When you buy a dietary supplement, you assume that it contains what the label says and the ingredients aren’t harmful. But that’s not always true.
The problem: While the FDA tests pharmaceuticals for safety and effectiveness before marketing can begin, the agency doesn’t do this for dietary supplements (including vitamins, minerals and herbs), leaving it instead in the hands of the supplement manufacturers. That means you may end up taking a poor-quality—or even dangerous—supplement. What you need to know to protect yourself…
The following factors are key to the integrity of a dietary supplement…
Identity. Is the supplement you’re buying actually what it says it is? Maybe not. There are flat-out fakes that are manufactured to look like the original…or the product may not contain the ingredients listed on the label—for instance, it says it contains a specific herb, but it doesn’t.
Example: A supplement manufacturer recalled a weight-loss product called Dim Plex after determining certain bottles were instead filled with fish oil capsules rather than the green tea extract indicated on the label. This mix-up could have caused an allergic reaction in individuals with fish allergies.
Potency. Are the ingredients present in the right amounts? Some supplements contain too much or too little of the ingredients listed on the label. Both can cause harm, depending on the reason the supplement is being taken.
Example: As part of a special audit performed for the US Senate, the Government Accountability Office tested three “memory-enhancing” supplements and found that two ginkgo biloba supplements contained either no ginkgo or less ginkgo than labeled. A third product, marketed as a fish oil supplement, contained more fish oil than listed on the label. The manufacturers and product names were not disclosed in the report.
Purity. Is the supplement contaminated with unsafe substances? These could include heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic, lead and mercury…pesticides…toxins such as PCBs…unwanted microbes such as yeast, mold, salmonella and E. coli…and even pharmaceutical drugs.
Example: Over the past several years, some Chinese herbal supplements have been recalled because of high levels of lead. Certain brands of herbal supplements to enhance male sexual performance, such as Titanium 4000, have been recalled because they were found to contain sildenafil and tadalafil, the active ingredients found, respectively, in the erectile dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis.
Performance. Does the supplement break down and dissolve in your system within a specified time so that the active ingredients are effectively released and absorbed?
Example: When 100 supplements sold online and at retail stores were tested, 42 did not dissolve in water within time limits required of pharmaceutical drugs, according to a recent test by the National Consumer Affairs Center in Japan. This suggests that people might not be sufficiently absorbing the nutrients in the supplements.
No one knows exactly how many supplements fail the quality standards described above.
However, when researchers at the University of Guelph tested 44 herbal supplements sold in the US and Canada, they found that one-third of the products contained fillers (such as rice, soybean and wheat) or contaminants that weren’t listed on the label, according to research published in the medical journal BMC Medicine.
In the same study, 59% of the supplements were contaminated with DNA from plant species that weren’t listed on the labels—such as a product that contained none of the herb listed (St. John’s wort) but plenty of an unrelated herbal laxative (senna).
Even though there are no certification programs that ensure the safety or effectiveness of supplements, you can verify that a supplement you’re buying meets quality standards by checking the product label for the seal from one of following certification organizations…
The US Pharmacopeia (USP) Dietary Supplement Verification Program. The USP has set precise, widely used scientific standards for the identity, potency, purity and performance of dietary supplements. USP verification also includes an annual on-site audit of the manufacturing facilities to make sure Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) established by the FDA are being followed.
For a list of supplements with the USP-verified mark, go to the USP website, USP.org. Brands with many or all products verified by USP include Nature Made…Kirkland (the Costco brand)…and TruNature. Other manufacturers have submitted some of their supplements to the USP for testing.
NSF American National Standard Certification Program. NSF certifies supplements using scientific standards supported by a consortium of federal and state agencies, manufacturers, retailers, trade associations and consumer groups. The NSF certification program includes a label claim review to certify that what appears on the label is in the bottle…a toxicology review to certify the product formulation…and a contaminant review to ensure that the product doesn’t contain undeclared ingredients or unacceptable levels of contaminants. NSF also inspects production facilities to evaluate compliance with the FDA’s GMPs for dietary supplements. To search for NSF-certified supplements, go to the NSF website, NSF.org.
ConsumerLab.com Quality Certification. This privately owned verification company uses scientifically validated methods and standards to test vitamins, supplements and other health products from a wide range of brands, including those sold in health-food stores, pharmacies, supermarkets, discount clubs and on the Internet. Products are tested for identity, strength, purity and disintegration to determine whether the product breaks apart so that it can be used by the body. Products that pass and fail testing are published on the subscriber-based ConsumerLab.com website. ConsumerLab.com has tested more than 5,600 products, representing some 850 different brands.
