I never cease to be amazed at the scams and weasel ways that manufacturers and purveyors of dietary supplements use to bilk and hoodwink their customers. I suppose I shouldn't be and am being my usual naive self. After all this is an industry worth over US$20 billion worldwide. A lot more than the olive oil industry, say, which was traditionally rumoured to be the Mafia's favourite way of doing 'legit' business.
I can just see the Capo di Capi and his Consigliere sitting around a table having a serious marketing meeting about the merits and pricing for the introduction of their new brands, Extra Virgin Cold Pressed and Virgin Lite versus the standard product, can't you? Nah, they'd just add a bit of colouring and print up three labels with all the fancy claims, and slap them on the bottles full of the cheap stuff, wouldn't they? Wad'sa madda wid de ol' stuff anyways? Hey, how many of 'em can tell the difference? Give 'em what they think they want, fer chrissakes.
If you think I jest, think again. It's almost certainly already happened. Matthias Rath, M.D., one of America's most prominent researchers and longtime colleague of Dr Linus Pauling, authors of the seminal work on heart disease and nutrition, went public recently claiming that America's two largest vitamin companies, Rexall-Sundown and GNC, were in fact Mafia owned and controlled.
But so what? Don't knock it - at least now they're in the health business. So let's not be down on Italian-Americans, after all the Mafia is just organised crime doing business in much the same as many of the other manufacturers and sellers of nutritional supplements. And that, put simply, is cheating the public.
The Odds are Against You
If you think I overstate it, get this. Since it was formed in 1999 independent US assayers, Consumer Lab, have found the following: Ginseng, of 22 brands of American and Korean ginseng tested, over 60% either did not have any or as much ginseng as claimed, and/or had 20 times the permitted level of pesticides (Korean ginseng was the worst offender, in this respect); Echinacea, of 25 brands assayed nearly 50% either did not have the claimed amounts or had 3 times the permitted microbial levels; Multivitamins, of the 27 brands sampled more than one third did not contain the ingredients claimed or were non-absorbable; SAMe, a potent natural anti-depressant also used to protect and regenerate the liver, of 13 brands sampled over 45% had less or none of this expensive ingredient; Glucosamine/Chondroitin, of 25 brands assayed 50% didn't have the amounts claimed, particularly Chondroitin, which is 4 times as expensive as Glucosamine; Ginkgo Biloba, out of 30 brands 25% did not have the claimed amount; St John's Wort, of 21 brands tested 33% either did not have the claimed amounts or contained dangerous amounts of cadmium. Similar results were found in tests for MSM, Vitamins E , Vitamin C, Valerian, Soy Isoflavones, Co Q10, Calcium, Saw Palmetto, Creatine and nutritional health bars.
Broadly speaking you have an even chance of being ripped off whenever you spend your hard earned money in your friendly neighbourhood health store. Actually the odds against you are even greater than that. Quite apart from the distressingly routine dishonesty on the part of far too many manufacturers, there are many other ways to sell you an inferior or useless product. The most prevalent of these is "smart" and/or deceptive marketing. This begins with the label.
Let's Go Shopping!
My partner and I have quite a serious habit when it comes to supplementation and, believe me, I've developed an eagle eye and a 6th sense for the bogus and the rip off. All the same my partner was on my case for quite a while, "Why do we always have to get our stuff from the US. Can't we get it cheaper and more easily from Australia?", she said. "Well", says I, trying not to sound defensive, "I'm looking into that...... " Fact is, apart from herbs you just can't get the same kind of formulations in effective dosages for vitamins and most other things in Oz. They've got too many restrictions. I could see she wasn't convinced and I was right. A week or two later after getting back from a trip to Brisbane she plonks a bottle of Ginkgo Biloba on the breakfast table.
" There!" she says, "That's got 2,700 mg. Ours is only 120 mg and costs more".. "Well......", I say again, "let me see that". Ah! Vindication. First off this is only 30 caps, ours has 100 caps. Next, altho' 2,700 mg of Ginkgo is writ large all over her bottle, look at the small print. There, do you see it? Tucked away it gives the amount of flavonglycosides which are the standardised extract or active ingredient and which is the only thing that's going to do you any good - and it's all of 12 mg! Ours is 120 mg delivering 42mg of flavonglycosides. So, 30 caps of 12 mg at US$11.00 v. 100 caps of 42 mg at $29.00. That works out at $0.37 per mg for the Australian product and $0.02 per mg for the US one. The ozzie one is 18 times more expensive! And now perhaps you can see the kind of profits that can be made by playing these games?
" Smart" Marketing
But let's be fair here and give credit where credit is due. If the maker of this Australian product is guilty of "smart" marketing they are to be commended on their honesty. At least they're honest enough to tell you how much of the active ingredient their stuff actually does contain. Most don't. I've seen expensively packaged brands on the shelves in Australia, Singapore and all over calling themselves Ginkgo 7500, the inference being there's a whacking 7,500 mg of ginkgo in each pill. They cost around $16.00 for 120 caps. Actually, no one in their right mind would want 7,500 mg of the active ingredient of Ginkgo, it's far too much. Looking at the label you see that what they are really saying is they have 7,500 mcg which is the equivalent of 750 mg of Ginkgo leaf. But, and here's the weasel, they don't say anywhere on the label how much of the active ingredient is contained. Which means there probably aren't any flavonglycosides at all! And, since they don't claim to have any, there's no lie. Some would call that smart marketing, I suppose. But do you really think you're getting anything of value for your $16.00? If you do - Good Luck! And, what is more, ginkgo leaf contains ginkgolic acid which is actively bad for you and needs to be extracted. Do you trust these guys to do that?
Some of you may be wondering what on earth ginkgo biloba is and why you would want it at any price? Among it's many properties it increases mental alertness and memory in healthy people as well as preventing brain aging. If you're finding there are a few more of those words on the tip of your tongue that you can't quite retrieve for a day or so - try this. Take 2 caps of 100 mg of quality ginkgo a.m and p.m for 2 months and see what it does for your memory and cognitive function generally.
Which is Cheaper?
Here's another example of "smart" labelling. My partner and I each take 100 mg a day of Co Q10. It is the best quality CoQ10 I can find anywhere and comes in an oil base of tocotrienols, which are the most effective form of vitamin E, which greatly enhances absorption of the CoQ10. A bottle of 100 caps of 100 mg costs US$92.00. Wow! I hear you say that's expensive! Yes, CoQ10 is an expensive substance and if you find it cheap it's going to be low grade and you don't want it anyway. But hang on a minute, it's not that expensive when you consider that this will last you 3.3 months. Now let's see what the "smart" marketers get up to and you be the judge.
Again, in Australia, Singapore and countries all over I've seen bottles of 30 caps of 10mg of CoQ10 costing about US$6.00. The unstated inference being that one cap of 10mg per day will see you right and one bottle will last you a month. Which then, do you think is the better deal? Six dollars or ninety-two dollars?
Well, first off you need to know that unless you take a minimum 60mg of CoQ10 per day you're wasting your time and should save your money anyway. You need to take somewhere between 60 - 200 mg per day to get any benefit (120 mg a day is ideal for most people). On a comparative basis, 30 caps of 10mg is going to last you all of 3 days. Great deal! I get 100 days. The cost on a direct per mg basis is this: the Australian brand costs over 2 cents per mg while the US brand costs less than one cent. It is 124% cheaper. The Australian brand is more than twice as expensive.
And that's given that the stuff they're selling you actually is what they say it is; that there actually is 10 mg per cap in it anyway; and that this isn't just 10mg of any low grade rubbish containing all sorts of impurities. Given that anything of the order of up to 60% of manufacturers routinely lie on their labels by not putting in as much of the ingredient as they claim or selling dangerously polluted or unabsorbable goods, to my mind any maker who knowingly misleads buyers on the label is entirely capable of cheating them in these ways too. I'm not going to buy their product in a million years.
None of this is to say there aren't good Ozzie products or that there aren't a good many more snake oil salesmen in America than there are in Oz.
CoQ Who?
Again, if you don't know what CoQ10 is or why you'd want it, there are probably other more primary forms of nutritional supplementation you may want to do first, like a quality multi for example. CoQ10 is one of the most potent antioxidants there are; it has an enormously positive effect on the mitochondria, which is what powers cellular energy; it not only helps prevent heart disease but is used in it's treatment; it is also an anti-cancer agent. Lastly, if nothing else try this: if you tend to bleeding gums, take 2 x 100mg per day of CoQ10 for 2 months and see the difference.
In the above I've just used two examples Ginkgo and CoQ10, but as you can see from the Consumer Lab reports the same low standard applies to almost any product you care to name. So how can you as a consumer or retailer avoid being ripped off out there? First thing would be to inform yourself as much as possible, then read the labels carefully before you buy. Next, would be to ask someone you think knows and can trust not to sell you a bill of goods.
Chox is Good for you! - Says Who?
Last issue I reported on the research showing that chocolate was good for you. And it is. What I didn't know at the time - but know now, is that the research was funded by none other than the Mars Corporation! Let's be clear here. There are more flavonoids in fruit & veggies than chocolate. It is cocoa that has the flavonoids and is good for you, not Mars Bars. Most commercial products are chock full of saturated fats and sugar and these are not good for you.
" Yer got gout, Mate. Take these and you'll be right", my doctor pal said, handing me a bunch of pills. Sure enough, within hours, I was. Until, that is, the next time........
