Want to Make Some Fast Money?
Have you ever noticed how expensive those big bottles of nutrition supplements are? If so, have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m in the wrong business… I should be selling supplements.”? Well, there’s good news for you. Because, as it turns out, there’s not much to it!
In fact, if you pay for expedited shipping on some rice powder, bottles, and labels that advertise your “proprietary blend,” you can probably be in business by the end of the week…
Read more: Would You Eat Chicken-less Eggs?
The “Regulation” of Nutrition Supplements
… I’m not sure what to write about the regulation of nutrition supplements… because there isn’t any. You actually don’t have to prove that your product is safe at all before you can start selling it. The burden of proof falls on the FDA, who must prove that the product is not safe before they can take it off the market.
So how safe are those miracle pills? Well, if they’re on the shelf, then you can rest assured that the FDA has not yet been able to prove that the product constitutes an immediate danger. Not too reassuring, is it? And that doesn’t even address the issue of how beneficial the supplements are… or are not…
Watch this trailer for Bigger Stronger Faster*: The Side Effects of Being American for a closer look:
Taking a Closer Look at the “Health Industry”
As these guys point out – the “health industry” seems to be heavy on industry and light on health. I love their comparison to the gentleman selling “Sunshine Oil” in the wild west. When you think of it like that, it’s not hard to imagine how far people will go to get a share of today’s $24 Billion nutrition supplement industry.
But, here at The Grow Network, we know one foolproof way to make sure that the nutrition your family gets is as healthy as possible. You guessed it – grow it yourself. Keep your soil strong, and eat those plants as soon as you harvest them. There’s simply no way to package that kind of nutrition up in an overpriced bottle.
COMMENTS(16)
I’m sure the people behind this short film mean well, but the regulators will jump all over this as a way to take away our right to all supplements, most of which are made with quality ingredients by honest people who are trying hard to help people with their serious health problems. This short film says nothing about the good guys, giving the FDA the ammunition to push more pharms of course, all of which are heavily regulated, approved, and dangerous as hell.
Wow. What a completely biased post. Short on facts and long on hyperbole. I’m in the supplement business, and I can assure you it’s nothing like this clip you apparently swiped from a TV show (probably illegally violating their copyright) that, by the way, gleefully promoted, of all things, illegal body-building drugs like Growth Hormone, while taking potshots at nutritional supplements. Great info source, right? Not.
In reality, the nutritional supplement industry is heavily regulated. Supplements have to be manufactured through a FDA certified lab that complies with government GMP (Good Manufacturing Processes) regulations. You cannot simply hire a bunch of illegal aliens and hand them a bag of powder and tell them to capsule it up, fill a bottle with the capsules and stick a label on it and sell it to the general public. That’s pure crap. It was done for sensationalistic appeal for the TV show pushing illegal body-building drugs. But it’s a crock. As with the internet, just because you see something on TV doesn’t necessarily make it true.
And by the way, supplements are considered to be food items. That’s why they’re not regulated like drugs in the sense that you have to “prove they’re safe” before they can be sold. But they do have to meet the label claims, and you have to show laboratory analysis demonstrating that label claims are met, and that there’s no microbial contamination as well, or you can be prosecuted for selling adulterated or contaminated food items to the public.
I’m in total agreement with the writer of the post, in terms of his statement that the best nutrition is that which you’ve grown yourself and eat fresh. He’s completely correct. But if for example you’re someone like me who has a degenerative condition like Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which responds really well to good nutrition but in amounts far higher than can be found in foods, then nutritional supplementation is essential. For example, the nutritional supplement D-Ribose is a 5-carbon sugar found in very small amounts in meats, mushrooms, milk and more. But not in concentrations high enough to help cells damaged by Epstein Barr virus to recover from the damage and begin producing adequate amounts of ATP (cellular energy) again, which is the big issue for victims of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. By taking a D-Ribose supplement, however, in amounts higher than can be found in foods, this damage to the cellular mitochondria caused by the virus that triggers Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can be mitigated and in some cases even reversed. A more-or-less normal life can be restored, whereas without the D-Ribose the overwhelming fatigue can be so great that life is unbearable.
The TV show you stole the long clip from has just about everything backwards. They claim the supplement industry used to be regulated, but now, thanks to Orrin Hatch, it’s no longer regulated. But the reality is this: The nutritional supplement industry was for years more-or-less unregulated (though the FDA has always had the power to remove supplements they deemed to be unsafe, and they’ve done so many times even back during the unregulated days). 20 years ago you could go to a health food conference and find people selling stuff they grew in their backyard (herbs, etc.).
But now, supplement manufacturers have to be GMP compliant, which means the manufacturing plants are routinely FDA inspected…must follow rigorous manufacturing practices designed for public safety…must document that they’ve following these government-mandated practices on a constant basis…and lab analysis has to be available for each supplement batch, etc., for the FDA to inspect. Long gone are the days when supplements could be “manufactured” in someone’s garage or kitchen, as shown in that stolen video clip.
As I read this, it seems that you imply you want the FDA, which approved wonderful “treasures” (This is sarcasm, folks.) like aspartame, to regulate supplements. I think one of the few freedoms we have left is the ability to choose supplements without a prescription. It is definitely possible for one to make good choices by learning and educating one’s self on the subject. Like everything, there are good and bad supplements.
Hi Michael, I want to start a tinctures and supplements business. I tried to watch the first video, but it did not load. I reloaded it repeatedly and it appears to be dead.Please send me a link so I can watch this. It is really important to me. I am one of those who never got started, because I wanted everything to be perfect. I mistakenly thought the big names were better. Succinctly put, I am heavy on nutrition and light on industry. Help! Thanks, Linda
The first one is a screenshot of the second video, Linda. I also found this confusing!
What drivel !!! It is simply a lie to say that dietary supplements are unregulated. Michael, it makes you look like an idiot to parrot the media brainwashing that opponents of supplements would have us believe. Just look at the Code of Federal Regulations 21, part 111 to see how extensively they are regulated including the requirement for good manufacturing practices and quality control of ingredients. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/SCRIPTs/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=111&showFR=1
There are tens of thousands of studies demonstrating the value of supplements – just search PubMed. You are on the wrong soapbox, so stick to something you know.
Eat real food, use supplements wisely.
Scott
I am 71 y.o. and have been taking Life Extension Foundation dietary supplements since 2004, after I was told I’d be on Dialysis by 2006. I switched to eating close to 100% Organic, and I exercise, do yoga, pray and meditate for 20+ minutes a day. Life Extension’s dietary supplements are “pharmaceutical grade.” This means that their products are 99% pure without additives or unnecessary substances which may cause unwanted side effects. They collect information from the whole world and document their sources for anything they say. You can talk to one of their health advisors (all of whom have some type of health background/education) and who have access to all of this information. They now limit calls to 20 mintues, but you can call back right away. I am so grateful to them for their part in helping to “save my life” so far. THEY ARE ALSO ACTIVISTS, FIGHTING THE FDA AND THE USDA.
Government employees are the worst group of people to “regulate” anything. When you give them the power to create winning or losing companies, you establish and nurture a snake pit full of lobbyists. These parasites have already destroyed America and it’s health. Look at Obamacare. Look at pharma. Look at the medical boards.
But there is a solution. Get rid of government employees and let the free market determine winners and losers. Let consumers determine if they want to pay sixty dollars for a pound of sugar. If consumers have complaints about value or effectiveness, private consumer groups such as UL or consumer reports will emerge to fill the role.
In any case, whatever you do, keep Americans away from government employees.
I’d much rather contend with less regulation than over-regulation. If the FDA could keep their noses out of dairy products, I could buy raw milk at my Farmers Market and it wouldn’t put my local dairy farmer in major debt to meet FDA guidelines.
Yes, buyer beware, but I think a majority of vendors would truly want to provide a good product to happy, repeat customers.
Hi Ana – I really didn’t look at it from that angle, but I have to agree with you that less regulation beats over-regulation.
To be honest, we only posted this up because we mentioned it in passing during the live webinar with Doug Simons last Thursday – and we promised that we’d post the video up for the people in the webinar to see. It was really intended to be a light-hearted joke more than anything else… So, I didn’t put as much time and effort into it as I probably should have.
Whew! What an interesting mud-in-the-eye reach. Thanks for the way you angled this, Michael. Brilliant, actually. And one that can’t be bottled, thankfully. 😉 An always appreciative fan, Jeneveve
Haha – thanks Jeneveve. I think you might be the only one who liked this post!
What? Supplements ARE regulated. They’re just regulated like food, not drugs. Do you have to prove your tomatoes are safe before selling them? They’re not allowed to claim they cure any diseases, if adulterants are found in the product it must be taken off the market, etc. These are regulations. Do you expect supplements to conform to a pharmaceutical drug based standard of extraordinarily expensive trials before being marketed? Do you think a niacin supplement for example might be harmful? And I never thought of supplements as “miracle pills” like you call them. Vitamins like extra vitamin D when one’s job prevents them from getting much outdoor sunlight might be very important, but I wouldn’t call it a miracle. Supplements aren’t meant to replace food, and not everyone can grow their own food. Furthermore, so much soil has been stripped of minerals, food often isn’t as nutritionally dense as it used to be. Would you rather people take drugs instead of effective supplements that can alleviate nutritional deficiencies? Because it’s the drug pushers who normally claim supplements are unregulated.
(By the way, I neither take any supplements nor sell any, so I have no stake in this argument besides a desire to correct misinformation.)
Micheal,
I have been in the supplement indistry for 30 years, and to be frank I am amazed at how uninformed you are. The industry is regulated, there are however people just like you that are for lack of a better term…scumbags that do exactly what you show in your video. The honest people (of which there are many) in this industry want the ‘hackers’ out of the industry because they make us all look bad. The FDA doesn’t do anything differently for our industry than they do for the drug companies, the FDA NEVER does product testing no matter what the industry is unless it hurts someone and they need to build a case. One exception is if you make health claims, then you are responsible for proving them. There is a difference between make health claims and meeting label claims, and yes the hackers out skirt the line in both categories. So, being dishonest works…until it doesn’t, there are dishonest people in every industry, this doesn’t make it right and essentially leaves it to the public to blow the whistle of the losers that try to ruin it for everyone. Instead of giving people the wrong impression about how the industry works, put some energy into letting folks know who is honest and which supplements work. Yes, anyone that can chew gum and walk can sell supplements, but as I have said to others over the years…”just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. Every State has an Attorney Generals office, then there is the FTC and you can even go to the FDA, find a bad company, send their product out to get tested yourself…then you will have a reason to make your case JUST FOR THAT PRODUCT. This is what a professional would do and not handle it the way you have here.
You have wonderful views which are evident from your writings. Keep posting such kind of blogs as they are really informative, wish you good luck for your future blogs and hope they receive as much appraisal as you have got now.
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