Why Mara Labs Will Never Make a Gummy Supplement

Written by David Roberts, MPH, Co-founder, Mara Labs

We get asked about a gummy more than almost any other product question. It's a reasonable request: the capsules work so well, but could you make them easier to take?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.

The short version is that sulforaphane and candy manufacturing are incompatible at the level of chemistry. Everything else we take issue with, the sugar and the flavoring and the fillers, follows from that.

What happens to sulforaphane when you heat it?

Sulforaphane falls apart when exposed to heat even at temperatures well below anything used to make a gummy.

Research on stabilizing sulforaphane for food use puts the onset of degradation above 40 degrees Celsius, which is 104 degrees Fahrenheit. [1]

That is why formulation work in this area treats 20 degrees Celsius as the reference processing temperature rather than anything warmer. [1]

The degradation has been measured, not assumed. Across 37, 50, 60 and 70 degrees Celsius, sulforaphane follows first-order degradation kinetics. [2]

It decays at a predictable rate that climbs with temperature.

In that research, unprotected sulforaphane degraded at a rate roughly ten times higher than microencapsulated sulforaphane at every temperature tested. [2]

When heated in aqueous solution, sulforaphane breaks down into a set of volatile sulfur compounds including dimethyl disulfide and 1,2,4-trithiolane. [3]

Those are decomposition products. They are not sulforaphane, and they do not do what sulforaphane does.

How hot does gummy manufacturing get?

A European patent application for an oral gum formulation notes that conventional candy processes run above 90 degrees Celsius, with a related prior-art process above 100. [4]

The patent exists because that is too hot for sensitive actives. Its own method keeps heat-sensitive plant extracts below 55 degrees Celsius, and preferably between 45 and 55. [4]

Read that again, because it is the whole argument. Formulators engineer special low-temperature gum processes specifically because heat-sensitive plant compounds cannot survive normal gummy manufacturing.

Conventional figures line up with the patent's description. A review of chewable gel manufacturing describes heating the gelling agent and solvent to an elevated temperature.

The example it gives is 90 degrees Celsius held for 90 minutes. [5]

An ingredient supplier's production guidance states that for pectin jellies the depositing hoppers must be held at 90 degrees Celsius. [6]

Could BrocElite be made as a gummy?

No. At 90 degrees Celsius for 90 minutes, a compound that begins degrading above 40 would not survive processing.

We want to be precise about what is and is not established here. Nobody has published a study measuring sulforaphane inside a finished gummy at manufacturing temperature.

So this is a mechanism argument, and we are presenting it as one. It is not a single experimental finding, and any company telling you it is has not read the literature either.

There is a related problem for products built on the precursor rather than the active compound. Many broccoli supplements supply glucoraphanin, which requires the enzyme myrosinase to become sulforaphane.

Myrosinase is even less heat-tolerant. In controlled cooking trials, core temperatures of 75 to 80 degrees Celsius destroyed up to 98 percent of myrosinase activity.

At 88 to 95 degrees, up to 99 percent was destroyed. [7]

Keeping the maximum core temperature between 50 and 60 degrees avoided inactivation. [7] Separate work found that blanching at 86 degrees or above inactivated the enzyme entirely. [8]

A gummy claiming to deliver sulforaphane through precursor conversion therefore has two problems rather than one. The current broccoli extract (glucoraphanin) gummies that do exist on the market state in their own 3rd party testing that these gummies do not contain sulforaphane, but rather "sulforaphane potential". That "potential" comes from the addition of myrosinase, which we have already established does not survive heat.

Why would a sulforaphane gummy need so much sweetener and flavoring?

The compounds that make sulforaphane work are the same compounds that make it taste and smell the way it does.

Sulforaphane is an isothiocyanate (ITC). ITCs and their parent glucosinolates are the principal source of the bitterness, sulfurous aroma and pungency of broccoli, cabbage and their relatives. [9]

We know this from our own product rather than from theory. Our published guide to the liquid version says plainly that it tastes pretty bad, and our directions suggest mixing it into a smoothie or an acidic juice.

That is us telling customers to mask it, in a format where the only thing added is their own smoothie.

Now consider what masking it inside a candy would take. Enough sweetener to cover sulfurous bitterness, enough flavoring to replace it with something else, and enough acid to carry the flavor.

No published study quantifies how much sweetener masking sulforaphane would take, because nobody has run that test. No gummy on the market currently contains sulforaphane.

Our products carry no fillers, no artificial colors and no artificial flavors. A sulforaphane gummy could not make that claim, and we are not interested in changing our commitment to that standard.

What else comes with the gummy format?

Gummies, even the high-quality ones, usually contain sugar, and a dosing standard looser than most people realize.

Added sugar in gummy supplements commonly runs 1-2g per gummy.

A children's multivitamin in the National Institutes of Health label database lists 4g of added sugar across a four-gummy serving. [10]

The dosing standard is the part that surprises people. The United States Pharmacopeia sets wider acceptance limits for chewable gels than for tablets and capsules, because gummies lose potency faster.

For vitamin C, the upper limit is 250% of the labeled amount in a chewable gel against 150% in a tablet or capsule. For folic acid, it is 245% against 150%. [11]

Pantothenic acid was removed from the chewable gel definition outright, on the grounds of instability. [11]

Those are permitted limits rather than records of what manufacturers add, and the distinction matters. What they show is that the format is understood to be unstable, and the standards were written around that.

Does this mean capsules always beat gummies?

For ordinary vitamins the published comparisons do not support a capsule advantage.

One 2026 paper reviewing that literature reports similar bioavailability between gummy and non-gummy forms in most comparisons.

It notes that folic acid is absorbed faster from gummies, and vitamin D3 shows higher bioavailability from a gummy than a tablet. [12]

That paper is in vitro with no capsule arm of its own, and one of its authors is affiliated with the company that supplied the test product, so treat it as a summary of the field rather than a verdict. [12]

The point stands regardless. If you want vitamin C or vitamin D and a gummy is what gets taken consistently, the evidence does not say you are making a mistake.

Our argument has never been that capsules are a superior delivery system in general. It is that sulforaphane specifically cannot survive the process that makes a gummy a gummy.

Delivery and stability matter most when it comes to sulforaphane.

What do we make instead, and what do we tell parents?

We encapsulate sulforaphane because this is the only format (besides liquid) that delivers this compound at the dose on the label.

BrocElite Plus provides 10 mg of stabilized sulforaphane and 650 mg of broccoli seed complex per two-capsule serving.

No fillers, no artificial colors or flavors, vegan capsules, and third-party batch testing for sulforaphane content, glyphosate and heavy metals.

For children we make BrocElite Kids, a gentler formulation without the PEITC found in the adult product.

On the question parents ask most, whether a child who cannot swallow a capsule can still take it: the capsule can be opened and the contents mixed into cold or room-temperature food.

One method our customers like is tipping the powder into the spout of an applesauce pouch. Our guide for parents has more.

Keep it cold or room temperature at all times. Stirring sulforaphane into hot oatmeal undoes the point of buying it.

It would be easier and more profitable for us to make a gummy, yes, but ease and profit have never been our underlying motivations in bringing BrocElite to the world. 

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