Garden of Life Review

Welcome to our Garden of Life review!

Never shy about their commitment to whole-food-modeled supplements, Garden of Life touts a veritable cornucopia of probiotic products, vitamins, and minerals, and much more—and they’re talking a big game about them, too.

Lo and behold, “Empowering extraordinary health,” as Garden of Life claims of their products, seemed less and less lofty of a slogan as our review process went on.

At the end, we realized that Garden of Life has indeed earned a few bragging rights, as their often doctor-formulated supplements stand out from the crowd with the support of top-notch ingredients, support, value, and more.

If you’re looking for a reliable, authentically developed supplement that can actually deliver noticeable results, we recommend Garden of Life, who received an overall score of A in our review. 

The Fruit of A Health Journey: How Garden of Life Began

As Matt Cousins shared with our team, Garden of Life initially began as a digestive health company.

Circa the turn of the millennium, founder Jordan Rubin was searching for ways to address his gut health challenges, and he translated much of what he learned into ideas for digestive health supplements that he could share with others in similar situations.

Garden of Life was officially established in 2000, and though their highly enterprising founder has launched several other ventures since then (like Ancient Nutrition, no big deal), the team has stayed very much invested in accommodating the digestive health crowd while expanding their product catalog to encompass just about everybody.

And perhaps an insular “crowd” isn’t the accurate term for the digestively challenged, because, as Matt wisely put it, “Everyone has compromised digestion to a point. Nobody’s perfect. Adding probiotics—almost everyone can benefit from that.”

Everyone has compromised digestion to a point. Nobody’s perfect. Adding probiotics—almost everyone can benefit from that.

Matt Cousins of Garden of Life

We’ll try not to whizz past the two decades after their founding too casually, but for brevity’s sake, Garden of Life focused on building close relationships with independent retailers, nutrition scientists, and reputable suppliers as they expanded their catalog.

Their success continued to grow (amidst the occasional failure, of course), and today, Garden of Life tops many best-selling lists for various products and categories in stores across the country. 

Their Amazon game isn’t too shabby, either. 

Our Garden of Life Review

Every brand review we conduct centers around these six criteria (Garden of Life scores included):

• Quality (A)
• Transparency (A)
• Website Experience (B)
• Customer Service (A)
• Value (A-)
• Brand Value (A+)

Garden of Life received an overall score of A for their elevation of the state of the industry, rigorous quality standards, research support, and more. 

As always, we’ll kick off the official review portion with a look at quality.

Quality

End product quality will obviously stay a key metric in this review category, but it’s in the name—“end” only caps off the final portion of the story.

To really get a sense of a product’s story, which allows for a much more comprehensive picture of quality (and consistency thereof), we need to understand sourcing and manufacturing standards, formulations, certifications, and more.

Garden of Life emphasizes “traceability” of their whole-food-derived products and the ingredients therein, which they act out by closely partnering with Certified USDA Organic, Non-GMO Verified producers and manufacturers that meet these and other standards.

As Matt informed us, “Every batch, every lot, every raw ingredient is tested at every step. Third-party testing is done on all final batches and before accepting raw materials.”

Every batch, every lot, every raw ingredient is tested at every step. Third-party testing is done on all final batches and before accepting raw materials.

Matt Cousins of Garden of Life

Some of the certificates of analysis—namely, for their CBD products—are available for customers to view, but results for other products are not typically displayed publicly. 

Further speaking to Garden of Life’s commitment to quality, the number of certifications they hold is certainly on the higher end of most nutrition brands.

Here are a few of the 18 certifications listed on the Garden of Life site:

• USDA Organic
• Non-GMO Project Verified
• Certified Vegan
• NSF Gluten-Free Certified
• MSC Certification
• Certified B-Corp
• Carbon Neutral

As for ingredient and formulation quality, Garden of Life adheres to industry gold standards across the board, using organic ingredients, highly absorbable versions of nutrients, and little to no added sugar.

Speaking of food products, one way to clearly expose the ingredient quality of a nutrition brand is to check out their protein products, which generally provide more opportunities for low-quality ingredients, so we used Garden of Life Raw Organic Protein as a litmus test.

Containing about twenty organic ingredients, zero added sugars, and zero harmful additives, the bars confirmed what their other supplements hinted at: Garden of Life takes ingredient quality seriously.

Tying all of this together, we award Garden of Life an A for overall quality.

Here’s a closer look at their product catalog.

Probiotics

Considering the company is rooted in digestive health products, it’s no surprise Garden of Life has one of the more extensive selections in the industry, including the following options to name a few:

• Dr. Formulated Women’s Probiotics
• Dr. Formulated Mood Probiotics
• Raw Shelf-Stable Probiotic Formula
• Raw Probiotics Colon Care

Concentrations range as high as 85 billion CFU (colony-forming units; bacteria), and Garden of Life includes these in their mykind Organics and Primal Defense lines to maintain a high variety within the collection. 

Once in the probiotics category, you can filter by target demographic (men, women, kids, etc.), brand, and more.

If you’re a bit overwhelmed by the options, the Explore Probiotics page provides a succinct introduction to the different product lines and probiotics in general.

Protein

Garden of Life carries several dozen varieties of protein powder (tubs and packets) as well as bars. 

As with the rest of their product catalog, they emphasize clean, traceably sourced ingredients, and plenty of plant-based options.

Garden of Life also sells collagen, and some of their collagen products are enhanced with probiotics, hyaluronic acid, and other ingredients to augment the effects or promote other benefits.

Vitamins and Minerals

Featuring over 70 multivitamin complexes and more targeted products, the philosophy of whole-food nutrition still peeks through in the way Garden of Life synergizes some of their ingredient lists here.

Of course, all the major “letter vitamins” (A, B, C, D, E, K, etc.) are covered, as well as zinc, iron, and as mentioned, dozens of multivitamins available in gummy, capsule, or even spray formats.

Suffice it to say, if it’s one or more vitamins and/or minerals your diet is lacking, Garden of Life likely has a product or five to accommodate.

Herbal Supplements

Making sure to stick to their usual standards of non-GMO, organic, and squeaky clean ingredient lists, the Garden of Life herbal supplements section leans on millennia-old healing traditions like ayurveda.

Top products include mykind Organics Elderberry Immune Gummies, mykind Organics Extra Strength Turmeric, and interestingly, a collagen product fortified with turmeric as well.

This category isn’t quite as fleshed out as those above, but still offers plenty of general-use and more targeted products to address a broad range of issues.

Sport Performance

Protein makes a resurgence, of course, in the sport performance category, but it’s not alone—Garden of Life has also worked in pre-workout and recovery products.

As usual, the focus on clean, ethically sourced, and (sometimes) plant-based options is clearly demonstrated throughout this category of grass-fed whey, plant-based, and/or organic protein and performance products.

Food

This category is a bit of a smorgasbord of flaxseed and chia seed products, overlapping protein bars from other categories, and various forms of fiber powder.

We might have expected a few more varieties of edible supplements, but considering Garden of Life has gummies, capsules, liquids, powders, and more covered in other categories, it certainly doesn’t feel like a major void.

Transparency

Unless it’s your first day on the Internet, you probably hear alarm bells in your head when an online retailer seems to be holding back key information.

Transparency is inseparable from trust, and in addition to measuring each brand’s transparency with their customers, we also take into account how willing they are to share information with us.

Matt was forthcoming with our team about everything we asked, including sourcing, product testing, Garden of Life’s sustainability mission, and more.

As for the website, Garden of Life definitely has one of the more fleshed-out “About” sections we’ve seen, featuring plenty of content and well-designed graphics detailing their certifications, sustainability efforts, and more.

However, their overview of their suppliers and manufacturers could have been more specific—it went into the certification standards they uphold for these partners, but no specific mention of who is doing what, and where.

As is usually the case, product-specific information is readily available on each product page, but is sometimes on the sparser side. 

The more menial, but important points like shipping and return policies, contact page, and so on were both easy to find and succinctly written, so no issues there.

Our overall impression of Garden of Life’s willingness to share key insights about their brand with their audience (and with us) is a positive one.

Aside from a few tweaks that would improve the execution, they’re clearly making an active effort to present their audience with a transparent account of who they are, what they do, and why they do it.

Hence, we give Garden of Life an A for transparency.

Website Experience

In the spirit of a wily bridgekeeper from a certain comedy of acclaim (dating ourselves), we ask each brand’s website to confidently answer “these questions three” before it can cross over to A territory:

First, how easy is it for site visitors to browse and purchase products?

Next, is your site formatted to display smoothly on mobile devices, or does it morph into a Jackson Pollock painting?

Finally, can customers find beginner-friendly educational resources on your site that enhance their understanding of the ingredients, processes, and so on?

Starting off with educational resources, there’s a well-maintained lifestyle blog on the Garden of Life site for some lighter reading, but given the company’s pedigree and their technical know-how, we would love to see some specific, beginner-friendly content on ingredients they use (for example, not everyone has heard of svetol), studies supporting their products, explanations of how their products work in the body, and so on.

To Garden of Life’s credit, they do have some guides geared towards understanding their product categories—like their Which Protein Is Right for You? page—but they are generally on the lighter and more marketing-focused side.

Despite their hefty catalog, browsing and purchasing products on the Garden of Life site is intuitive.

Thanks to a shop navigation link that handily avails all product categories and subcategories for you when you hover over it, you can jump into any given category within one click of the homepage. 

There were no oppressive pop-ups, unnecessary splash pages, or otherwise unwelcome kinks in the checkout process, so the overall e-commerce experience is a strong one.

Finally, we had no functional site navigation issues when browsing the Garden of Life website on mobile devices, but several of the images did seem to suffer a dip in resolution.

Overall, the Garden of Life website could use a bit of beefing up and consolidating on the educational resource front, and some primping on mobile, but the immersive shopping experience they provide helped them land a grade of B for website experience. 

Customer Service

If you can’t get in touch with a human when calling up a company, what makes you think they’ll put any more care into the products?

Beyond customer support services themselves, we also assess shipping and return policies, with consideration for any guarantees the brand provides.

Starting there first, Garden of Life upholds a fairly generous return policy, which allows customers to return both used and unused products within 30 days of purchase.

They ship to all 50 states, and shipping is free on orders of $25 or more.

As for their available support channels, Garden of Life has both email and phone support.

The phone service proved both prompt and accommodating, as we were able to connect with a real person quickly and receive thorough, polite answers to our questions.

The email service was equally helpful, providing us a thorough response within less than 24 hours of our inquiry.

Overall, Garden of Life makes a very convincing effort to actively assist and engage with their customers, earning them an A for customer service. 

Value

Even if quality justifies price, there are ceilings beyond which few customers will venture, so we keep those in mind when reviewing premium brands like Garden of Life.

On the other hand, if a brand makes a product that costs 20% or so more at twice the quality of the competition, they can still be pricey and earn an excellent grade in this category.

In Garden of Life’s case, we found that the premium they charge puts them about 20-30% higher than some competitors on price, but in the vast majority of ingredient quality comparisons, they surpass this margin.

Moreover, when limiting our search to premium brands only, Garden of Life more than held its own, often coming in first against multiple competitors (depending on the product being reviewed). 

As always, some products are more competitively priced than others, where others stray into pricier territory.

Here’s a quick price comparison between Garden of Life and some other leading health food brands across a few popular supplements (prices may have changed since publication): 

Vitamin D3

• Garden of Life: 5,000 IU, $0.47/capsule
• Nature Made: 5,000 IU, $0.20/capsule
• Nordic Naturals: 5,000 IU, $0.50/gummy

Probiotics:

• Garden of Life: 50 Billion CFU, $0.03 per billion CFU/serving
• Nature Made: 30 billion CFU, $0.04 per billion CFU/serving 
• Nordic Naturals: 12 billion CFU, $0.08 per billion CFU/serving

Omega-3 Fish Oil:

• Garden of Life: $0.0006/mg
• Nature Made: $0.0002/mg
• Nordic Naturals: $0.0003/mg

Balancing the premium price with the leap in quality, we arrive at an A- for value.

Brand Value

Here we cast a broader net that encompasses any factors adding to the overall impact the reviewed brand has had on their industry, also awarding credit for philanthropy and charity efforts.

The way in which a brand adds value can vary based on their niche(s) and more factors, but generally, these are the things we look for:

• Innovation
• Industry disruption
• Institutional knowledge
• Sustainability
• Philanthropy
• Elevating public nutrition

Having the advantage of an already decades-long history, Garden of Life has made use of their time by innovating a number of doctor-formulated probiotics, organic multivitamins, and more.

As a B Corp-certified company, Garden of Life not only gets to say they are sustainable—they actually have to prove it to a third party that audits them on their sustainability efforts (and more), as Matt explained to us.

Indeed, Garden of Life is one of the biggest companies around to be Certified Carbon Neutral by Carbonfund.org. 

Their philanthropic side is equally active, as they’ve partnered with several organizations doing good in the world, like the Special Olympics, Women Heart, 1% Ocean Fund, and the National Parkinson Foundation. 

If the picture isn’t clear yet, it’s definitely an A+ for brand value.

Our Experience

Our team sampled the Organic Apple Cider Vinegar Diet Gummies and the Raw Probiotics Ultimate Care Capsules.

Both products arrived fully intact in adequately labeled and durable packaging, but we aren’t the biggest fans of the pop-top (i.e., not really childproofed) lid of the probiotic product.

The gummies were tart, as anticipated, and delicious.

With two grams of added sugar per gummy, a mostly organic ingredient list, and no artificial additives to be found, the ingredient list was impressive for a gummy.

Our sampling window wasn’t quite long enough to clearly determine the efficacy of these Svetol-powered gummies (Svetol is a green coffee bean extract) for weight loss, but studies like this one out of Vidya Herbs in Bangalore, India attest to the slimming power of the green coffee bean.

Similarly, most people aren’t going to take a probiotic for a couple weeks and suddenly feel transformed, but the probiotic capsules were developed in accordance with the findings of Dr. Eli Metchnikoff—the “Father of Probiotics”—so we respect the formulation.

Moreover, Garden of Life ensures never to heat the probiotics to a temperature greater than 115℉, which maximizes retention throughout the manufacturing process.

All this, and we’ll still gripe about the bottle being about three times too big for the amount of capsules it houses—just saying!

Minor gripes aside, our team’s experience with Garden of Life aptly reflected the other components of our review, leaving us with the impression that they know and are passionate about what they’re doing.

Garden of Life FAQs

Final Thoughts

Garden of Life is an environmentally conscious, scientifically minded nutrition brand offering a broad range of premium health food products and supplements.

They’re open with customers about the important stuff, though they could stand to improve on expanding and consolidating their educational resources.

You’ll pay a bit of a premium, but for anyone looking for the several quality differentiators that Garden of Life brings to the table, the prices are worth it.

Finally, their products are extremely clean and often supported by sound research.
Garden of Life earned an overall score of A in our review, and we recommend their products to anyone looking for a safe and effective health and wellness solution.