MSNBC’s Dateline Exposes Un-Safe Supplements
I don’t know how many of you happened to see Dateline on MSNBC last week, but it highlighted an investigation by Chris Hanson into the questionable (and sometimes dangerous) status of the supplement industry in the U.S. Are your supplements safe to take? Read on for some shocking facts.
The team posed themselves as potential manufacturers of a new supplement line that wanted to have the safety of their formulations tested prior to marketing. They intentionally planted several toxic and potentially lethal ingredients (like arsenic) in their formulation to see if they would be found.
Disturbingly, the research lab in question determined that they were indeed safe supplements for distribution. Additional labs were then consulted that did identify the toxic substances and suggested further testing.
The episode brought to light an issue that many of us are increasingly concerned about: whether or not the supplements available in the U.S. are safe to consume. Most people live out of the assumption that if a supplement is on a store shelf or available to buy online, it has to be a safe supplement to take – right? Unfortunately, experience and research has shown us this is not the case.
In the United States, supplements are only required to be manufactured according to “food grade” standards, which means that the product “meets standards for human consumption.” So basically, ingredients cannot be dangerous or lethal in normal doses; and of course even this depends on who is doing the testing, as we’ve seen. There is no guarantee of the safety and accurateness of the contents.
The only way to know that you’re getting safe supplements, is to make sure that your supplements are manufactured according to Pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practices. This is an even higher standard than “pharmaceutical grade” supplements and the only way to be sure that what’s on the label is in the bottle, and only what’s on the label.
I’ll be sharing more about the distinctions in supplement manufacturing, but for today I want to encourage you to know what you’re taking! Read the label, research the company, find out about their manufacturing processes. Your health and well-being may depend on it.