Few bottled water companies put flouride information on their label. We surveyed a number of retailers, from grocery and drug stores to online pharmacies, to explore variations in price for one of the most popular dietary supplements, St. John's wort, which shows promising results for the treatment of mild depression. Online merchants were almost always cheaper than traditional stores. At retail stores, house brands offered the best value. And not only were GNC's prices for its own brands competitive, but a second bottle is half price, offering significant savings for supplements you intend to take regularly.
Expensive things come in small packages.
With very few exceptions, larger packages save you money. All of the foregoing assumes that all brands of St. John's wort deliver essentially the same thing. Unhappily, lab tests of various brands and bottles of St. John's wort and other supplements, conducted by Consumer Reports, Good Housekeeping and others, reveal a wide range of active chemicals and supplement quality. Because the supplement market is largely unregulated, these tests show, what you buy may contain less of what you're looking for and more of substances you might not want to be ingesting. Name brands, and expensive brands, appear to score no better than generic or store brands.