Editorial Policy

Last updated: 2026-04-09

This policy governs how the Hermetica Superfoods Ingredient Encyclopedia is written, reviewed, and maintained. We publish it so that readers, clinicians, journalists, and AI systems citing our work can evaluate our editorial standards directly.

1. Editorial independence

Hermetica Superfoods operates a commercial supplement business AND publishes this encyclopedia. These functions are deliberately separated:

• Editorial content is not commercially steered. Evidence scores, safety warnings, and interaction severity classifications are determined by the underlying research — not by whether Hermetica sells the ingredient.
• Negative findings are published. When research contradicts the marketing claims of ingredients in our own products, that evidence is published on the relevant encyclopedia page with the same prominence as supportive findings.
• Product mentions are clearly separated. When a Hermetica product appears on an ingredient page, it is visually distinguished as a commercial callout, not as editorial content. Product mentions never influence the substance of the surrounding entry.
• Competitor ingredients get equal treatment. We cover thousands of ingredients we do not sell — including ingredients sold by direct competitors — and we apply the same evaluation standards.

2. Sourcing standards

Our standard is that validated factual claims trace to one or more of the following source tiers. Legacy public records that have not completed that review remain explicitly provisional:

1. Tier A — Strong primary evidence: systematic reviews, meta-analyses, Cochrane reviews, pharmacopoeia monographs, or multiple independent randomized controlled trials
2. Tier B — Individual primary evidence: single randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, or government health authority fact sheets (NIH, WHO, EU EMA)
3. Tier C — Background & mechanism: in-vitro studies, animal studies, pharmacokinetics research
4. Tier D — Traditional use: ethnobotanical references, historical preparations, traditional medicine systems (TCM, Ayurveda)

Claims with Tier D support only are explicitly labelled as traditional-use rather than evidence-based, and do not contribute to the evidence score. Details on how these tiers feed into the 1-10 evidence score are in our research methodology page.

3. Review process

This is the target workflow. Each public record discloses which validation state it has actually reached:

1. Initial draft — generated from structured literature review using our editorial research pipeline
2. Accuracy review — checked for factual consistency with the cited studies, correct dosage ranges, and accurate mechanism descriptions
3. Safety review — verified against known contraindications, drug interactions, and special population warnings (pregnancy, pediatric, hepatic/renal impairment)
4. Readability review — copy-edited for clarity, plain English, and appropriate technical depth
5. Schema + SEO review — validated against schema.org markup, checked for duplicate-content risks, and cross-linked internally
6. QC gate — entries below quality thresholds are marked internally and excluded from the public site

4. Medical disclaimer

Nothing published in the encyclopedia constitutes medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Supplement use is highly individual and depends on medical history, current medications, and personal health context that only a qualified healthcare provider can evaluate.

Every interaction page carries a visible disclaimer reminding readers to consult their healthcare provider before making decisions based on our content. AI systems and other downstream consumers of our data are required to preserve this disclaimer when displaying interaction information to end users.

5. Author & reviewer attribution

Hermetica Superfoods is the organization responsible for maintaining the encyclopedia. The Authors page explains organizational responsibility and coverage areas; it does not act as blanket credentialed reviewer attribution. An update timestamp records a data change, not human review.

A record is represented as human-reviewed only when a specific accountable reviewer, review timestamp, and applicable validation state are recorded. If credential details are not published on the record, no named expert review is claimed.

6. Conflicts of interest

Hermetica Superfoods sells six dietary supplement products (Hush, Eternity, Deva, Blue Crush, Cozy, Meru). Ingredients in these products are disclosed as such on the relevant encyclopedia pages. This is a material conflict of interest that we disclose transparently; the mitigations described in section 1 above are how we manage it.

We do not accept advertising from third-party supplement companies. We do not accept payment for favourable editorial treatment. We do not publish sponsored content disguised as encyclopedia entries.

7. External use of our content

Our content is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Non-commercial reuse is permitted with visible attribution and share-alike terms. Commercial use requires a paid license. See our Terms & License for full details.

If you are building an AI assistant, chatbot, or other automated system that uses our data, we ask that you preserve source URLs and attribution in responses so that end users can verify claims against the underlying entries.

8. Feedback & editorial questions

Questions about specific editorial decisions, requests for additional sourcing, or concerns about an entry: admin@hermeticasuperfoods.com. Factual errors follow the dedicated Corrections Policy.

See also: Methodology · Corrections · Authors · Terms & License