Spending money on a subpar supplement that produces little or no result is a waste of time. Yet many of us may be doing just this without realizing it.
There is a real problem with the supplement industry that’s been bugging me for years now. It’s an issue that REALLY affects how well the supplements we take work – so it’s a pretty big deal.
So, what is the big lie that’s being fed to us? It’s simple really, it’s to do with the amount of the ingredients and the claims made as to their benefits.
This isn’t a warning about ALL supplements, far from it many are excellent. What I want to do is to educate you on what to watch out for when choosing a supplement. It’s also about time someone outed the practice of ineffective supplements and to make supplement companies “up their game” and be more honest transparent to their consumers.
I have spent a fair amount of time recently checking out Super Green supplements and have spotted two trends. Firstly that ingredient amounts are often lacking and that ingredient amounts are often undisclosed or hidden on the label.
Ingredient Amounts Really Enough?
Marketing is a wonderful thing, it informs us, but so too at times it also conceals the truth and supplement companies do have a habit of using pseudo-science to feed us false information to get us to buy their products and to increase their profit.
We all know that many things only work when you have sufficient amounts. Medicine, food most things need to come in the correct quantity.
Supplements are exactly the same.
You wouldn’t expect your doctor to prescribe you 20% penicillin you need to fight off that bacterial infection because they would make more profit, additionally, you wouldn’t expect your Doctor to make up something and prescribe it to you in the knowledge there’s no chance of it having any real benefit.
This is what the supplement business has been doing for years.
What I would like, is that everyone did a little more research and homework to better understand the correct dosages for ingredients and not to blindly trust supplement companies.
Are Ingredient Amounts Really Backed by Science?
A common practice by supplement companies is to support their health or other claims by referencing clinical trials on the same ingredients.
This is a good thing and adds confidence that the consumer has chosen a supplement that will have a beneficial effect.
However, it’s not quite as simple as it first appears.
For many of the popular ingredients, it’s possible to find the minimum dosage amount required to trigger a positive effect based on clinical trials. So, when a company claims a clinical trial supports a particular benefit when consuming so many milligrams (or grams) per day, you would expect the supplement to contain this amount.
Wrong. In most cases, this is not what happens.
Many supplement companies claim a benefit when in fact the supplement contains much less than what the trial recommends for the daily serving.
I noticed this when I looked at the most popular Super Greens supplements on the market – in fact I have reviewed over 50 brands.
A quick example is in the case of a popular Greens ingredient, Spirulina.
According to Examine.com the science supports benefits when consuming between 1-8g per day. Yet many Super Greens Supplements contain much less in their daily serving.
Claiming you can also experience the benefit when containing sometimes 1/2 or even less of the ingredient is misleading!
Truth about Proprietary Blends
Considering it’s a legal requirement for supplement companies in the UK and the USA to reveal the individual ingredients in supplements, how do they get away with not revealing amounts?
Simple, supplement companies wrap the ingredients into a so-called “proprietary blend” and list the individual ingredients but only state the total amount for the blend.
The current law states that you list the ingredients in order of quantity, so the largest ingredient first. There is no legal requirement to list individual amounts in a proprietary blend, which makes no sense at all and does very little to protect the consumer.
The justification for hiding ingredient amounts is to protect the manufacturer's “intellectual property” and to stop other companies from copying their “powerful formula”.
This is total BS.
If a company really wanted to copy a formula it’s not that difficult,. You can easily relatively cheaply have supplements analyzed in a lab and get a breakdown of the product making it easier to work out what’s inside and the relative amounts.
It’s not something the average Joe on the street might want to do, but with a little information not difficult either.
So, what’s the real reason for putting a group of ingredients in a “proprietary blend”?
In my opinion, the use of blends is clearly a marketing ploy. By making the supplement ingredients sound more exotic can make the product sound much more appealing and increase its perceived value. And importantly sounds like it could work more effectively.
This is the BEST CASE reason for a company using a proprietary blend, with the “WORSE CASE scenario” being in the company is hiding an INEFFECTIVE group of ingredients.
I have written a complete article on why I hate proprietary blends in supplements.
Labels That Lie
The idea with supplement labels is to give you the consumer an informed choice as to what you’re taking. Once you know the ingredients, the full supplement “facts”, you can confirm that stated amounts match with what you would expect.
If the science says that for any beneficial effect you would need to take 1 -8 g of Spirulina but the packaging you are looking at only has 250mg per serving then you’re not getting enough for your money and it would be clear to you that the manufacturer at this point is deceiving you.
Okay, so most of us may not go that deep into the supplement label and double-check that you have enough of the ingredients. However, I am arguing that you should. Due diligence is essential to ensure that not only you are getting value for money, but you are getting what you paid for.
Following on from explaining the use of proprietary blends to disguise what you are getting, you are now better able to take an objective look at the different supplement labels below. One using proprietary blends and the other doesn’t and so has a full disclosure label – see the difference?
Which product makes it easier to know what you’re consuming – obvious eh?
Proprietary Blend Label – Science Based Green Detox
Full Disclosure Label – Green Vibrance
The US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) outline the dietary supplement labelling guidelines on their website here.
How About Fake Ingredients?
It’s surprising to hear these days but sometimes fake or dangerous ingredients have been used in popular supplement brands.
There have been countless examples of supplement companies using fake ingredients, check out the following:
Some of the most popular high street stores like GNC, Walgreens, Target and Wal-mart have been accused of selling fake and adulterated supplements, to be fair, these aren’t own brand products, but they could insist on better product descriptions and they could have random samples tested. It wouldn’t break their banks.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/herbal-supplements-targeted-by-new-york-attorney-general/
Thankfully examples like above are rare and 99.9% of supplements from “reputable manufacturers” are fine.
Having said all this, it’s not a reason to start buying your supplements from eBay for instance. The same goes for buying cheap products overseas.
Buying supplements based on price is also short-sighted, in that, some country the guidelines and regulatory frameworks are not as strict. The USA, Western EU countries, and Australia have much higher levels of safety in food manufacturing and therefore will be a more “trustworthy” source.
My Final Thoughts
The intention of this article is not to scaremonger, most well-known brands using proprietary blends aren’t harmful, it’s just that they don’t give you the whole picture.
The fact is, whilst the constituent parts may be roughly equal, not all supplements or supplement companies are created equal.
I hate the exaggeration, lies, overblown advertising, and confusing pseudoscience of the supplement industry just as much as you. The supplement industry is plagued by pseudoscience, ridiculous hype, misleading advertising and endorsements, products full of junk ingredients, the underdosing of key ingredients, and many other shenanigans.Mike Mathews, Founder of Legion Athletics
There are some great ethical supplement companies that produce excellent products that do what they say. So that you’re not taken in by clever marketing you need to keep your eye on the product description.
It’s my opinion that the practice of using proprietary blends to conceal what is in the product is truly terrible and I would advise avoiding any supplement that does this, eventually, I hope this will force the manufacturers to change the way they work. There really is no legitimate reason for doing this especially if you want an open and honest relationship with the people that buy your products.
Full disclosure of ingredients and amounts on the label, is what everyone should insist on.
It’s the ONLY WAY to be 100% confident you know what you’re consuming.
Snake Oil Plymouth Rock Snake Oil now. I love the old western movies.
“There are other medications that can have side effects, but patients come in and tell you the dose, and you can reverse it,” Jamshidi said. “But with supplements, you don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
Hi Bogdana,
This is especially true for supplements that use a proprietary formula in their blend. You literally do not have any idea how much of each ingredient there is. I really dislike this, and if I can help it, do not choose or recommend such supplements.
Full disclosure labelling all the way!
Adam