Saw Palmetto Extract

Saw palmetto is the ripe dried fruit of Serenoa repens (W. Bartram) Small, a fan palm of the Arecaceae native to the coastal southeastern United States and still largely wild-harvested in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The commercial article is a lipidosterolic extract: the berries are dried and then extracted with supercritical carbon dioxide or with hexane or ethanol to recover the fatty acid and phytosterol fraction. Thovek supplies both the free-flowing oleoresin and carrier-adsorbed powders for dry blends. The extract is defined by its fatty acid profile. The USP monograph for saw palmetto extract sets total fatty acids at not less than 80% and quantifies eleven individual acids by GC-FAME — caproic, caprylic, capric, lauric, myristic, palmitic, palmitoleic, stearic, oleic, linoleic and linolenic. Authentic material runs roughly 27–30% lauric, 27–30% oleic, around 10% myristic and around 10% palmitic, with phytosterols including beta-sitosterol at a fraction of a percent. Our standard offer is 85–95% total fatty acids. The USP monograph revision added a set of ratios of lauric acid to the other individual acids specifically applicable to supercritical CO2 extracts, and we screen against those ratios rather than reporting a bare total. That screening matters because saw palmetto is one of the most adulterated botanicals in the trade. The American Botanical Council's Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program has documented dilution and outright substitution with cheaper palm, palm kernel, coconut and canola oils and with designer free fatty acid blends assembled to mimic the profile; its 2019 laboratory guidance document, authored by Stefan Gafner, assessed 34 published analytical methods and concluded that a combination of organoleptic inspection, acid value and GC profiling of fatty acids, fatty alcohols and phytosterols is needed to establish authenticity. A total fatty acid number alone proves nothing. On declarations: the material is entirely plant-derived, vegan and vegetarian, and buyers should note it is not a fish or marine oil despite being an oil — there is no fish, crustacean, milk, egg, soy, peanut, tree nut or gluten source in the extract itself, and authentic material contains no coconut or palm oil, which is worth stating because coconut is a declarable tree nut in the United States. Where a powder is required the carrier is silicon dioxide or maize-derived maltodextrin, declared on the specification. Softgel encapsulators should confirm their own shell material separately, since gelatin shells are commonly bovine or fish derived and that declaration belongs to the finished dose, not to this ingredient.