More bogus supplements for health

I am not a fan of the supplement industry in a general sense. This industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry and it mostly preys on people's ignorance or because people want to be sold a miracle in a jar. Some of my own family members have fallen victim to many of these passing fads and it is kind of tragic because if they do feel anything from taking most supplements it is simply a placebo effect.

Many of these products make dubious claims such as being something that can aid in the prevention of cancer or they will make some vague claim that it contributes to bone strength, bone density, yada yada yada. The claim is really not that important but merely that the studies that they will reference are nearly always funded by the people who are selling the product, which is always something you should be leery of but remarkably the manufacturers are able to get away with this in the supplement industry probably because they are a powerful lobbying group.

It can be a bit alarming when you go into a Vitamin Shoppe or some store like GNC because there are just so many products all of which are making grandiose claims about what the product actually does. Now in rare instances there have been studies conducted where something like fish oil or St. John's Wort do actually do something that benefits the body, but in order for this to end up being the case an extremely specific dosage combined with other factors such as diet needed to exist in order to achieve such ends and even then, the results tend to be extremely minor to the point where it can only be detected with some very sophisticated blood tests. Basically, the opportunity for you to achieve similar results in your kitchen is going to be slim to none.

It can be very difficult to get the exact right dosage of these herbs in a capsule and this is made a lot more difficult when the manufacturers of the product themselves don't even bother putting whatever the herb they are meant to be selling you in the actual pills.

It wasn't that long ago that a massive recall of supplements happened in multiple US states when some Attorney Generals joined forces to test a bunch of supplements that were commonly sold at Walgreens, GNC and Wal-Mart, among other outlets.

They went after popular supplements initially such as St John's Wort, Gingo Biloba, and Echinacea. When they conducted tests to see if the percentages indicated on the packaging were correct I think they expected them to not be accurate, what they and the public likely weren't expecting to discover was that a great percentage of the products didn't contain ANY of these herbs at all. According to then Attorney General Matty Mack, “In a good number of cases, there was no organic material in the product.” That's right folks, in many of these pills they found that they contained nothing but filler and in some instances they had the gall to simply package sand in a capsule and then sell it on to the public.

In 80% of the overall tests, the capsules did NOT contain what it said on the labels.

The industry paid a bunch of class action fees, recalled the products while making some sort of excuse, and then did as much as they could in order to bury the story. I would imagine that many people never even knew that this happened even though it wasn't that long ago. You can see the official report here just in case you think I am making this information up. I am not.

The thing that gets me is that even if the bottles DID contain what was written on the labels, which they didn't, their claims of health benefits are spurious at best and intentional lies at worst.

I am not a big believer in alternative medicine and there was a comedian whose name eludes me who once quipped "I don't believe in alternative medicine because if a product is called "alternative medicine" it is because it either has not been proven to do what it claims or it has been proven that it does NOT do that. Do you know what alternative medicine is called when it does work? It's called medicine."

Don't fall for the hype folks. If a product sounds too good to be true there is a fantastic chance that this is because it isn't true. The only supplements I believe in are whey protein and maybe creatine. These two products have been proven time and time again by independent research and testing to do what it says on the tin. Now we just have to be apprehensive about even these products actually containing what it says on the label as well. If you have the opportunity, getting your protein from a natural source such as real food is always the better option. If not, use a well known brand that has been independently tested to contain what it says on the label.