“Nature is our greatest teacher. And if we could all pause long enough to listen, I think we would have a lot more answers.”
Twilight‘s Cullen family jokingly called themselves “vegetarians,” as they feasted on animal blood rather than human blood. Nikki Reed, however, who famously played Rosalie Cullen in all five franchise films, doesn’t take health and wellness as lightly as her vampire character did.
“Sometime in my early 20s, I started to develop a little bit of a consciousness surrounding the connection between all things on this planet, meaning what lands on our plate, what grows beneath our feet,” Reed exclusively tells Green Matters.
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Now 35, Reed’s sense of awareness has led to an inspiring journey involving action, activism, and continued learning. In early 2024, Reed co-founded The Absorption Company with husband Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries). The supplement brand boasts “proprietary game-changing technology” and claims that its supplements “actually work.”
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“I’ve transitioned into areas of passion that move me in a different way and that I think, hopefully, contribute to the earth in a different way,” says Reed, who left Hollywood for a minimalist farm outside of LA.
That being said, the Thirteen star doesn’t want people to assume she looks down at entertainment or her acting past, or even that she’s left it behind completely.
“I don’t think of myself as having left or ended one chapter of life with a full stop at the end … I also still very much value the role that entertainment plays in that,” she explains, before mentioning her involvement in Common Ground, a regenerative agriculture documentary she co-executive produced in 2023.
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In a phone interview with Green Matters, Reed touched on how The Absorption Company is shaking up the multi-billion-dollar supplement industry, investing her time and energy into intentional brands, and entering the “pool of conscious living.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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GREEN MATTERS: You’ve been in the eco-conscious and health and wellness space for about 15 years. Where did this stem from?
NIKKI REED: In my early 20s, I developed an awareness of interconnectedness, which led me toward sustainability. It started with health and diet. Once you start thinking about where food comes from, you get a better understanding about the health and treatment of animals, and then you start looking at your broken food system. Then you start thinking about where your products come from. It all becomes this sort of domino effect.
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GM: What inspired you to create The Absorption Company alongside your husband?
NR: Health and wellness has been a passion of mine for the last 10-plus years. I spend my evenings reading medical journals. So I think that coupled with the fact that I went through my own weird, mysterious health journey about five years ago — I found myself hitting a lot of closed doors when it came to answers. It really made me want to look at the system. I thought, “Why are healthy people getting sick? Why are we seeing increasing, alarming rates of autoimmune disease and cancer in young people?”
When you look at the supplements in your pantry, how many can you actually say you feel a notable difference from? A lot of these nuanced supplements have zero regulation. Less than 4 percent of supplement companies third-party test, which is a very alarming. There’s no accountability for what’s actually in the bottle that you’re buying, meaning you can package a supplement in a bottle and sell it as anything, and make any claims. It’s kind of like the Wild West, and that really sparked a fire in me.
GM: The Absorption Company’s products “utilize breakthrough liposomal absorption technology” and “only contain ingredients procured in their most bioavailable form.” Can you tell us what this means exactly?
NR: We are peeing out about 84 percent of our supplements. The Absorption Company was built on one of the key pillars of maximizing absorption (at a 500 percent increase) through this piece of proprietary technology called Capsoil that allows you to take lipophilic material and turn it into a nanometric water soluble powder instead of binding it to a fat. When you drink them, your stomach acids don’t have the ability to destroy them before they get into your intestinal tract.
And we’re using ingredients that are already in their most bioavailable form. We use pharmaGABA instead of synthetic GABA, magnesium glycinate instead of standard magnesium, and methyl folate instead of just folic acid.
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GM: You also have partnerships with a number of other sustainability-focused brands and even founded your own sustainable jewelry company, BaYou with Love. What is it about these companies that stands out to you?
NR: It’s just one pool of conscious living. Sneakers that are made with recycled ocean plastics, children’s medicine made with organic blueberry syrup instead of synthetic preservatives and fillers and artificial flavors, a supplement company that actually allows you to absorb nutrients, and jewelry that’s made with repurposed metals and consciously sourced stones. All of those things have a lot in common: An awareness about our impact on the planet.
