3 Ways to Avoid Getting Scammed by Supplement Companies

Did you know that nutritional supplement sales reportedly exceeded $11.5 billion in the United States in 2012? The same report by Packaged Facts predicts that figure will skyrocket to over $15 billion by 2017. That’s a lotta cash.

This statistic isn’t alarming just because of its sheer size. It’s alarming because most supplements do not work. And those that do work likely don’t warrant the price tag that hundreds of thousands of ill-informed people are willing to pay. That’s a lotta of wasted money.

But there’s good news – some supplements DO work. The challenge is finding which ones are worth it. Luckily, the trusty dudes over at Examine.com put out their Supplement Goals Research Guide back in July. It’s a must-have resource for anyone who cares about health, fitness and performance. It’s a compilation of thousands of published research studies that evaluates the effectiveness of over 300 supplements. They’re organized by health goals and it’s a breeze to read and use – like a cheat sheet that you quickly reference when you want to know if a supplement actually works.

More good news: the Supplement Goals Research Guide is on sale for $29 until midnight on Friday. That’s $10 off the regular price in celebration of Examine.com going completely 100% independent. They went as far as taking down their Amazon.com links, which means there are no hidden agendas and no bias, so you can trust their info.

On a related note, here are three tips to avoid getting bamboozled when shopping for supplements.

1. CHECK THE DOSAGE

Even the highest-quality ingredients won’t do a damn thing if they’re not provided in adequate doses. When you pick up a supplement container, you should immediately flip it around and look at the nutrition label to see the dosages of each ingredient. Look at milligrams or international units (IU) of each nutrient – this will tell the tale of a supplement’s true worth.

For example, take a look at the above label from a common multivitamin. Check out the dosage for Vitamin D. It’s 100 percent of the recommended daily value, but it’s only got 400 IUs per tablet. Research shows that most people need 1,000-2,000 IUs per day for effective Vitamin D supplementation. The vitamin D in that multivitamin is under-dosed by 500 percent. And that’s just one nutrient. Do the smartest thing you’ll do all day and pick up the Reference Guide, and go through a multivitamin’s ingredients one by one. You may be shocked to find that most supplements are hilariously under-dosed.

2. CHECK THE SERVING SIZE

Another area where they’ll get ya is the serving size. Oftentimes a serving size will be purposefully under-dosed and the instructions will tell you to consume several servings at one time or staggered throughout the day. It’s questionable whether this helps your health, but it certainly helps you blow through pills and powders en route to emptying your wallet.

Check out the above label for a well-known fish oil supplement. The serving size is one softgel and you get servings 100 per bottle for just $14. That’s just 14 cents a serving. Pretty great deal, right?

But wait. The directions say to take 2 softgels up to 3 times daily. Now we’re taking 6 pills a day. Suddenly, this bottle only lasts us 16 days. That’s a little over two weeks. Now we’re spending $14 every two weeks, which is $28 a month – almost a dollar a day – on just fish oil. See how quickly we went from 14 cents to a dollar?

Don’t fall for a promising deal only to get duped into taking multiple servings per day just to meet your nutritional requirements.

3. WATCH OUT FOR PROPRIETARY BLENDS

Just when you’re savvy enough to check the dosages and do the math on serving sizes, they kick you in the nuts with a proprietary blend, which is just a sly way of saying “here’s a bunch of stuff we lumped together under a fancy name so we don’t have to tell you how much of each ingredient is in our product“.

Here’s a label from a popular preworkout supplement. The entire thing is a proprietary blend. It doesn’t tell you the actual amount of ANY of the ingredients. All we know is the whole thing is a little over four grams and that ingredients are listed in order of weight. So there’s more of the first ingredient than anything else and less of the last ingredient than anything else.

We can’t be sure if any of these ingredients are properly dosed. Are we getting 4.1 grams of arginine alpha-ketoglutarate and just 45 mg of everything else? Only the mad scientists who made the stuff will ever know.

Opt for supplements that tell you exactly what’s in the bottle. If you’re guessing, you’re probably losing.

DON’T DRINK THE KOOL-AID… UNLESS IT’S PROPERLY DOSED

Keep these tips in mind before you buy another supplement. Arm yourself with skepticism and you’ll waste a lot less money down the road. And if you grab the Supplement Goals Research Guide for $29 – less than a 2-pound tub of protein – you’ll never play the supplement guessing game again.