What's In Your Supplements?

Everyone interested in good health today is looking to supplements to enhance their diet.   Knowing which ones to take and how much is practically a full time.  So when you know what you want to buy, you assume that the supplement you want contains the ingredients mentioned on the label.  That may not be so.  The New York State Attorney General's office recently tested store-brand supplements from Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target and GNC to see what they were really made of.  In five out of six cases, by using DNA barcoding technology, analytic testing disclosed that  the supplements tested were either unrecognizable or a substance other than what they claimed to be.  Many supplements were filled with rice or sand.

Some products were worse than others, but ginkgo biloba and St. John's Wort could not be found in the products sold with those labels in any of the stores.  GNC, Wal-Mart and Walgreens plan to stop selling the supplements just within New York state.  Target is more aggressive, and will pull them off the market nationwide.

So what's a consumer to do?  The best bet for consumers is to make sure supplements indicate that they are third party regulated on the label.  This means that they have been tested by a third party and found to contain what they say they contain.  Unfortunately for consumers there are no federal regulations on supplements as there are on drugs, which leaves us in a difficult position.  Who do you trust? I do not take vitamins or supplements (other than Vitamin D), so I don't know much about which companies have the best reputation.  If I did take supplements, I would do a bit of research and try to find companies where the products have been tested.  If the supplements contain what they're supposed to, companies should have no hesitation about being tested.  The reality is that we've got to have federal regulation of supplements to assure the public that they're getting what they want.  Are those that don't want the federal government in our business going to complain about this?  I hope not.  This is an example of where the government should intervene, to help keep us safe.