Recently on the MH fitness board, I posted s message about visiting a Vitamin Shoppe. The only non-prescription items I take are aspirin, chondroidtin.glucosamine, and a vitamin capsule (not tablet). In addition to these three things, my wife takes timed-release niacin at her doctor’s orders. We usually get these from a nearby GNC store, but last week my wife was out of niacin, we stopped for coffee at Starbucks, and there was a Vitamn Shoppe next door.
The store was amazing, about ten times the size of its GNC competitor, with an astounding array of supplements of various kinds, including strange stuff like broccoli powder at $19 for a month’s supply. An entire counter was given over to supplements claiming to aid male sexual prowess, various sorts of pseudo-Viagras and supposed aphrodisiacs. One bottle hinted that it might contain something like Spanish fly or cantharides.
Two things struck me and I said so in my post. One was the prevalence of gullibility in the consuming public. The other was the avarice of those who took advantage of these overly credulous people.
One response, from someone who I think has many an alias, was that people who believed the exaggerated or downright false claims of these merchants of snake oil deserved to be swindled.
I don’t agree. I think that education in nutritional matters is highly beneficial. I also think that claims that this or that nostrum improves our health need to be substantiated, and that the industry that profits from selling such items requires regulation.
Why is there almost no regulation of the supplement industry? The answer is political, having to do with Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and his 1994 Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA), which deregulated the supplement industry that is extremely prominent in Utah’s economy.
Well worth reading on this matter is a 2001 article in The Washington Monthly. Here’s a quotation. “Hatch [...] has been unapologetic in his support for the supplement industry, having battled the FDA and other federal agencies over the regulation of vitamins, herbals, and other natural medicines for more than a decade. He believes the government has no more right to restrict Americans' access to vitamin A or the herbal ma huang than to McDonald's french fries. Hatch considers his 1994 law, DSHEA, a triumph on behalf of consumer health freedom. But a close look suggests that if anything, DSHEA (or the Hatch Act, as body builders call it) has left Americans "free" to serve as guinea pigs for a multibillion-dollar industry, much of which is built on a foundation of fraudulent claims, pyramid schemes, and lousy manufacturing practices.
“Since DSHEA became law, substances as varied as paint stripper, bat shit, toad venom, and lamb placenta have all been imported from overseas, bottled up---often by people with no scientific or health backgrounds---and marketed as dietary supplements to unsuspecting American consumers. Many supplements have been tainted with salmonella, arsenic, lead, pesticides, unapproved foreign prescription drugs, as well as garden-variety carcinogens. And despite their New-Age health aura, a significant portion of these "natural supplements" are stimulants, depressants, and other mood-enhancers that some medical experts believe would be classified as drugs if they were synthetic. A surprising number of these products are addictive.”
The entire article can be found at
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...mencimer2.html
It deals specifically with the use of illegal performance enhancers in athletic competitions.