Cutting soft gels in half ?!
Question: Cutting soft gels in half ?
So, I have started carefully cutting the soft gel in half. Taking 1/2 and putting the other in a piece of plastic wrap for tomorrow.
Surprisingly, very little, less than 2% gets wasted. And while I think I can cut it pretty close to even, if I get 60mg one day and 40 the next, its not that big a deal.
Or 55 & 45 or anything in between.
The taste doesn't bother me when swallowing it.
Is there anything bad about what Im doing ? The other half of the tablet isn't going to rancid over night is it ?
I could send them back and get a smaller size but that costs me postage both ways and the smaller size costs more per mg.
What do you think ? Any major downside to what Im doing ?
Answers:
Some of the downsides are that it'll start oxidizing when you cut it in half, it can be messy, it can be a pain to cut in half every day, the taste can really get to you after a while (you're lucky it doesn't bother you), the gelatin edges might be sharp enough to scratch your mouth or throat (it's happened to me before)... that's the main ones I can think of off the top of my head.
No, it won't go rancid in 1 day, but some of it will oxidize... the main question in my mind is why you don't just buy a 50 or 60 mg dose to take daily instead of going through all the trouble of cutting the 100 mg in half. The price isn't that drastically different, but if it is a cost concern, there are cheaper options on the market from several good quality companies. Good luck and I hope I helped!
[edit]: Oxidation is essentially the first step in going rancid, but it would take much longer than a day to go rancid. CoQ10 is an antioxidant so some of the benefits will be lost when it starts to oxidize... it's impossible to say if it would be less than 1% or more than 5% as it would depend on how it's stored and many other factors. It shouldn't be a huge difference, but that's the only concern about quality.
Health/nutrition classes, personal experience, and personal research in my role as a Product Specialist for a vitamin company