Investigation of Herbal Supplements Results in Recalls

Editor's Note:  I've had a lot of emails telling me of the recent investigation by the New York Governor, so I decided to finally put out a blog post on it.  It's very sad to see people waste their hard-earned money and have to wonder whether they got what they thought they were paying for.  Labeling laws have few requirements .... maybe that will change after this investigation.

Quality is not a common theme in the supplements industry.  We've been in it for 33 years and have seen a lot of brands come and go.  We've stayed with the brand we began with because as time passed by, we saw more and more problems with the alternatives ... generally reported by our customers at the shop when they decided to try a cheaper brand of what they were using.

We have always focused on quality and tried to educate our customers, but most folks think we're just making a sales pitch.  Hey!  I admit I would think the same way.  There are few companies out there that test their raw materials or even know if the right species and part of the plant has been harvested and whether it was harvested at the proper time, and even fewer that manufacture to pharmaceutical standards.

Watch this video to know what you need to look for while you're choosing your brand of health supplements.  Low prices indicate low cost ingredients so you do not get the potency on the bottle, nor are you assured that the ingredients are not contaminated with heavy metals, radiation, etc. Learn what you should look for when reading a product label.

In the News: An investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office into store-brand supplements has found that many herbal supplements not only contain arguably no herbs, but also don’t contain the main ingredient/herb advertised.

Here are some of the bullet-point findings of the investigation:
• Most of the supplements contained phony fillers.

• Many of the supplements contained unlisted allergens. Five of the 24 products tested contained unlisted wheat, and 2 contained unlisted beans — both of which are known to cause allergic reactions in some people.

• Some of the supplements didn’t even contain the herb advertised. All but 5 of the 24 products tested contained DNA that was either unrecognizable or from a plant other than what the product claimed to be.

• None of Walmart’s 6 supplements tested were found to contain purely the ingredient advertised.

• Tests on 6 of the Target brand’s products resulted in only one unqualified positive.

The investigation targeted 4 national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart, each of which received cease-and-desist letters demanding that a number of their supplements be taken off the market.  Read the entire article.

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