Health Supplement Hoax
Labels promise purity. Lab tests tell a different story. Here is what independent research has found inside the bottles sold as "health supplements."
Adulteration in the Supplement Industry
Despite the legal obligation to ensure their authenticity, published reports show that a portion of botanical ingredients and products are adulterated. Most often, such adulteration is carried out for financial gain, where ingredients are intentionally substituted, diluted, or "fortified" with undisclosed, much lower-cost commodity ingredients.
While some adulteration is easily detected with simple laboratory assays, the adulterers frequently use sophisticated schemes to mimic the visual aspects and chemical composition of the labeled botanical ingredient in order to deceive the analytical methods used for authentication.
In most cases, adulteration is done by providing botanical ingredients that appear to comply with specifications and standardization requirements for specific marker or active compounds but, in fact, simply exploit the lack of specificity of the test method used to measure them. A declaration of the methodology used to obtain the quantitative results should become standard industry practice.
Misleading Labels in the Sports and Supplement Industry
A large portion of sports and dietary supplements may be misleading when it comes to labeling their ingredients, according to a research letter published in JAMA Network Open in 2023. The researchers found that 89% of dietary supplements examined didn't accurately label the ingredients in the products, and up to 12% were made up of ingredients prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
When it comes to supplement quality and accuracy, there tends to be wide variability because, unlike prescription drugs, supplements are not approved by the FDA before they are sold. As a result, supplement makers don't have to prove their products' safety or efficacy, or be held to the standards of clinical trials.
It's not surprising, then, that the authors of the study found quality issues and misleading labels on sports supplements. These products included compounds like Rauvolfia vomitoria, methylliberine, halostachine, octopamine, and turkesterone. Researchers honed in on these five ingredients in particular because they're often used in sports supplements to enhance performance and serve as substitutes of sorts for ephedra, an FDA-prohibited stimulant.
Findings from the Field
"The FDA does not pre-approve these ingredients, or any supplement ingredient, for either efficacy or safety before their introduction, but FDA inspections have found that supplement manufacturers often fail to comply with basic manufacturing standards, such as establishing the identity, purity, or composition of the final product," the authors wrote.
Among 57 products, 40% didn't contain a detectable amount of one of those five labeled ingredients, the researchers found. Among the products that did have detectable levels of the labeled ingredient, the actual amount varied from a low of 0.02% to a high of 334%, meaning the products are widely inconsistent.
DNA Testing of Store-Brand Herbals
Numerous store-brand supplements aren't what their labels claim to be, according to an investigation that subjected popular herbal supplements to DNA testing. The investigation, led by the New York Attorney General, focused on herbal supplements from four major retailers: GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreens. Lab tests determined that only 21 percent of the products actually had DNA from the plants advertised on the labels.
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