Question
I noticed your unflavored multi collagen, that’s now NSF certified, uses the fish tilapia instead of red snapper. Why did you change?TJ
Thanks for the great question TJ! We love when customers read labels (especially ours) and don’t hesitate to ask us for clarity.
The super-short answer is that if we wanted our multi collagen to be NSF Certified for Sport®, the certification process required us to shift our fish source from wild caught red snapper to wild caught tilapia.
The decision driver: NSF Certification
Let’s start with the why, thanks Simon Sinek.
Aside from wanting to help anybody and everybody live healthier and fuller lives, we also strive to be the #1 supplement trusted by professional athletes and Olympians.
To sell to Olympians, the NHL, MLB, and many other professional sports leagues, a supplement MUST be NSF Certified for Sport®. Simple enough, right?
Which of our multi collagen products use Tilapia vs Red Snapper?
If you’re into reading ingredients (which you should be — especially with supplements), you’ll notice that our NSF certified collagen, will use wild caught tilapia fish instead of wild caught red snapper fish.
Our NSF certified Unflavored uses Wild Caught Tilapia:
If you continue to read labels on our other products, you’ll notice that our Every Day multi collagen powder will use wild caught red snapper as the fish source:
- Vanilla Multi Collagen
- Strawberry Lemonade Multi Collagen
- Chocolate Multi Collagen (label pictured below)
- Seasonals (like our Pumpkin Collagen)
Our Non-NSF certified flavors use Wild Caught Red Snapper:
Does NSF certification require Tilapia fish?
It’s not that the NSF certification process requires tilapia fish over red snapper fish — it’s fairly fish agnostic (unless we wanted to use goldfish or something 🐠).
This is about manufacturing.
To produce a premium grade product, our manufacturer must be US-based and the facility has GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) — see what the FDA says about GMP. Every single producer of an ingredient in our multi collagen complex blend has to pass NSF Certification. This is the HARDEST certification for a manufacturer to achieve. And many manufacturers simply choose not to deal with it — trust us, we’ve done our research.
Are there some manufacturers, that we didn’t connect with, willing to use red snapper in an NSF supplement? Maybe. But we talked to quite a few!
We are the first and only multi collagen to be NSF Certified. It’s the cleanest multi collagen powder you can find. To achieve this level of quality, wild caught tilapia needed to be our fish source.
A Few Pros of Tilapia vs Red Snapper in a Multi Collagen
Though all our products are premium grade and we work really hard to perfect the multi collagen complex on all of them, we have discovered some slight pros of using wild caught tilapia over wild caught red snapper.
Note: most people won’t and can’t tell the difference between using different fish sources. Remember, we’re our own worst critic in all of this!
- Taste. We tasted aprx. 15 different batches of our multi collagen complex and tilapia seemed to have a slightly less fishy taste than red snapper. Tilapia is generally a less “fishy” fish than red snapper.
- Consistency. We noticed a slightly better dissolvability with Tilapia (again, most people probably won’t recognize the difference — all our multi collagen products dissolve extremely well!)
Where we source our Tilapia Fish for our multi collagen
As you’ve noticed, we’ve mentioned numerous times that our Tilapia is WILD CAUGHT.
Isn’t wild caught Tilapia hard to source?
Yes, wild caught tilapia can be difficult to source! That’s why the NSF certification process is complex, long, and difficult — only premium ingredients will pass their testing!
Tilapia suffers from a bad reputation because 73% of tilapia imported to the United States from China is farm-raised and fed absolute SLOP (we’re talking animal feces here people!) As you probably assumed, that is not the type of Tilapia we use in our multi collagen. We source our wild caught Tilapia in the USA — which is the top 10% of high-quality tilapia!
Advocating for Tilapia
For all your Tilapia haters, here are some quick facts you may not know:
- Yes, tilapia is a real fish — it has scales and bones. We get our collagen from the bones and skin.
- Tilapia is a freshwater fish that lives in natural habitats.
- Tilapia is a high-quality fish low in metals and high in protein content.
- Tilapia has more omega-3 fats than red snapper (which doesn’t mean anything to our supplement, but an interesting fact!)
Is Tilapia a better fish source (since the end product is NSF certified) than Red Snapper?
Since NSF certification tests for over 270+ substances and ensures there are no unsafe levels of contaminants, could our NSF products (that use Tilapia) be considered superior to our non-NSF products (that use Red Snapper)?
Well, yea, of course. NSF certified supplements will always be superior from end-to-end. That’s why Olympians and professional athletes require NSF certification!
However, that doesn’t translate into Tilapia being a better fish source than Red Snapper. Both are fantastic fish sources to ensure the overall ingredients of our multi collagen products provide awesome collagen benefits to our loyal customers. We are committed to a premium product — it’s a founding pillar.
This is simply a pivot to ensure the ecosystem of CB Supplements could operate in the way we needed it, to align with our why (be the #1 supplement trusted by professional athletes and Olympians).
Final Thoughts
Being the first and only multi collagen to be NSF Certified for Sport® means there’s no existing prototype here for us to follow. When you’re sourcing from multiple animals (cows, chickens, fish) to provide a supplement with 5 types of collagen, there’s a balancing act amongst many variables (sourcing, manufacturing, certification, timing, etc.).
However, if you have any further questions about our fish sources, we’d be happy to continue this discussion. Use our chat to send a message or Contact Us.
