Maltodextrin
Carrier
Maltodextrin is the carrier the apple skin and mangosteen extracts in BioQuench are spray-dried onto. Ours is made from corn. It arrives as part of those two extracts rather than being added separately, and it is the smallest of the three non-active ingredients by weight.
Why a botanical extract needs a carrier
A botanical extract begins as a liquid. Fruit, skin or seed is washed with water or alcohol, the solvent pulls the compounds out, and what is left is a concentrated solution. To put that into a capsule it has to become a dry, free-flowing powder, and the standard way to do it is spray drying: the liquid is atomised into a hot chamber, the solvent flashes off, and the solids fall out as fine particles.
The problem is that concentrated plant solids are largely sugars and polyphenols, both of which turn sticky and hygroscopic as they dry. Sprayed on their own they glue themselves to the chamber wall and to each other. A carrier is a neutral solid dissolved into the liquid beforehand that gives those compounds something to dry onto, so the output is a dry powder that can be weighed, blended and filled.
Which extracts carry it
In BioQuench, only the apple skin extract and the mangosteen hull extract. The other five actives are supplied as dry powders and bring no carrier with them.
What it is made from
Maltodextrin is a starch that has been broken into shorter chains of glucose. The starch is treated with enzymes until the chains reach a set length, then dried. The result is a white, almost tasteless powder that dissolves readily in water. It is one of the most widely used carriers in the food industry, and a permitted ingredient in food and dietary supplements in the United States, the European Union and most other markets.
The starch itself can come from corn, wheat, potato, tapioca or rice. Ours is made from corn, and that is deliberate: corn is not a gluten grain, so sourcing it this way removes the gluten question rather than answering it.
| What it is | Enzyme-hydrolysed starch |
| Starch source | Corn — not wheat |
| Role in BioQuench | Spray-drying carrier within two extracts |
| Added separately? | No |
| Gluten | None — BioQuench is gluten-free |
| Relative weight | Smallest of the three non-actives |
The gluten question
The short answer is that it does not arise here. Maltodextrin can be made from wheat, which is why anyone avoiding gluten is right to ask about it. The maltodextrin in BioQuench is made from corn, and corn carries no gluten.
For completeness: even wheat-derived maltodextrin is exempt from allergen labelling in both the United States and the European Union, because the hydrolysis and purification that turn starch into maltodextrin strip out the gluten proteins. That is a sound argument and we would rather not have to make it. Sourcing from corn settles the question at the ingredient rather than in a footnote, and BioQuench as a finished product is gluten-free, which is what the label states.
Why we list it at all
Many labels do not. A carrier that arrives inside a purchased extract can legitimately be left out of the other ingredients line, and plenty of brands leave it out because a shorter list reads better. We list it because the alternative is that you read our label, read someone else’s, and conclude theirs is cleaner when the two bottles contain the same thing.