GoKawiilEvery category I have covered has had what you might call ‘a golden age’. A period when buyers could truly judge quality. In every case, I published a story about how the factors we could once judge were somehow removed or concealed from consumers.
Supplements never had that golden age. No one has ever been able to judge the quality of a capsule by inspecting it. Even so, the category has grown even more challenging for consumers to navigate over time.
Our regulations are where this story starts. Since 1994, no supplement maker has been required to demonstrate to the FDA that its claims about its products are true, or even that they contain what the label claims, before selling them. US laws place the burden of proof entirely on the government itself. The statute reads: “the United States shall bear the burden of proof on each element to show that a dietary supplement is adulterated”.
To pull a product, the government must test it itself. That is not possible in today’s market.
In 1994, when Congress wrote the rule, the supplement industry sold roughly 4,000 products and did about $4 billion that year. The FDA now says there may be as many as 100,000 supplement products on the market. Americans spend nearly $73 billion a year, and three in five adults take a supplement in any given month.
The FDA is unable to provide firmer figures because it is hamstrung. Cara Welch, who heads the agency’s Office of Dietary Supplement Programs, explained its predicament plainly: “Under our current authorities, FDA has no systematic way of knowing what dietary supplements are on the market, when new products are introduced, or what they contain.”
The agency responsible for policing this entire industry has no mechanism for even listing the products within it.
This essay is about how that happened, and what you can do to ensure you are getting the supplements you paid for.
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A few factories and a deluge of brands
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