Out of 446 studies conducted on sports supplements available both online and in high street stores, they found that between 12 and 58% of all products tested contained substances banned by the World Anti Doping Agency (or WADA).
These findings were published in the 2017 review titled ‘Intended or Unintended Doping? A Review of the Presence of Doping Substances in Dietary Supplements Used in Sports’.
The reason for this contamination was sometimes unintentional – mostly due to poor quality control – but in some instances, the adulteration was intentional.
Why?
Because less trustworthy supplement brands will go to any length to make you feel like their product is having the intended effect – whether that be muscle growth, fat loss, an increase in energy, and a whole host of other desired effects.
If you’re looking to gain muscle and Honest John’s Weight Gainer 3000 suddenly allows you to gain 20lbs of muscle over 5 weeks (because it contains trenbolone, or some other highly potent anabolic steroid – but you don’t know), you’re going to think it’s the best weight gainer in the World and tell all your bros about it.
Now, you’d think a market regulator would step in to stop this from happening right?
Wrong.
In the US at least, the FDA is responsible for the regulation of food supplements. In the UK, it’s the MHRA.
However neither of these organisations require third-party evaluation or testing – according to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), dietary supplements, including nutritional ergogenic aids, that are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, currently do not need to be evaluated by the FDA or the MRHA prior to their commercialization.
In this 2017 review, it was discovered that the most frequently encountered contaminants in these products were anabolic steroids (banned by the IOC since 1974 after the positives detected at the Commonwealth Games held in New Zealand), although other prohibited substances were also present—such as certain stimulants (ephedrine, nor-pseudoephedrine, sibutramine).
This creates a big concern not only for the average gym-goer who is consciously steering clear of substances like this, but even more concerning for professional athletes – whose careers and incomes depend on avoiding these sort of substances.
One of the most relevant studies, due to the number of supplements analyzed, which laid the groundwork for the determination of the contamination of nutritional supplements, is that performed by Geyer et al., in 2001, in Germany, where 634 non-hormonal supplements were analyzed in the search for testosterone and its prohormones, nandrolone and its prohormones, and boldenone.
The results showed that 15% of the samples contained hormones or prohormones that were not identified in the labeling.
A similar study was conducted by Kamber et al., in 2001, in which the objective was the detection of anabolic steroids or stimulants, not indicated, or poorly described, on the label. The study analyzed 75 products, of which 17 were prohormonal supplements, and all contained substances not described in the labelling.
You read that right – ALL OF THEM contained substances not described on the labelling.
In 2004, a study was published, in which 103 supplements, purchased online, and divided into four categories (creatine, prohormones, mental enhancers, and branched-chain amino acids), were analyzed. In this case, the most common contaminant was testosterone and the products with the highest contamination rate were prohormones. The labeling error rate was 18%, whereas 20% of the products contained metabolites of different hormones not allowed by the WADA.
So, as you can see – supplement contamination (both intentional and unintentional) is a major issue, and it doesn’t seem to be improving. Competitiveness between brands in the marketplace is probably making the issue bigger – with lesser known, more unscrupulous brands looking for any way to get ahead of the competition.
But without strict regulatory requirements, any move to cleaning-up the industry is going to take time and huge financial investment.
This is one of the main reasons why Verifier Lab was created – to create a Universal gold-standard in supplement testing and verification, to not only confirm the absence of contaminants, but also to verify that the product is what it says it is, that it is of the strength being advertised, that the supplement can be realistically absorbed by the body, and that pesticide levels, heavy metals, microbiological agents, and toxins can be thoroughly tested-for and levels quantified – with the overall goal of making food supplements safer, and providing consumers with the information they need to make the right decisions for their health.
If you are in any doubt about the contents of your daily supplements, consumers can also submit supplements for one-off testing, with prices starting from just £50 per test type. Check out our full range of services here.