Three Wellness Brands That You Can Rely On

The following feature appears in the June/July issue of NYLON.

We get manicures, pedicures, facials, and body wraps. We pile on deep conditioner, slap on face masks, and scrub with exfoliators. 

We spend so much time and money on self-beautification, but seem to forget one thing: that beauty starts from within. Cue Carrie Bradshaw voice: If we focus more on what we are consuming, can we spend less time on all of the grooming? Lucky for us, we’ve been introduced to three wellness brands that take the guesswork out and put the beauty in.

Ritual Vitamins

With Ritual Vitamins’ Essential for Women multivitamin, what you see is quite literally what you get: clear capsules containing only nine key ingredients, housed in simply labeled glass bottles. The company was born when founder Kat Schneider decided to end her tiresome search for the perfect vitamin and create it herself. No more questionable ingredients that force us to scratch our heads, pull out our phones, and Google in drugstore aisles. 

Ritual Vitamins contain only the nine ingredients that women need most, like vitamin K2, which promotes healthy skin, iron (needed for building blood cells), and omega-3, which strengthens the immune system. In keeping with its philosophy of complete transparency, Ritual Vitamins is also upfront about where and from whom each of the ingredients are sourced. Perfectly packaged, perfectly honest multivitamins made for women, by women? We have a funny feeling that the Flintstones Chewables from your childhood are blushing with embarrassment. 

Ritual Vitamins, $30/month, available at Ritual.

Care/of Vitamins

Supplements are often confusing territory. I’ll admit it, I’m guilty of going to Whole Foods armed with a list of herbs I read about on a blog, only to flag down the nearest employee and question each and every item. “Is ashwagandha a flower? What makes holy basil so…holy?” And still, I end up leaving with a bag full of pills with names that I can’t pronounce and a receipt that makes me do a double take. If only there were a company that could recommend exactly the supplements I need while being honest about scientific research and easy on my wallet. Enter Care/of, a health brand that really gets personal. Go online, take a quiz, and Care/of recommends a combination of supplements catered to your specific needs. 

A month’s supply is then shipped to you with your name printed on each daily packet. But my favorite part is that they tell you exactly what’s up on the science front—I’m talking full disclosure on what supplements are strongly researched, and which are still being studied, so that you can decide what you want and what you don’t. No magic pills here, Care/of is the real deal. 

Care/of Vitamins, $5 to $25 per month, available at Care/of.

Kalumi Beautyfood Collagen Bars

Considering that they make a living off their looks, it only seems logical that a couple of models are responsible for creating a new protein bar for beauty. When Chrissy Blair and Jayla Harnwell noticed that the combination of busy lifestyles and limited food options led to bad skin, hair, and nails, they decided to take things into their own hands. In a tiny NYC kitchen, they came up with Kalumi Beautyfood Collagen Bars—the key ingredient being marine collagen, which is one of the most bioavailable sources of protein. 

This means that it’s easy for our body to absorb and put right to work on clearing skin, thickening hair, and strengthening nails. Unfortunately, when it comes to most health-food bars, a glaring issue comes to mind: terrible flavor created by terrible sugar substitutes. Kalumi changes the game by using yacon syrup to sweeten their bars. Derived from a root vegetable found in South America, yacon both tastes amazing and contains prebiotic fiber (read: healthy gut). In that case, it seems like the only issue will be deciding on which flavor to pack in our purse. 

Kalumi Beautyfood Marine Collagen Bars, $66 for 12 bars, available at Kalumi Health.