Is anyone checking your supplements?
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Arnold Schwarzenegger <[email protected]>
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Arnold's Pump Club welcomes subscribers and shares a personal story of a costly supplement mistake to illustrate the importance of choosing safe supplements. The brand highlights three key questions to ask when shopping for supplements to avoid similar errors. They emphasize the need for careful evaluation to prevent health risks and financial losses.
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How to Choose Safe Supplements (And The 3 Questions to Ask First)
The most expensive protein powder I ever bought taught me how to shop for supplements. Let my hard lessons save you time, money, and unnecessary health risks
Together With Momentous
Editor’s Note from AB: I want to tell you about the worst supplement purchase of my life.
It was a five-pound tub of whey protein called One World Whey, and it cost about $150. That's roughly $30 a pound, when you could buy perfectly decent whey for a fraction of that. (Whey is insanely expensive right now)
You might see the price and think I was a fool. And, fair enough, because I was. But not for the reasons you might think.
At the time, the price wasn’t my biggest concern (And yes, it should have been). Even then, I already knew how the supplement industry cut corners. But I used the wrong method to judge safety and effectiveness.
The pitch was built for people who questioned supplement quality. So they played up the details that would stand out. Grass-fed, pasture-raised cows. A proprietary cold-processing method called TruCool that supposedly protected the protein from heat damage. Heavy-metal test results allegedly showing it was clean.
Most of it sounded right, and the stranger claims rode in on the back of the reasonable ones. I paid more because I believed paying more would get me something better.
Then, in the spring of 2014, the company suspended sales. Lab analysis had found less protein and more sugar than the label claimed.
According to the company's statement and corrected label, the product promised 21 grams of protein per serving and delivered only 5 grams. And despite being labeled as low-sugar, it had 17 to 18 grams per scoop.
The label didn't match the product. But my poor purchase helped ensure that, moving forward, I wouldn't make the same mistake again. That meant any supplement purchase I made required one thing on the label to prevent a similar error.
What Matters Most On A Supplement Label
Most people assume someone checks supplements before they hit the shelf. Nobody does. The FDA governs supplements, but they don't approve dietary supplements for safety, effectiveness, or labeling before they're sold.
The company that makes the supplements is responsible for getting it right and telling the truth on labels, and regulators mostly step in after something has gone wrong.
When you buy a product, you probably assume that’s what on the label has to be in the product. That's one reason why One World Whey sat in kitchens, mine included, until the company's own lab work caught up.
That’s not to say the FDA isn’t involved. They are. But they don’t act until a clear foul occurs.
And, unfortunately, because of that, One World Whey isn’t an isolated story.
When researchers combed through the FDA's warnings on tainted supplements, they found 776 products containing unapproved drug ingredients over roughly a decade. In nearly every case, about 98% of them, those ingredients appeared nowhere on the label. Fewer than half of the products were ever tied to a recall.
When researchers tested 25 melatonin gummies in 2023, only 3 contained an amount within 10% of what the label promised. One contained no melatonin at all.
When researchers tested 6 popular brands of creatine gummies, 4 of the 6 had lower levels of creatine than promised. One brand had zero grams in the product. A creatine gummy with no creatine.
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