100 formulation, because that product eliminates far more allergens than any other.
2) Linus Pauling (d. 1994) is a hero of scientific and biomedical research, especially as regards vitamin C, but there is good reason to believe that the institute that took his name is simply behind the curve in its evaluation of ester-C (even so, the first sentence of the critique virtually concedes the entire argument!). Note too that the article you cite is undated, whereas ester-C has been around for more than fifteen years. What is more, the article in fact cites by name the opinion of literally one physician, Dr. Cathcart. I cannot regard seriously the views, transmitted at second hand, of an anonymous commenter whose work is the development of bioweapons for the U.S. government.
3) No other measurement of vitamin C level is even remotely as significant as tissue-absorption level. Vitamin C is not a digestive aid; it needs to get absorbed into the body's tissues to do its vital work.
4) All of the other critiques/sneers I see about ester-C online stem from people who buy into the official view that less than 100 milligrams a day of vitamin C is all anyone needs. At such a dosage level, there is indeed no point whatsoever in taking ester-C.
5) Finally, if you are buying vitamins and supplements at chain drugstores or GNC or similar places, please stop doing so immediately. Buy from a top-notch mail-order outfit, either by phone or online. You'll be surprised to discover the extraordinarily wide range of supplement vendors, most of which have been deliberately excluded from most retail outlets, which sell junk almost exclusively. Best of all, you'll discover that
you'll save money! I regularly buy from three or four such establishments—Swanson, iHerb, Total Health Discount Vitamins (sells many doctor-only brands otherwise hard to get!), and rarely Vitacost—and I recommend them all. Swanson and iHerb especially have excellent libraries of thoroughly footnoted health- and supplement-related articles.