Joint Food Reviews

Is Joint Food Any Good?

Published 17th April 2023

Joint Food Is Another Under Dosed Proprietary Blend That Claims The Health Benefits Of It's Correctly Dosed Competition.

Joint Food does contain scientifically backed ingredients, that much is true. But, most of the doses are far too low to be effective. If we compare it to other joint health supplements at the same price point with similar ingredients, they tend to be 4 pill a day supplements, whereas Joint Food is only the one. This should give you a relatively simple overview as to what the issue here is. A lot of the ingredients in Joint Food require 500mg-1000mg to be effective. And Joint Food is a 700mg supplement all together. A couple of quick examples are Turmeric, which requires 500-1000mg [1] of the active ingredient curcumin. Which is actually only about 20% of turmeric. In Joint Food this is part of a 3 ingredient blend that totals 300mg. So whilst the ingredient can claim to be scientifically backed for joint health, it would need to be in a much higher dose. MSM is perhaps the worst offender as you need 3 grams of this for it to have an impact. [2] Boswellia has a similar issue. 

There are a few ingredients in Joint Food that should work even at the lower doses, but we can't justify buying Joint Food, when FlexAgain contains almost all the same ingredients, correctly dosed, with a few more effective ones thrown in for only $5 a bottle more for 120 capsules rather than 30. 

So in short, Joint Food won't do nearly as much to reduce joint pain or arthritis pain than it could do if the ingredients included were actually included in the doses that have been studied to treat joint pain. And to make matters worse, there are several totally ineffective ingredients in Joint Food, so all in all we can't recommend Joint Food. Generally we recommend FlexAgain if you're looking for a supplement like this, it contains several of the same ingredients in their functional doses, as well as a host of other more effective ingredients.

Best Joint Supplements

Customers Joint Food Reviews

It's pretty hard to find any verified customer reviews of Joint Food, most reviews only exist in the way of testimonials on their website, which doesn't really mean very much.

There's a couple of negative Joint Food Reviews on reddit, and these mostly complained that it simply didn't work. But, other than that there isn't really much to go on. 

Our Joint Food Tests

As for our experience with Joint Food, we gave it to Mike (one of our team) to test it for 2 weeks, Mike had a long term chronic pain issue after a car accident. He said "Joint Food isn't really great, I noticed that by comparison to my normal joint supplement, FlexAgain, my shoulder hurt substantially more, which was a shame as there's one ingredient in here I was quite interested in as my issue is specifically none arthritis pain, the tarmarind was quite interesting as that's mostly been shown to relieve joint pain in people with injuries like mine".

Joint Food Ingredients

Vitamin C 50mg - This is 57% of RDI and is a reasonable inclusion and dose for joint health supplements, nothing to complain about here. It's only really helpful at treating a relatively uncommon deficiency, but even subclinical (small deficiencies) can cause an increase in joint pain. [3]

Tamasteen 300mg

Tamarind Seed Extract - Tamarind is quite a new ingredient for treating joint pain, it's mostly been tested on none arthritis pain [4] which is good [5], or at least until you realise that the most effective dose is 400mg [4]. And this blend is 300mg. It can have some effect at 250mg, but even this is unlikely to be the dose in Joint Food.

Mangosteen - All of the mangosteen studies are on animals [6] and typically speaking these things don't translate very well to human trials. As a result we doing rate the inclusion of Mangosteen for chronic joint pain.

Turmeric Extract - As we mentioned in the intro, turmeric extracts are good ingredients for joint pain supplements, the problem is, that you need to have 500mg as a minimum. And that has to be the curcumin extract, which on average only makes up 20% of turmeric. [7]

Proprietary Blend 367mg

MSM - To be effective MSM has to be dosed at 3 grams to be effective for joint pain relief, meaning that it would need to be almost 10X larger than the entirety of this proprietary blend. As such whilst MSM is listed as the largest ingredient, we have to hope that it doesn't take up much more than 100mg. If the other ingredients here are to be dosed in their effective amounts. [8]

Bromelain - Bromelain is normally effective at around 100mg, which seems likely to be correctly dosed judging by the layout of the blend. It's been shown in several trials to be effective at reducing joint inflammation, although there are many more effective ingredients. [9]

Hyaluronic Acid - This is a pretty poor inclusion, the main issue is that whilst hyaluronic acid injections may be effective at reducing joint inflammation, it doesn't seem to work orally. Most studies show it to be ineffective for joints and only effective for skin [10], but those that do have it in much higher doses as hyaluronic acid is digested and broken down in the stomach. It is quite common in lower quality joint health supplements, and is normally dosed at around 50mg, meaning that we expect the next ingredient, (boswellia, which needs to be dosed over 100mg is going to be ineffective as a result).

Boswellia - Boswellia needs to be dosed at over 100mg, [11] this is mathematically impossible based on the blend ingredients list as they are required to be listed from largest to smallest. So even though the ingredient is a reasonably well backed one for a joint pain relief supplement, it's not a good inclusion for our joint food review.

Cetyl myristoleate - The only human study to show Cetyl myristoleate actally worked in humans required a dose of 250mg. [12] So whilst it has shown some potential to relieve pain for osteoarthritis patient it isn't possibly dosed high enough here.

Collagen Type ii - Seeing as the standard dose in most joint health supplements that include collegan type ii is 10mg, it's quite likely that as the smallest ingredient in the list that's how it's dosed. [13] [14]

Joint Food Review Conclusion

All in all Joint Food isn't going to do all too much to relieve joint pain, there's nothing here to make it a better option than much cheaper products like Kirkland, or other products at it's price point like FlexAgain.

Whilst it is true it contains a lot of ingredients that would make a great joint pain supplement they simply aren't in high enough doses to do very much, especially treating arthritis pain.

There are much better options to help you maintain healthy joints and we don't recommend Joint Food.

Supplements For Joint Pain
Criteria Rating
Ingredients 3/10
Pain Relief 3/10
Joint Health 4/10
Swelling 4/10
Value 3/10
Recommended 3/10

References

1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5003001/

2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5372953/

3 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5391567/

4 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6643110/

5 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26059174/

6 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282431/

7 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664031/

8 - https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/treatment/complementary-therapies/supplements-and-vitamins/supplement-and-herb-guide-for-arthritis-symptoms

9 - https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/bromelain

10 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34203487/

11 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7368679/

12 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5340442/

13 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7222752/

14 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015808/