The Supplements Industry's Plan to Steal Your Money

[Pennies for Thoughts]

Take my vitamins? No thanks, I'd rather trust the government. http://www.mypyramid.gov/guidelines/index.html

Here's a money machine: convince some folks that (whatever) is essential to their well being and then sell it to them for the rest of their lives. The supplements industry in the USA is a $61 BILLION per year industry and growing. Never mind that responsible dietary sources explain that for the most part supplements simply make expensive urine.

There's a hole in U.S. law big enough to drive a 61 billion-dollar truck through. If a snake oil salesman says, "Take this medicine, it'll cure what ails you," he can go to prison. But if he says, "Take this food, it'll cure what ails you," all bets are off.

I was perusing a local "health food" store reading supplement label claims which, if they were true, would be winning Nobel Prizes, when I came across alfalfa supplements going for $5.49 for a bottle of 50. Whoa, Nellie! Eleven cents each for alfalfa pellets? Why not go down to the feed store and get rabbit food? A 25-pound sack of those alfalfa pellets only runs a buck a pound!

Perhaps the biggest tip-off that supplements are a scam is that powerful Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah has fought responsible supplement legislation for decades because supplements are the Mormon state's third largest industry. http://www.naturalnews.com/008034.html

Vitamins, minerals, and assorted weeds qualify as supplements. For more read Quackwatch's wordy but wonderful assessment of vitamins at http://www.quackwatch.org/search/webglimpse.cgi?ID=1&query=vitamins

 

[JustBusiness17]

Re: The Suppliments Industry's Plan to Steal Your Money

This segment of Bigger, Stronger, Faster is pretty telling of the supplement industry :geek:

 

[Krpi]

Re: The Suppliments Industry's Plan to Steal Your Money

First of all, supplements aren't bad by default. You just need to educate yourself on what you actually might benefit from. Anyone have a problem with women taking iron? Anyone have a problem with a person living up north (such as myself) supplementing with vitamin D during the winter? In case you don't eat a lot of fish, how about taking fish oil?

And when it comes to athletes, well, that's a whole different beast to tackle. Many use stimulants such as caffeine to great effect. Creatine works but if your levels are naturally high you won't receive much benefit. Protein powder is just that: protein, the only real difference to eating meat is that it's convenient to use. And of course it's not secret that cycling test is pretty much the most effective thing you can ever take.
There's a lot of stuff that works, no doubt, you just need to get through the exaggerative advertisement, understand how the product is supposed to work and find out whether or not it could be of use to you.

Oh and as a side note, I believe the guy in JB17's video who admitted to using steroids while advertising some regular BB product(s) lost his sponsors right then and there.

 

[No1Mensan]

I actually have some experience with this kind of stuff. I agree that creatine and some others are useful, but most people who use them are influenced by magazines which are owned by the supplement companies.

For beginners to Weightlifting, milk will do everything that the supplements will and at a much lower price too. Supplements should be treated with caution, a lot of them are worse than useless. Check this out if you want to see what I mean.

 

[Pennies for Thoughts]

@ Krpi

You just need to educate yourself on what you actually might benefit from

With all due respect you need to educate yourself on the difference between caveat emptor and caveat vendor. You've placed the responsibility on consumers for sorting through a mountain of supplement hype to get to mere pebbles of truth. Some of the pebbles you cite are indeed useful, if cherry picked, applications of supplements. But since you are willing to go the consumer self-education route on supplements, perhaps you can look it up and tell us what taking eleven-cent rabbit food pellets is good for?

Your equating taking fish oil to eating fish suggests inadequacy in your nutrition education to date. Fish is full of protein. Fish oil is mainly fat. Beyond this, there is no such thing as "protein" as you've expressed it. There is a large family of proteins associated with human metabolism and their manufacture from amino acids is a rather complex process. Many of these processes can only take place inside the body. But your position is that if the consumer buys a jar of stuff that says "protein" on it , that will fulfill all of his or her body's protein requirements.

When it comes to nutrition education I fear you have a very long, long way to go before you can sincerely recommend it to others. Why not start here with protein health problems: http://www.pcrm.org/news/HighProteinReport.pdf

 

[Krpi]

@ Krpi

You just need to educate yourself on what you actually might benefit from

With all due respect you need to educate yourself on the difference between caveat emptor and caveat vendor. You've placed the responsibility on consumers for sorting through a mountain of supplement hype to get to mere pebbles of truth. Some of the pebbles you cite are indeed useful, if cherry picked, applications of supplements. But since you are willing to go the consumer self-education route on supplements, perhaps you can look it up and tell us what taking eleven-cent rabbit food pellets is good for?

Your equating taking fish oil to eating fish suggests inadequacy in your nutrition education to date. Fish is full of protein. Fish oil is mainly fat. Beyond this, there is no such thing as "protein" as you've expressed it. There is a large family of proteins associated with human metabolism and their manufacture from amino acids is a rather complex process. Many of these processes can only take place inside the body. But your position is that if the consumer buys a jar of stuff that says "protein" on it , that will fulfill all of his or her body's protein requirements.

When it comes to nutrition education I fear you have a very long, long way to go before you can sincerely recommend it to others. Why not start here with protein health problems: http://www.pcrm.org/news/HighProteinReport.pdf

Oh don't get me wrong, I talk about educating the masses only because the industry is free to do whatever they want, not because I think this is the way things should be. But really, I have a very long way to go before I can recommend nutrition education to others? I thought education was a good thing!

I have no idea what you're going on about when it comes to fish oil and fish. Fish oil is mainly fat? NO KIDDING! I was wondering what the "oil" part meant there. The reasons why you'd maybe want to take fish oil are EPA and DHA, mainly because they have lots of beneficial functions in your body. Unless you eat fish they're fairly hard to get in a regular diet.

If you buy a jar of protein and the protein contains all the essential amino acids your body won't be missing anything (amino acid balances notwithstanding). You break it down, and build whatever you want from it since it has all the necessary parts. This is the reason why vegetarians have problems with protein, even though all vegetables have protein only a few offer all the essential amino acids.
Although I have no idea where you're going with this either. As I said, protein powder is a convenience, it isn't better than regular protein sources in any other way. I prefer to eat meat, eggs and whatnot over powdered protein but when I make my post-workout shakes of doom throwing in protein powder is just easy (though I also throw in eggs and cottage cheese). Same for adding some protein to my oatmeal.

And if you want to discuss protein health problems I suggest you link a study that actually deals with the subject. I'm very interested in the mechanics behind any harm caused by protein. As for that study you linked... Did anyone here actually mention taking up a high-protein diet?

 

[Pennies for Thoughts]

Thanks Krpi, I did get you wrong on some things which your second post clarified.

I still can't get on board with the education idea, not because I think it's a bad one, but because I don't see how it can compete with the well-funded tidal wave of disinformation put forth by the supplements industry.

I need to go to the bigger picture to clarify my point on fish oil. The generalized argument goes that if you don't consume enough X, which the body needs to get Y, then take supplement Z. There is indeed some truth to be found in such statements, along with quite a bit of industry hype. True or not however, I think this begs the question. Eat more X, get more Y (and lots of other good stuff ), and you can forget about Z.

If you buy a jar of protein and the protein contains all the essential amino acids your body won't be missing anything (amino acid balances notwithstanding). You break it down, and build whatever you want from it since it has all the necessary parts.

I showed this and our related posts to my roommate, a PhD microbiologist who specializes in proteins and is a researcher at Genentech. He's published papers, is flying to Boston next week to speak at a conference, and in short is a real protein egghead. He said, "That's not how it works." I asked him if he could explain how it does work so I could reply more fully to you. He just gave me that look that mommy gives when her four-year-old asks why the stars shine, adding only, "I wouldn't take protein powder. I'd just eat halfway decently."

And that advice takes us back to my original post. When it comes to nutrition we should trust what the government considers eating decently before we trust the supplement pushers.

 

[Krpi]

If you buy a jar of protein and the protein contains all the essential amino acids your body won't be missing anything (amino acid balances notwithstanding). You break it down, and build whatever you want from it since it has all the necessary parts.

I showed this and our related posts to my roommate, a PhD microbiologist who specializes in proteins and is a researcher at Genentech. He's published papers, is flying to Boston next week to speak at a conference, and in short is a real protein egghead. He said, "That's not how it works." I asked him if he could explain how it does work so I could reply more fully to you. He just gave me that look that mommy gives when her four-year-old asks why the stars shine, adding only, "I wouldn't take protein powder. I'd just eat halfway decently."

And that advice takes us back to my original post. When it comes to nutrition we should trust what the government considers eating decently before we trust the supplement pushers.

Really now, if I was wrong about something please post an actual explanation. You sound like a truther quoting a mystery expert. If the guy didn't want to explain this to you then you dig up the explanation yourself. Since protein's a fairly common thing you shouldn't need to go further than wikipedia to find what you're looking for. Though I'm not exactly sure what you'd be looking for anyway.

And screw government guidelines! They don't want me to eat 20 eggs/week

But hey, here's how I'd "educate" people when it comes to supplements: ignore all supplements until a professional (a real dietitian/doctor) recommends a supplement for various reasons. Then you dig up everything you can about the supplement and see if it could do any good to you and whether or not you actually need to supplement with it or if you might as well get it from your diet.
Bam, course completed, I hope everyone passed.

 

[Pennies for Thoughts]

My resolve to eat reasonably and avoid unnecessary supplements, particularly protein powder, was reinforced again by searching "protein powder bowels" and reading why protein powder is, not metaphorically but genuinely, a crock of... No, no, wait! That joke is just too easy.

Let's get back to the big picture. This thread is about supplements as overwhelmingly, though not completely, woo-woo. It will kill the thread if it devolves into a back-and-forth about protein powder. Krpi believes in it, I don't, and am content to leave it at that.

To further discussion of a general nature, let's continue to develop Krpi's position on consumer self-education, including the refinement that an individual's supplements education is a matter of doing what responsible nutritionists and doctors advise. The problem I see in this avenue of education is that it is too limited to time and place. E.g., a blood test showing one's iron is low and a doctor recommending iron supplements.

Krpi, are you still holding the position that it is the individual's responsibility to climb a mountain of caveat emptor rather than cutting the mountain of the supplement' industry's hype down to a molehill?

 

[Krpi]

Nice dodge on the topic of protein. "That's not how it works" turned suddenly into "I avoid taking unnecessary supplements, oh and there can be bowel movements". I can say that I haven't had any problems with protein shakes or protein powder in general. And for the record, I don't think regular people should take protein powder just for the hell of it. For athletes it is a convenient way to up protein consumption, to keep catabolism at bay during training and to get nutrients flowing quickly after training.
But that I "believe" in it? It's PROTEIN for pinecone's sake, not a magic cure for cancer.

Anyway.
Of course the customer is responsible for his/her own actions. If you buy food from a regular food store it's your responsibility to check what the product contains and understand whether or not you should be eating it. I don't see how walking into a supplement store is any different.
And when it comes to the industry's hype... What do you think my point was when I mentioned that advice should be received from trustworthy professionals? The point is to ignore all the hype/advertisement and get information from better sources. And even when you get advice from professionals you should research the matter further (depending on the product in question, of course).

 

[JustBusiness17]

How about I solve your little quarrel. I used to be a regular weight lifter and worked as a retail sales associate at a supplement shop. On top of that, I had over 1000 posts at www.DiscussBodybuilding.com and subscribed to MensHealth magazine for 2 years.

Supplements are neither all bad or all good. Things like Ginko Biloba and St John's Wort are a waste of time and sell based on rumors. On the other hand, something like Glucosamine with MSM and Chondroitin have a proven track record and lab results to back it up. If you somehow believe that supplements are all bogus, go pop some Hoodia and Ephedra and tell me what happens to your appetite. Better yet, dissolve a couple Melatonin sublingually and try to go out for a party (just don't try to operate a motor vehicle ).

As for protein, you have to be completely dense to think it's some type of conspiracy. Protein is protein just like carbohydrates are carbohydrates and fats are fats. The only thing that matters is the amino acid profile. Whey protein which is made from the byproduct of cheese making is a complete protein meaning it has all of the amino acids required by the human body.

A simple whey concentrate is all most people need but if you're serious about weight lifting, you're going to want a variety of powders with different absorption rates. A cross flow micro-filtrated isolate absorbs extremely fast because the long protein peptides have been broken down so that they don't need to be digested. This is a post-workout protein. Some bodybuilders go another step and grab a casein powder for their bedtime shake because the protein actually congeals in your stomach and releases over a 6-8 hour period of time. That ensures you get a release of amino acids during the night while you're body is repairing itself.

That's all great, but If you're really serious, you can also purchase individual amino acids. One of the most useful is glutamine because it's directly involved in protein synthesis. From what I remember, it also reduces cortisol levels which decreases the amount of catabolism during your workout. Creatine is one of the most popular and has the research behind it while L-Argenine was just taking off when I fell out of the whole thing.

As the guy in the video I posted said, its best not to pay extra for proprietary blends. You can get the same thing by purchasing a generic or buying the ingredients individually.

-------------------------


My point is that a polar opposition to supplements is ridiculous. Yes they can be expensive, but if you make a living as an athlete or a bodybuilder, you want every advantage you can get. Shifting to the general public, I can't tell you how many midle-aged and elderly people thanked me for convincing them to take a glucosamine complex regularly for a couple months. These are the same people that dismissed the product because it didn't work after a week of using it which is where a lot of supplements get a bad wrap. They're not all immediately effective even though everyone wants an overnight fix.

Bottom line, a universal condemnation of supplements is absolute lunacy.

 

[No1Mensan]

I have to add something to this. For the average person who reads these supplement company owned magazines, both the supplements advertised and the Bodybuilder's split routines shown are ineffective (not useless.) The average person will be considerably better off sorting out their diet and doing a proper training routine suited to their skill/experience level. Protein Powders are one of the better supplements as a high protein diet is beneficial if not essential for meaningful progress. The more advanced supplements are more useful for people who have been training for a long time, where progress is slower.

 

[Pennies for Thoughts]

Scientific studies are the foundation upon which the supplements industry's house of cards is built, and the supplements pushers are as irresponsible as creationists at quote mining.

Real scientists do indeed find real, typically marginal, benefits to things like protein supplements in bodybuilding and calcium supplementation for pregnant and lactating women. But generalizing from the specific is a fallacy of Aristotelian proportions. This logic lapse doesn't bother the supplements industry a bit when they twist studies into, "Look everybody, science proves that [whatever] is good for you, therefore you need to take [whatever]! They're also masters at putting the cart before the horse. "Hey, you want a ripped body, take protein supplements. Scientific studies prove it works!"

Get back to basics. Eat reasonably and don't take supplements except as required in rare circumstances and even then only under medical supervision. Scientific studies prove it works!

 

[JustBusiness17]

Scientific studies are the foundation upon which the supplements industry's house of cards is built, and the supplements pushers are as irresponsible as creationists at quote mining.

Real scientists do indeed find real, typically marginal, benefits to things like protein supplements in bodybuilding and calcium supplementation for pregnant and lactating women. But generalizing from the specific is a fallacy of Aristotelian proportions. This logic lapse doesn't bother the supplements industry a bit when they twist studies into, "Look everybody, science proves that [whatever] is good for you, therefore you need to take [whatever]! They're also masters at putting the cart before the horse. "Hey, you want a ripped body, take protein supplements. Scientific studies prove it works!"

Get back to basics. Eat reasonably and don't take supplements except as required in rare circumstances and even then only under medical supervision. Scientific studies prove it works!

Wow... just wow...

 

[Krpi]

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology"
*administers protein powder*

And thus the 6 million dollar man was born. Or maybe it was just 6 dollar man, I'm not sure how much the miracle drug known as protein supplement costs these days.

 

[JustBusiness17]

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology"
*administers protein powder*

And thus the 6 million dollar man was born. Or maybe it was just 6 dollar man, I'm not sure how much the miracle drug known as protein supplement costs these days.

You wouldn't believe how many people expected miracles from protein while I was working in the supplement store. Some people even thought it was on par with using steroids... LOL!

 

[Krpi]

Yea I've run across that as well. It really bothers me that people don't research the product before they buy it. Then I need to bring them down and have the exact same "...but it's just protein!" -conversation that we've had here.
And yea, I've had some pretty fun conversations about the mysterious bags of white powder in my apartment. Although I'm a bit disappointed, no one's ever asked if it's cocaine I'm hoarding

 

[Lallapalalable]

Most of what's in supplements is neither beneficial nor detrimental, and you could pretty much eat chalk for the same effects. But, companies like making money, and convincing you that living without their product is a sad existence is just one way to get you to buy it. Now, with medicine/supplements, scaring you into thinking that if you dont take them you will be a feeble retard or that by taking them you will be superman is their main tactic. And people, generally, are fucking stupid. Tack that onto their lack of a healthy lifestyle and they think they have the get out of jail free card; eat like a fatass, dont move if you can help it, try not to engage your brain in anything it hasnt already done and all you have to do is take a magic pill and that guy that goes jogging at 5 am and has never eaten fundoodles is the stupid one.

Couple all that with the fact that they sell these things at a price that would make you think the damn things could cure AIDS, cancer and herpes, and you have people thinking "I can be lazy and fat, but I'll be super healthy!"

I have to quit now, or this will become a rant.

 

[Sami052]

I will read time to time that


Whey Protein Powders