[Anon]

I hope you ladies have been staying on top of events and have read the news that most herbal supplements are not what they are labeled to be.

www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/11/222/abstract

According to this study:


‣ 59% of products contained plants not listed on the label
‣ Although 48% did contain what was on the label, 1/3 of these had fillers.
‣ Product substitution occurred on 30 out of 44 products
‣ Only 2 out of 12 companies had pure products(no substitutions, contamination or fillers)

Unfortunately, company names were not published to avoid lawsuits and angry CEOs. Now, maybe one day the company names will be leaked on wikileaks, but that's mostly for political stuff

I just want us all to be aware that not all supplements are created the same and someone could just put dirt in some capsules and label it as something else because no one would be none the wiser. We have no way to verify our herbs and I think the best way to ensure we are getting what we need, we should be sharing supplement brands because if you got some result and then someone else got some result from the same brand, then maybe it's real.

If someone finds some brands that adhere to Good Manufacturing Practices(GMP) and is verified, please share! I don't want to be taking pulverized weeds under the belief that it's Pueraria

[Koko]

Thanks for the info, Anon.

[LookingForward2NBE]

From my day job professional experience, those results are very representative of reality.

Its gotten better in the USA the past 5yrs when the FDA made it mandatory for manufacturers to be held liable for what label they put on a product so iits cleaned up a lot.

However, the big issue .. And its a hard one to deal with for each natural ingredient is identity testing. Its expensive, and for plants sometimes a challenge to do technically.

So for manufacturers, proving what you buy is what you wanted can be difficult - especially in powder from unless its a Standarized ingredient with hplc or gc etc..
There is nIR fingerprint but for plant based system where each crop can very hugely year to year in the same field grown in the same way.. Add the complexity of multiple varities (think tomotaoes - there's hundred but yet for lycopene its just listed as tomatoes) and its a very daunting task if not impossible if you want to keep costs reasonable.

Then add ingredient suppliers from india and china that purposefully provide certificates of analysis stating xyz is in the barrel and many many companies just say ok.. But if you test it, its just talc, some other cheap herb or its cut 50%... That's more likely the reason why the result demonstrated off labelling.

There are good companies that qualify suppliers and don't play around but they are far and few.. And its not necessarily the bigger the company the better.. Sometimes, its the smaller one that can be higher quality.

As for GMP - anyone can put it on label, means nothing. The certification is good but how can you know its really made in a gmp facility. You can't. I've been to pharmaceutical plants and nutraceutical ones and GMP means very different things to each but least the Nutra industry is trying to get better.

[Anon]

As for GMP - anyone can put it on label, means nothing. The certification is good but how can you know its really made in a gmp facility. You can't. I've been to pharmaceutical plants and nutraceutical ones and GMP means very different things to each but least the Nutra industry is trying to get better.

You're right. I went on some supplement sites like NOW foods, Swanson, and both of them said they were GMP certified which I found weird. Like such a big company wouldn't lie. I doubt if confronted, they would tell the truth about what's in their product. Is it just certain countries that manufacture the pills or is it in the states too?

I wish we knew which companies were the real deal.

[AbiDrew85]

As for GMP - anyone can put it on label, means nothing. The certification is good but how can you know its really made in a gmp facility. You can't. I've been to pharmaceutical plants and nutraceutical ones and GMP means very different things to each but least the Nutra industry is trying to get better.

You're right. I went on some supplement sites like NOW foods, Swanson, and both of them said they were GMP certified which I found weird. Like such a big company wouldn't lie. I doubt if confronted, they would tell the truth about what's in their product. Is it just certain countries that manufacture the pills or is it in the states too?

I wish we knew which companies were the real deal.

NOW and Swanson's actually are both very reputable.

[LookingForward2NBE]

The 2005-2007 implementation did a lot of good, a lot of garage, kitchen based companies closed up out of fear.

That being said, the USA is actually way behind other countries requirement for nutraceutical manufacturing. Europe and canada's guidelines significantly exceed that of the USA. When it comes to supplements, made in the USA is good but not the best by a far margin.

If you are looking for highest quality including appropriate product claims - then EU. The next being Canada but Canada IMO is to loose regarding a concept of marketing doses being allowed and a bit too loose claims that way overstated compared to Europe but still significantly tighter then the USA.

If you take label claim out of the picture, then Canada and Europe pretty close with USA far far behind.

Why? I know most here will that's not right yadda yadda. Both Europe and Canada you need to apply for a license to market every product (notGMP). The regulatory agencies review the ingredients, manufacturing equipment, manufacturers which must gmp certified and have a manufacturing license with them, ingredient sources etc. But even more important is they review the Research (have to send full studies) as justification for doses and claims.. EU is way more strict then Canada in that regard. They prefer Human studies not animal but in case where no human data exists then accept animal studies as long they are well designed with appropriate statistics with sufficient power to draw a conclusion.

USA - absolutely none of that. No registration of your product. Its the wild west. No other way to describe it.

From a GMP - which is basically a set of procedures to insure a minimal level of quality is down across every one - like building codes. All it means in its basic required implementation is know what you buy, how you r storing it, making sure you retain records of manufacturing, quality control testing, recall procedures. Sounds good and it is to a certain extent. It just means..we did this and kept here and here is a number incase we need to get it back.

Here's the kicker:
1. Testing for identity.
In pharma you run exact tests to confirm material using very advanced methods. For even well know synthetic identified structures it costs thousands to develop and between $1,000-$1,500 for each batch.

In nutraceutical: 2 ways are down.
1. Confirm against CofA. (eye roll). What if the CofA is fake which common from china...
2. organoliptic: confirm by taste or smell and color
(eye roll). Its way cheaper to flavor talc then give you real herb.

So immediately GMP means nothing but we put something a bottle and know how to get it back.

2. Expiry dating:
In pharma: its based on real time and stress conditions predicting 3yr+ expiry. Very expensive.
Due to hwo the registration and validation process works, it take 2-5 years from date of submission to approval so you get a real expiry. Even then, each batch does minimal testing like 6-12-18-24-36months based on how the stability performed initially will determine if morer points are needed.

Nutra: 1 approach has been to base it all of the ingredients that go in a capsule and using the shortest. (eye roll). This is the better of the 2 (see next one) but since the other ingredients cause the shortest to go off even faster if it had a higher moisture content etc. Also, you can say that the manufacturing and packaging does not have an impact on shelf-life. As it absolutely does. In addition, encapsulation is done under high pressure which introduces a lot of heat.. So that alone could accelerate decay.

2nd approach is to give an arbitary 3 years (most retailers insist on at least 1yr when its their company and hope no one gets ill if micro contamination grows. There suppose to hold retain samples for FDA but they can't touch em. So little testing is down 6 months, 24 months later. No herb is 100% free of micro.. There's upper limits. So you start with some and end up expiry????

Why all this... Its to demonstrate that in Nutra GMP is simply an illusion but does provide a minimal accountability.

By the way, the FDA has almost no on the ground to police nutraceuticals. There approach has to be: if someone complains due to illness or they are catch incoming ingredient to fail at the incoming border and they step an investigation little can be done by them. They point the onus on the manufacturers to... And that's not good.

So the end of story... Don't even worry about GMP as it means nothing honestly and its so easy to setup a system to get around in Nutra for anyone that wanted too.

Don't get me wrong, pharma is a very very different scenario and gmp is nearly impossible to get around and is actually a sign of quality but everyone meets the stringent requirements. When they don't, the FDA issue a 483 notice and its public info.

[Anon]

NOW and Swanson's actually are both very reputable.

That's good to hear! Most of my supplements are from NOW foods.

[djt-d]

Hi

I am currently taking just EPO and fish oil capsules and have recently been made aware they are rebranded rubbish.

Please can anyone advice on a reputable herbal company/website in the UK.

Many thanks

[EllaC]

As for GMP - anyone can put it on label, means nothing. The certification is good but how can you know its really made in a gmp facility. You can't. I've been to pharmaceutical plants and nutraceutical ones and GMP means very different things to each but least the Nutra industry is trying to get better.

You're right. I went on some supplement sites like NOW foods, Swanson, and both of them said they were GMP certified which I found weird. Like such a big company wouldn't lie. I doubt if confronted, they would tell the truth about what's in their product. Is it just certain countries that manufacture the pills or is it in the states too?

I wish we knew which companies were the real deal.

NOW and Swanson's actually are both very reputable.

I hope your right Abi, I've recently been buying a lot of NOW supplements, I can't belive the pricing compared to my country. My only concern is having them brought over to my country I wonder what dosage of radiation they are being exposed to whilst going through customs and processing! If you or anyone could enlighten me on that little (big) issue I'd be appreciated.
Thanks.

[AbiDrew85]

I hope your right Abi, I've recently been buying a lot of NOW supplements, I can't belive the pricing compared to my country. My only concern is having them brought over to my country I wonder what dosage of radiation they are being exposed to whilst going through customs and processing! If you or anyone could enlighten me on that little (big) issue I'd be appreciated.
Thanks.

That, I DON'T know... I'm pretty sure it'd just float through US customs as an export no questions asked, but as an import into your country things could get trickier. Where are you located? I maybe could try to find out your country's import practices.