Our Story
Nearly a century of whole-food nutrition.
Since 1929, one conviction has guided everything we do: nutrition works best the way nature assembles it — in whole foods, not in synthetic isolates. This is how that idea became a company.
1929 · Dr. Royal Lee
A founder ahead of his time, and one stubborn idea.
Dr. Royal Lee founded Standard Process in 1929, at a moment when the science of nutrition was just beginning to take shape. An inventor and a relentless researcher, he was convinced of something the rest of the field would take decades to catch up to: that the vitamins and minerals our bodies need don't act alone.
In whole foods, he argued, nutrients arrive as complexes — bundled with the enzymes, cofactors, and trace elements that help the body actually use them. Pull a single vitamin out and synthesize it in a lab, and you lose much of what made it valuable in the first place.
So Dr. Lee did something few were doing: he built a supplement from concentrated whole foods rather than synthetic isolates. It was one of the first products of its kind, and it set the course Standard Process has followed ever since.
“Nutrients were never meant to work alone. Whole foods deliver them the way the body is built to receive them.”
It starts in the ground
Good nutrition starts in the soil — so that's where we start.
Most supplement companies begin with an order form. We begin with a field. On our certified-organic farm in Wisconsin, we grow many of our own ingredients — which means quality isn't something we inspect at the end. It's something we cultivate from the very beginning.
We farm what we make
On certified-organic land in southern Wisconsin, we grow many of the very ingredients that go into our supplements. The harvest doesn't begin a supply chain — it begins ours.
Soil first
Healthy plants come from healthy ground. We tend the soil with the same care we ask practitioners to bring to their patients, because the quality of a nutrient is decided long before harvest.
Whole plants, whole nutrition
We harvest at peak vitality and keep the plant intact. A whole-food complex carries far more than a single named vitamin — and we believe that fuller picture is the point.
Seed to supplement
One company, from the seed in the ground to the bottle on the shelf.
Standard Process is vertically integrated — we don't hand our ingredients off to a chain of outside suppliers. We grow, harvest, test, and manufacture, keeping watch over every step. It's how we make sure the whole-food complex that left the field is the same one a practitioner recommends.
Grown on our own farm
It starts in our fields — crops raised on certified-organic soil and harvested when their nutrition is at its richest, not when a calendar says so.
Gently made into supplements
We process whole foods with a light hand, using methods designed to keep the natural nutrient complex intact rather than strip it down to isolated parts.
Studied and refined
Our Nutrition Innovation Center carries the research forward — testing, validating, and deepening what nearly a century of whole-food science has taught us.
Still family-owned
Three generations in, the mission hasn't moved.
Nearly a hundred years after Dr. Lee started the company, Standard Process is still family-owned — now into its third generation. We've never been bought, broken up, or steered by outside owners chasing a quarter. From our home in Palmyra, Wisconsin, the work has stayed close to the people who care about it most.
That continuity is a quiet advantage. It lets us think in decades, invest in the soil and the science, and hold to the whole-food conviction even when shortcuts would be easier. The names on the door have changed across generations. The reason we're here has not.
A few milestones
Nearly a century, in brief.
- 1929
The company is founded
Dr. Royal Lee establishes Standard Process and introduces one of the first whole-food supplements.
- Decades on
The farm takes root
Certified-organic farmland in Wisconsin lets us grow our own ingredients and control quality from the soil up.
- Today
A center for research
Our Nutrition Innovation Center advances the science of whole-food nutrition for the next generation of practitioners.
- Now
30,000+ practitioners
Health-care practitioners across the country build their nutrition work on Standard Process.
See what a century of whole-food science makes possible.
Explore the products built on Dr. Lee's idea — or, if you're a health-care practitioner, find out how to bring Standard Process into your practice.