>I do love the supplement/nutrition industry

Why? It is almost entirely unregulated and unsupervised. They have been known to contain unlisted ingredients, none of the ingredients they say, and dosages that differ wildly from what they are labeled as. I saw a movie where they just put some random shit into a pill (flour and stuff) and started marketing it as a supplement. This was apparently legal.

http://www.livescience.com/40357-herbal-products-unlisted-in...

> In the study, nearly 60 percent of herbal products tested contained plant substances not listed on the label. In nearly a third of products, the main ingredient was substituted with a different product. More than 20 percent of products contained fillers such as rice, wheat and soybeans, in addition to the main ingredient.

>Overall, out of the 12 companies that produce herbal supplements included in the study, just two had products with no substitutions, fillers or contaminants, the researchers said

> Such unlisted ingredients may pose health hazards for consumers, the researchers said. For example, one produced was labeled as St. John's wort, but actually contained the laxative plant Senna alexandrina. The laxative is not recommended for long turn use, and can cause serious side effects, such as chronic diarrhea and liver damage.

> 2011 study of 131 herbal tea products found that 33 percent were contaminated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/health/policy/26herbal.htm...

>Nearly all of the herbal dietary supplements tested in a Congressional investigation contained trace amounts of lead and other contaminants

>The levels of heavy metals — including mercury, cadmium and arsenic — did not exceed thresholds considered dangerous, the investigators found. However, 16 of the 40 supplements tested contained pesticide residues that appeared to exceed legal limits, the investigators found. In some cases, the government has not set allowable levels of these pesticides because of a paucity of scientific research.

> Among the witnesses at the hearing will be Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, a company that has tested over 2,000 dietary supplements made by more than 300 manufacturers and has found that one in four have quality problems. According to Dr. Cooperman’s written testimony, the most common problems are supplements that lack adequate quantities of the indicated ingredients and those contaminated with heavy metals.

> Travis T. Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, wrote a letter to the committee saying that some athletes have been rendered ineligible for international competitions because they took supplements that contained steroids not listed on the products’ labels. There are thousands of supplements available for sale that contain steroids or other harmful ingredients, he wrote.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852683/

>Case Presentation

> A 54-year-old woman was referred to the University of California, Davis, Occupational Medicine Clinic with a 2-year history of worsening alopecia and memory loss. She also reported having a rash, increasing fatigue, nausea, and vomiting, disabling her to the point where she could no longer work full-time. A thorough exposure history revealed that she took daily kelp supplements. A urine sample showed an arsenic level of 83.6 μg/g creatinine (normal < 50 μg/g creatinine). A sample from her kelp supplements contained 8.5 mg/kg (ppm) arsenic. Within weeks of discontinuing the supplements, her symptoms resolved and arsenic blood and urine levels were undetectable.

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5292535_Nutritional_...

>These investigations showed that nutritional supplements contained prohibited stimulants as
ephedrines, caffeine, methylenedioxymetamphetamie and sibutramine, which were not declared on
the labels. An international study performed in 2001 and 2002 on 634 nutritional supplements that were
purchased in 13 different countries showed that about 15% of the nonhormonal nutritional supplements
were contaminated with anabolic-androgenic steroids (mainly prohormones).

>In 2005 vitamin C, multivitamin and magnesium tablets were confiscated, which contained crosscontaminations
of stanozolol and metandienone. Since 2002 new ‘designer’ steroids such as prostanozol,
methasterone, androstatrienedione etc. have been offered on the nutritional supplement market. In the
near future also cross-contaminations with these steroids are expected. Recently a nutritional supplement
for weight loss was found to contain the b2-agonist clenbuterol. The application of such nutritional
supplements is connected with a high risk of inadvertent doping cases and a health risk.

This actually worries me a lot, since I am required to take an iron supplement because of chronic iron deficiency. If I get the tablets from the pharmacist (I have a prescription) they just repackage the over the counter stuff and charge me triple the price. There's no way to tell if I'm getting medical grade iron.