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5 Dirty Little Secrets of ‘Natural’ Supplements
The supplement industry preys on consumer naïveté, hawking products with mystery ingredients that often don’t work and can be harmful. That may now change.
Since the invention of snake oil, the United States has done little to regulate the slick sales of dubious cures promised in sundry vitamins, minerals and unpronounceable “natural” chemicals that fall outside the realm of regulated medicine. Yet they are often mislabeled, many of them flat don’t work, and a slew of common, brand-name products can be harmful or even deadly.
Looks like things may finally change.
On Feb. 11, the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, called B.S. on a big chunk of the mostly unregulated supplement industry, issuing a stern and impassioned statement about the “agency’s new efforts to strengthen regulation of dietary supplements by modernizing and reforming FDA’s oversight.”
“The growth in the number of adulterated and misbranded products — including those spiked with drug ingredients not declared on their labels, misleading claims, and other risks — creates new potential dangers,” Gottlieb said in a lengthy statement discussing the remarkable rise of a largely unregulated…
