How We Press a Specimen

Why a herbarium

A herbarium is a collection of pressed, dried plants, each mounted on a sheet with a label that records what the plant is, where it was collected and who identified it. The format exists because plant names are slippery: one common name can cover several species, and the same species can go by many names. Kitchen botanicals have exactly that problem. "Cinnamon" on a jar can be one of several barks, and "chamomile" on a tea box can mean more than one flower.

So we borrowed the format. It is a way of organizing information honestly, not a claim that we run a scientific collection. We do not hold physical specimens, and we do not buy, open or test the products we describe.

What the label block records

Every specimen sheet carries the same block of fields. Here is what each one means on this site.

Below the block, "Det." names who identified the specimen, as a herbarium label does. On this site that is always the VitaNews Daily Editorial Team and the date of the review.

How a product earns a sheet

• An established brand with a live listing on Amazon.com. We open the listing ourselves and confirm the title, the brand, the exact size or bag count, and that it is in stock. We do not cover direct-to-consumer products sold only through their own websites.
• An everyday botanical. Kitchen spices, dried culinary herbs and single-herb teas that people already use as food. We do not cover concentrated extracts sold with bold promises.
• The label, read literally. Ingredients, net weight, the type of panel on the box (food or supplement), and every seal. A seal appears on our sheet only if it is on the label or the brand's own page.
• A price with a date on it. Every price says when we saw it, which size and which seller. A price is only true on that day, and we ask you to check the listing before buying.
• Evidence in proportion. We look for what the research actually studied, which is often a concentrated extract in a small trial rather than a pinch in a pot, and we say so. Our sources are primary and public: NCCIH and other NIH resources, the FDA, EFSA and Germany's BfR, and studies indexed in PubMed.
• Safety notes from NCCIH and NIH. Cautions and interaction notes on every sheet are taken from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health or another NIH source, and the sentence names that source. We do not write our own safety verdicts.

How we make money

VitaNews Daily earns money in exactly one way: the Amazon Associates program. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Every product button on this site goes to that product's Amazon listing, and if you buy through it we receive a small commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you.

There is no other affiliate program, no direct-seller link, no sponsored post, no paid placement, and no free product accepted in exchange for coverage. A brand cannot pay for a sheet here, and the commission rate plays no part in whether a product gets one or in what the sheet says. The full version is in our Affiliate Disclosure.

What we do not do

• We do not run lab tests. We are an editorial team, not a laboratory. We describe what a label and a brand state and what public sources say.
• We do not give medical advice. Nothing here is written for your situation. Herbs in kitchen amounts are one thing; concentrated products and regular daily use are another. If you take medication, are pregnant or nursing, or have any existing condition, talk to a clinician or pharmacist first.
• We do not promise effects. No sheet on this site says a spice or a tea will do something to your body. Where research exists, we describe what it studied and how limited it is.
• We do not invent people. The byline on every page is VitaNews Daily Editorial Team. There is no fictional herbalist or doctor reviewing sheets, and no named individual endorsing anything.
• We do not sell or ship anything. Every purchase happens on Amazon under Amazon's own terms. See Shipping and Returns.

Who publishes this

VitaNews Daily is published by BASK NUTRITION & HERBS, INC., based in Lake Elsinore, California. The pages are written and maintained by a small editorial team. We are not clinicians, pharmacists, dietitians or botanists, and we do not claim to be. What we bring is a process: open the listing, read the label, name the plant, find the primary source, date the price, and say when we could not confirm something.

Corrections

If something on a sheet is wrong, we want to fix it: a price that has moved, a net weight we misread, a botanical name the brand has since changed, a study we described too generously, a dead link. Write to us through the Contact page with the page address, the sentence or number you believe is wrong and, if you have one, a source we can open ourselves.

When we confirm an error we correct the page and update its review date. If the correction changes what the sheet says about a product, we add a short note on the page saying what changed.

How often sheets are reviewed

Every sheet carries the date it was last examined. Our working rule is to re-open every Amazon listing we link to at least once a quarter, confirming that the ASIN still resolves to the same product and size, that it is in stock, and that the label has not changed, and to re-check a price whenever we touch a page for any reason. Between reviews a listing can change without telling us, which is why the date on the page is the only date that counts.

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