Diet Pills and Superfoods: Looking for health in all the wrong places

Fat blasting powders and superfoods in a pill are some of many nutritional supplements being targeted by authorities for making false claims.

The US Department of Justice on Tuesday, November 17 stated:

"As part of a nationwide sweep, the Department of Justice and its federal partners have pursued civil and criminal cases against more than 100 makers and marketers of dietary supplements. The actions discussed today resulted from a year-long effort, beginning in November 2014, to focus enforcement resources in an area of the dietary supplement market that is causing increasing concern among health officials nationwide."

The announcement caused the share prices of many large supplement companies, including GNC and Herbalife to plunge, but also raised a number of questions: Are nutritional supplements really dangerous? Are they going to poison your body and leave you with incurable diseases? Does this mean the entire supplement industry is a sham?

For many untrained individuals, the answer to these questions is a shaky “maybe”, but once you weigh in the scientific rationality behind the lawsuit, such claims just seem absurd.

For starters, the type of supplements targeted in the lawsuit were pre-workouts, and referring more specifically to popular US company USP Labs’ ‘Jack3d’ and ‘OxyEltie Pro’ – both of which are regularly a matter of controversy. USP labs is being charged with inciting liver toxicity among consumers and using synthetic ingredients in place of the natural plant extracts the product claimed to contain.

However, supplements with actual science behind them - whey protein, creatine, amino acids - rarely come under fire. It is the fat burners, performance enhancers and miracle superfoods that demonstrate the need to falsify and oversell their claims for the sake of sales.

Health and fitness specialist Libby Babet from Chief Bar, which produces protein bars (made of lamb and beef) using only organic production methods and “100% Australian grass-fed and hormone free” ingredients, could not agree more. When asked about the U.S. supplements lawsuit, she says it is “disappointing” as it shames the entire industry as a whole.

Babet adds that she could not imagine a situation more dreadful than her, or one of her athletes, testing positive for doping, all because of an undisclosed ingredient within a dodgy supplement. This is why Chief Bar carefully selects who manufactures its produce.

Honesty and transparency are major factors for building a successful, and indeed healthy nutrition company, Babet further quips, especially when it comes to dealing with athletes. There is no point over or understating the effectiveness of a product when all it leads to is underperformance.

This is particularly so when the whole purpose of supplementation is to enhance an already healthy diet, not to replace real food. Even Babet agrees that all micro and macro nutrients can be obtained by eating real food, which defeats the purpose of supplementation all together.

This is why in the US, labels on all supplements must contain statements such as:

"This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

"Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect."

"Before using this product, consult a licensed, qualified, healthcare professional."

When people take more than the recommended amount, or worse still, show preference for powders over food, problems will definitely emerge. The body was not designed to be fed chemicals and hormones, says Babet.

However, it is these criticisms thats creates tension for the supplement industry over whether supplements are truly necessary and effective, especially in light of their high prices and habit to incite chemical toxicity. Science seems to have no collective answer either: For every study proving the benefits of nutritional supplementation, there is another study proving just the opposite.

According to Babet no one should ever take a supplement’s claim “as gospel.” So how do you know if the product you’re looking at in a supplements store isn’t going to toxify your liver?

“If your grandma wouldn’t eat it, then you shouldn’t too.”

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