Bilberry Multi — the small dark berry of the northern moor and the colour of seeing

Maybe you noticed it about a year ago.

Twelve plants and nutrients. One capsule. A way to put some of that lost colour back into a part of the body that depends, more than most, on colour and pigment.

A clean cream pot, the green band of our label running around it like a forest line. Sixty vegan capsules inside. The dose is gentle — one capsule, one to three times a day, with food. Most people take one with breakfast or lunch and find that's plenty.

That's how plants in this category tend to work. Not with fireworks. With patience.

Bilberry — Vaccinium myrtillus — is the small dark cousin of the cultivated blueberry. It grows wild from Iceland to the Caucasus, in acid heathland and mountain woodland, on knee-high shrubs that you have to crouch to pick. In the British Isles it is the whortleberry of the West Country, the blaeberry of Scotland, the bilberry of Yorkshire. In Sweden it is blåbär, in Finland mustikka. The fruit is smaller than a cultivated blueberry, deeper purple-black, juicier, and tastes more wild — sweet on first bite, with a faint resinous edge that no greenhouse fruit ever quite achieves.

What sets the bilberry apart from its supermarket cousin is the colour goes all the way through. Cut a cultivated blueberry in half and the flesh is pale green. Cut a bilberry and the inside is the same deep ink as the skin. That difference is the sign of one of the highest natural concentrations of anthocyanins in any fruit — the deep purple pigments that give the bilberry, the elderberry, and the acai berry their character.

The legend that everyone in this country has heard once goes like this. During the Second World War, RAF pilots flying night raids over occupied Europe ate bilberry jam before takeoff and reported sharper night vision in the cockpit. Bilberry has a long history as a food in northern Europe. The Provençal herbalist of the seventeenth century knew it. The Scottish cailleach knew it. The Latvian grandmother knew it. Bilberry extract equivalent to 550mg of fruit, drawn from concentrated wild-harvest fruit, alongside the rest of the formula.

In the landes — the great pine forests of south-west France, planted in the nineteenth century to stabilise the dunes — and in the long-needled stands of Pinus massoniana in southern China, the inner bark of the tree carries a quiet treasure. Proanthocyanidins — a family of polyphenol compounds, deep red-brown, related to the tannins in tea and red wine. Pine bark extract, equivalent to 1,250mg, providing 79mg proanthocyanidins.

Modern extraction concentrates the proanthocyanidins from the bark into a fine reddish-brown powder. We use 1,250mg of pine bark equivalent per capsule, providing 79mg of standardised proanthocyanidins.

If you cut a healthy human retina open at the back, you will find a small bright yellow spot called the macula lutea — Latin for yellow spot. It is the part of the eye responsible for sharp central vision. The yellow comes from two pigments — lutein and zeaxanthin — both of which the body cannot make from scratch and must take in through food. They are abundant in dark green leaves: kale, spinach, watercress, parsley. They are also abundant in marigold flowers (Tagetes erecta), the orange flower from which the supplement industry now harvests them.

A diet that includes generous amounts of dark leafy greens delivers them in real food form. We use 15mg of lutein esters per capsule (equivalent to 7.5mg free lutein) plus 2mg of zeaxanthin — a meaningful daily contribution, alongside whatever salad you put on the plate.

When you peel an orange, the bitter white layer between the skin and the segments is the pith. Most of us scrape it off and bin it. Citrus bioflavonoids, 5mg (3mg hesperidin). We use 5mg of citrus bioflavonoid complex per capsule, providing 3mg of standardised hesperidin.

Vitamin C (40mg, 50% NRV) — the most familiar nutrient in the bottle. The food safety regulator allows the wording: vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of blood vessels. Vitamin C also contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress — the wear-and-tear process of being alive that the polyphenols in this formula are also part of.

Most of this article has been about plants. Four of the ingredients here are trace minerals, all with food safety regulator authorised wording.

Zinc (5mg, 50% NRV) — contributes to the maintenance of normal vision.

Manganese (2mg, 100% NRV) — contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress.

Copper (0.5mg, 50% NRV) — contributes to the maintenance of normal connective tissues and to the protection of cells from oxidative stress. Works in concert with zinc — the two minerals are usually paired in good formulation, because too much of one without the other can disturb the balance.

Selenium (55μg, 100% NRV) — contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress and to the normal function of the immune system.

Vitamin E (6mg α-TE, 9 IU, 50% NRV) — contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress. A fat-soluble vitamin that works in adjacent rooms of the same broad story as vitamin C. Found in cold-pressed plant oils, nuts, seeds, leafy greens.

Lay these twelve ingredients on a table — bilberry, pine bark, lutein, zeaxanthin, citrus bioflavonoids, vitamin C, zinc, manganese, copper, selenium, vitamin E — and what they share is a single quiet theme: the colour and protection of a part of the body that depends, more than most, on tiny blood vessels and exquisitely sensitive light-sensing cells.

We didn't pick them at random. We picked the bilberry tradition of northern Europe, the maritime pine bark tradition of Atlantic France, the marigold-derived eye pigments that the body can't make for itself, the four trace minerals that the soil isn't always supplying, and the two antioxidant vitamins that EFSA has formally agreed support cells against oxidative stress. And we laid them in the same capsule. The thinking isn't more is more.

One capsule, one to three times a day, with food — most of these compounds are fat-soluble, and a meal helps absorption. Most people take one with breakfast or lunch and find that's plenty. The bottle holds sixty capsules — at one a day it lasts two months, at three a day three weeks.

Don't stack it on top of three other multivitamins or the zinc, copper, and selenium will overlap. Plants of this kind work in the background.

If after sixty days nothing has changed, stop. A supplement that isn't doing anything for you isn't worth the money, and we'd rather have your trust for the next thing than your loyalty to the wrong thing.

This is a food supplement — it complements a varied diet, doesn't replace one. This product is for adults only and should be avoided during pregnancy, breastfeeding and if you take medication, unless advised by a medical practitioner. Keep it cool, dry, sealed, out of reach of children. Don't exceed three capsules a day.

If you've read this far, thank you. We tried to write the kind of page we'd want to read before spending money — no neon promises, no overblown language.

— Vitadefence