AguaVit & Omni – Two New Functional Ingredient Products From Keys

Keys Skip Generation Technology – Blended Whole Botanicals

by Bob Root  Keys Technologist

We are about to introduce two new products that represent a significant advancement for us and the industry.  AguaVit and Omni are two new products coming soon that employ a remarkable change for us in how we produce products that offer functionality, efficacy and performance.

Traditionally, companies blend ingredients to create a new product.  These can be oils, essential oils, extracts and blends of ingredients that were separately processed.  Often these ingredients are estered or separated and refined for a specific function.  For example, Vitamin E can be refined from vegetables  to look for and extract only a portion of the Vitamin E or the creation of a Tocopherol substance using refining processes.   Then many ingredients with separated functionality are blended together to create some action.  This is a lot of work and I continually question separating components of any natural substance to increase its intensity.  Deriving an intense form of Alpha Hydroxy Acid (AHA) from fruit like apples sounds natural, but it is not.  The intense action of an AHA burns the skin to exfoliate rapidly with many consequences beyond red skin.  So it true of many estered ingredients.

A few years ago, I was introduced to a company in Switzerland named Zeller AG.  It was founded by an herbalist around 1864 named Max Zeller.  It has continued to make herbal remedies depending on herbal concoctions that they create in their own gardens.  Similarly, Horst Rechelbacher, Aveda’s founder, has created a new company named Intelligent Nutrients (IN) focused on developing herbal products that he himself grow in Wisconsin.  I think that both of these companies are breaking ground for what I call skip generation thinking for the natural products industry because they are thinking about the whole person using whole ingredients.

To further clarify, scientist and engineers often refer to a term called next generation.  Skip generation is a term used by some quantum scientist to describe a revolutionary way of thinking or skipping many next generation changes.   It is often characterized by the term “going wide” or futurists thinking.

Functional Ingredients Science

As I thought about starting to use herbal extracts and ingredients to create new treatment and functional products, I started to wonder what would happen if we combined the whole ingredients into a blend and then extracted the complimentary ingredients whole and in one step.  Rather than taking 10 fruits, spices, vegetables and herbs and processing each as an extract, what if we blended them together whole to  create a symphony that plays in harmony.  What benefit would we gain for people, if any?

Imagine, firing up your blender and building a whole ingredient smoothie from herbs, fruits, spices and vegetables that helped digestion.  Yet another blend of different fruits, vegetables, spices and herbs created an elixir that thinned the blood or another that reduced tension.  Happens every day you say at your local health food store.  This does not happen with supplements or skin care products.

Watching a TV show years ago about how Angostura Bitters are made in Trinidad, I realized the process was not only possible, it was very doable.  The trouble was, what to blend to make something that performed a specific function for the skin that we wanted.  Not as complicated as mapping the Human Genome, but certainly something that required understanding how many whole ingredients might interact together.  It is a fairly complicated math model.

After four years of testing, quantum modeling and research, we have created a directory of functional ingredients where we can predict what they will do when blended together and used on the skin.  These are whole ingredients blended together raw and whole in a slurry where no water is added, no processing yeasts or catalysts and no chemicals meant to separate vitamins, hydrosol or essential oils.  Just a mash of natural whole, fruits, herbs and spices.

The process is tedious and yet quite simple.  It is not unlike how beer is brewed or a fine French liquor is made.  We grind, pulverize and blend specific organic fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices together and let them sit in an enclosed vessel for a period of time that can range from days to weeks.  This wort (mash) is transferred to a processing unit that is custom designed and made of crystal in a spherical shape.  Heat is applied to the ingredients to elevate the wort to a specific temperature.  Then the ingredients are sent through an advanced process that reduces the remaining liquid to create a serum or syrup that is free from the hydrosol (solid matter).  This ingredient is placed into a glass container and shipped to our production factory to be diluted and packaged for shipment.

Technically, this is now a whole single ingredient that performs a specific function on the skin based on our functional ingredient map.  The ingredient can be blended with essential oils or other functional ingredients that we have created to offer “multi-purpose” functionality.

Ariane & Miras Functional Ingredients

Ariane and Miras are our first two functional ingredients created in our facility in Oregon and then packaged in our factory near Baltimore Maryland.  They are both quite different and offer extremes in what makes up our process of creating a functional ingredient.  Ariane is a complex blend of fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices.  Miras is a blend of various parts of the forsythia plant designed to create a very complex structural functional ingredient that is then blended with Ariane to create a specific product that has many many functions for the skin.

 

Ariane Functional Assembly

We blend & distill whole organic orange, lime, cranberry, cucumber, juniper berry, star anise, cassia cinnamon, anise seed, ginger and clove

Miras Functional Assembly

Miras is created by blending the fruit, leaves and roots of the Forsythia plant to create a blend that is very high in Betulinic and Oleanolic .  Betulinic is a naturally occurring pentacyclic triterpenoid which has anti-retroviral and anti-inflammatory properties, as well as a more recently discovered potential as an anticancer agent.  Oleanolic or oleanic is a naturally occurring triterpenoid, widely distributed in food and medicinal plants, related to betulinic

Further reference for:

Betulinic (Click Here)

Oleanolic (Click Here)

Functional Ingredients Create Functional Products

AquaVit

AguaVit (pronounced  ˈä-kwə-ˌvēt\ )  Means ‘Water of Life!’

It is a  Natural, Chemical-Free Restorative Toner & Tonic Refresher

Here are the basic uses, features and benefits

• Botanical Skin Tonic

• Refreshing Spray

• Makeup Enhancer

• Makeup Setter

• Luminescent Finisher

• Fast Skin Hydrator

• Anti-Aging Restorer

• Anti-Inflammatory

• Anti-Itch Calmative

• Aromatherapy

Omni

OMNI is a Universal Solution, Natural Elixir and Herbal Remedy

Here are the basic uses, features and benefits

• Botanical Skin Elixir

• Herbal Therapy

• Anti-Inflammatory

• Antioxidant

• Anti-Aging Restorer

• Calms Redness

• Anti-Itch Calmative

• Aromatherapy

• Fast Skin Hydrator

Revolutionary Is An Understatement

Our development of whole functional ingredient blends is more than revolutionary.  This is skip generation science at its best.  Natural functionality mapped based on components of whole fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices blended to perform specific functions on the skin provides efficaceous features and benefits.  One step, but with a world of functionality that can be tailored to specific outcomes and without harsh estering or processing with chemicals.

The products are coming soon.  I really wanted you to understand the science behind them first.  These two new products will begin an entirely new family of named functional ingredients at Keys.