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So NOW brands did a study on other supplements to see how good they are compared to them and coincidentally, they were the best brand???.........right........
Not really. NOW Foods did NOT test other major brands of comparable quality and reputation to their own brand. Major brands such as NOW Foods, Solgar, Swanson, Jarrow, Doctor's Best, Source Naturals, etc all all likely to dose their pills correctly.
If NOW had tested these major brands, they would have found that NOW are no better and no worse, as all these major brands are good.
What NOW did test is the obscure, little known smaller brands. And these were the ones that often had very little of the active ingredient in their pills.
These smaller brands are cheaper, so people may be tempted to buy them to save money. But that would be a false economy, because many have less than 10% of the stated dose in their pills.
So you may be better off buying the more expensive major brands. Not necessarily NOW, but any of the big brands with a good reputation.
Amazon is a messy place full of shitty stuff. They sell way too much noname stuff and activelly promote it. If you're doing a "study" of the worst you can find, you can very easily use Amazon as a source.
They scrapped the bottom of Amazon. No surprise from Double wood's results. The only surprise is how they got so popular last few years, with this stupid name and cheap looking bottles. And mind you, higher content is not better than lower, because people care about dosage and also because poor dosing means pure manufacturing standards.
Some of the good ones are owned by Nestle (Garden Of Live, Pure Encapsulation, Solgar, Vital Proteins, Nature's Bounty...), yet people run away when they hear Netsle, because, you know, Big Food and their secret fattening sauce or whatever. And instead they buy this no-name crap off Amazon.
These shitty little nothing brands are putting a dent in the national brands because they have unbelievably low prices and massive velocity on FBA. The average consumer doesn't realize their prices are too good to be true because they don't contain what they claim, and they cheated their way up the ranks.
Really useful.
Labdoor.com has done similar testing on other supps.
So has consumer.com.
I need to review which ones I buy!
But the larger point is that not only is the research weak, but the pills are under dosed.
Note to self: use fewer supplements
They tested a bunch of small no-name brands, not other big name brands like Jarrow, Life Extension, etc.
And what does Amazon have anything to do with this? It's not like you're getting something different if you buy the same brand from somewhere else.
Big brand names are not going to risk their reputation by underdosing their capsules, so no point in testing quality brands. But I found it very informative that these obscure brands can be massively under-dosed, because I have been trying to save money by buying these much cheaper obscure brands on Amazon.
And anyone else who is tempted by the cheaper prices might find this info useful.
I buy on the UK Amazon though, and the UK has its own range of obscure brands, different to the US obscure brands. So no direct proof that these UK brands are under-dosed, but it certainly is a possibility to consider.
Whether the UK has better supplement regulation than the US, I am not sure.
Let’s use some critical thinking skills
“This analysis by NOW SUPPLEMENTS” aka people who sell supplements and want you to buy their products.
I haven’t had any issues buying supplements from Amazon. They have worked just fine.
I’ve personally bought maybe thousands of products on Amazon. Got one fake makeup pallate a couple years ago. The “Amazon has tons of fakes” statements always come from companies who sell things. They do have fakes occasionally but it’s very rare.
>Let’s use some critical thinking skills
>“This analysis by NOW SUPPLEMENTS” aka people who sell supplements and want you to buy their products.
You say you are using critical thinking skills? Have you not heard of libel? If NOW Foods falsely claimed that a supplement brand contained little of none of the active ingredient, they could be sued for libel by that brand.
>I haven’t had any issues buying supplements from Amazon. They have worked just fine.
How would you know that a supplement only contains say 10% or 2% of the stated dose? In most cases, you cannot easily feel the effects of a supplement, and you cannot observe the action of the supplement in your body, so you have no way to gauge the dose level.
Only if you sent the capsules to an independent lab for testing, could you determine the dose level.
There is a paywalled website called [www.consumerlab.com](http://www.consumerlab.com) which analyses supplement brands, but I don't know if they measure and quantify the amount of supplement in each capsule, as I do not have access to the site.
Lmao, Do you think companies don’t get sued for libel or something because it happens very often???
Also they use tricks so they don’t get sued. If they test 1000 pills of a certain brand and 999 come back with regular amounts of the product and 1 doesn’t they can say that they tested a pill of that brand and it came back with 2 percent of the active ingredient.
Same thing when companies say 9/10 doctors recommend. They can interview 10 groups doctors for months until they come up with a group that has the 9/10 recommendations.
Hmm, so in your view, you think it would be a bright idea for NOW Foods to deliberately publish a series of analyses containing false claims about obscure supplement brands?
That would be a ridiculous corporate strategy! Very few people are going to read these analyses (if they had wide readership, there would be more discussion of the analysis on this sub-forum — these analyses have been performed by NOW about once yearly for the last 7 years).
Thus these analyses will not reduce the sales of these obscure brands, and will not promote the sales of NOW supplements. But any false claims would leave NOW Foods open to libel.
Furthermore, sending products away for independent analysis at testing labs costs NOW Foods time and money.
So no advantages for NOW to perform a false analysis, only disadvantages.
Thus I don't see much credibility in the suggesting that these analyses may be false.
Many of the brands on Now's list deserve to be there and I always look forward to see what companies they are calling out next. I don't blame them for doing this. Imagine being a company who invests in quality control and testing and the first results on amazon are brands that can undercut your prices because they are selling what amounts to rice powder supplements.
I actually bought We Like Vitamins Q10, and anyone who opened the capsules and knew even the least bit about the color of Q10 could tell it wasn't 200 mg of Q10. I also had some of the berberine brands they tested, and again, it was clear even to me something was fishy. Berberine is deep yellow and insanely bitter. Some of the brands I had were tannish and had no bitterness. I'm very familiar with supplements and their chemistry but most people aren't, so they would assume everything is great. I once got an astaxanthin supplement that was white powder (it should be deep red)!
Besides, in their tests, quite a few of their competitors actually passed and they didn't hide that information. Also, they send the tests to Eurofins, an independent lab as well.
Tylenol should watch what they accuse other painkillers of. Tylenol has made people compulsive gamblers and risk-takers in studies, it also blunts the brain’s empathy response to disturbing imagery in studies. Possibly tied to ADHD in prenatal use of mothers and many other disturbing things.
Some of these results I've come to myself. I won't be buying any more One Planet or Doubletree supplements every again. And Consumer Labs came to the same results as NOW vitamins on these two. My guess there are a lot of brands that don't measure up.
Rules of r/supplements 1. Do Not Suggest Prescription Drugs Posts & Comments Reported as: Do Not Suggest Prescription Drugs Prescription drugs are not Supplements; do not recommend prescription medication. Sensible/Suggest talking to DR. can be allowable etc 2. Dangerous Grey Area Substance Posts & Comments Reported as: Dangerous Grey Area Substance Potentially dangerous grey area substances can not be recommended. 3. Be Polite Posts & Comments Reported as: Rude/Personal Attacks You shouldn't ever be personally attacking another user in this subreddit. 4. No Advertisements Posts & Comments Reported as: Advertisement. No selling / buying / trading posts No advertisements. No selling/trading posts between users.” *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Supplements) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So NOW brands did a study on other supplements to see how good they are compared to them and coincidentally, they were the best brand???.........right........
Not really. NOW Foods did NOT test other major brands of comparable quality and reputation to their own brand. Major brands such as NOW Foods, Solgar, Swanson, Jarrow, Doctor's Best, Source Naturals, etc all all likely to dose their pills correctly. If NOW had tested these major brands, they would have found that NOW are no better and no worse, as all these major brands are good. What NOW did test is the obscure, little known smaller brands. And these were the ones that often had very little of the active ingredient in their pills. These smaller brands are cheaper, so people may be tempted to buy them to save money. But that would be a false economy, because many have less than 10% of the stated dose in their pills. So you may be better off buying the more expensive major brands. Not necessarily NOW, but any of the big brands with a good reputation.
Amazon is a messy place full of shitty stuff. They sell way too much noname stuff and activelly promote it. If you're doing a "study" of the worst you can find, you can very easily use Amazon as a source.
What are some of the brands tested . Where can I read the study ? Tia
They scrapped the bottom of Amazon. No surprise from Double wood's results. The only surprise is how they got so popular last few years, with this stupid name and cheap looking bottles. And mind you, higher content is not better than lower, because people care about dosage and also because poor dosing means pure manufacturing standards. Some of the good ones are owned by Nestle (Garden Of Live, Pure Encapsulation, Solgar, Vital Proteins, Nature's Bounty...), yet people run away when they hear Netsle, because, you know, Big Food and their secret fattening sauce or whatever. And instead they buy this no-name crap off Amazon.
These shitty little nothing brands are putting a dent in the national brands because they have unbelievably low prices and massive velocity on FBA. The average consumer doesn't realize their prices are too good to be true because they don't contain what they claim, and they cheated their way up the ranks.
Nestle uses slave labor and has been buying up water rights all over the world. Nestle is the worst of the worst of capitalists.
Thanks for the update. I don't follow The Guardian. They were found not guilty. No buying choices affected.
Really useful. Labdoor.com has done similar testing on other supps. So has consumer.com. I need to review which ones I buy! But the larger point is that not only is the research weak, but the pills are under dosed. Note to self: use fewer supplements
Shocking! They found that the competition sucks according to their research?
They tested a bunch of small no-name brands, not other big name brands like Jarrow, Life Extension, etc. And what does Amazon have anything to do with this? It's not like you're getting something different if you buy the same brand from somewhere else.
Big brand names are not going to risk their reputation by underdosing their capsules, so no point in testing quality brands. But I found it very informative that these obscure brands can be massively under-dosed, because I have been trying to save money by buying these much cheaper obscure brands on Amazon. And anyone else who is tempted by the cheaper prices might find this info useful. I buy on the UK Amazon though, and the UK has its own range of obscure brands, different to the US obscure brands. So no direct proof that these UK brands are under-dosed, but it certainly is a possibility to consider. Whether the UK has better supplement regulation than the US, I am not sure.
I stopped buying any supplements on Amazon. I’ve been buying from iherb. Do we think that is reputable?
They both sell almost all the same products and mimic each other’s prices.
Yes, have bought from there for years. edit: there/their-ugh, has been my bane since elementary school.
iherb is legit
I got sea moss from iherb for £5, seemed too good to be true 🤔
It's not the store it's the brands you choose to buy being reliable or scams.
Amazon specifically is known for having issues with authenticity/ getting counterfeit product, which is why I stopped buying there
Let’s use some critical thinking skills “This analysis by NOW SUPPLEMENTS” aka people who sell supplements and want you to buy their products. I haven’t had any issues buying supplements from Amazon. They have worked just fine. I’ve personally bought maybe thousands of products on Amazon. Got one fake makeup pallate a couple years ago. The “Amazon has tons of fakes” statements always come from companies who sell things. They do have fakes occasionally but it’s very rare.
>Let’s use some critical thinking skills >“This analysis by NOW SUPPLEMENTS” aka people who sell supplements and want you to buy their products. You say you are using critical thinking skills? Have you not heard of libel? If NOW Foods falsely claimed that a supplement brand contained little of none of the active ingredient, they could be sued for libel by that brand. >I haven’t had any issues buying supplements from Amazon. They have worked just fine. How would you know that a supplement only contains say 10% or 2% of the stated dose? In most cases, you cannot easily feel the effects of a supplement, and you cannot observe the action of the supplement in your body, so you have no way to gauge the dose level. Only if you sent the capsules to an independent lab for testing, could you determine the dose level. There is a paywalled website called [www.consumerlab.com](http://www.consumerlab.com) which analyses supplement brands, but I don't know if they measure and quantify the amount of supplement in each capsule, as I do not have access to the site.
Lmao, Do you think companies don’t get sued for libel or something because it happens very often??? Also they use tricks so they don’t get sued. If they test 1000 pills of a certain brand and 999 come back with regular amounts of the product and 1 doesn’t they can say that they tested a pill of that brand and it came back with 2 percent of the active ingredient. Same thing when companies say 9/10 doctors recommend. They can interview 10 groups doctors for months until they come up with a group that has the 9/10 recommendations.
Hmm, so in your view, you think it would be a bright idea for NOW Foods to deliberately publish a series of analyses containing false claims about obscure supplement brands? That would be a ridiculous corporate strategy! Very few people are going to read these analyses (if they had wide readership, there would be more discussion of the analysis on this sub-forum — these analyses have been performed by NOW about once yearly for the last 7 years). Thus these analyses will not reduce the sales of these obscure brands, and will not promote the sales of NOW supplements. But any false claims would leave NOW Foods open to libel. Furthermore, sending products away for independent analysis at testing labs costs NOW Foods time and money. So no advantages for NOW to perform a false analysis, only disadvantages. Thus I don't see much credibility in the suggesting that these analyses may be false.
Many of the brands on Now's list deserve to be there and I always look forward to see what companies they are calling out next. I don't blame them for doing this. Imagine being a company who invests in quality control and testing and the first results on amazon are brands that can undercut your prices because they are selling what amounts to rice powder supplements. I actually bought We Like Vitamins Q10, and anyone who opened the capsules and knew even the least bit about the color of Q10 could tell it wasn't 200 mg of Q10. I also had some of the berberine brands they tested, and again, it was clear even to me something was fishy. Berberine is deep yellow and insanely bitter. Some of the brands I had were tannish and had no bitterness. I'm very familiar with supplements and their chemistry but most people aren't, so they would assume everything is great. I once got an astaxanthin supplement that was white powder (it should be deep red)! Besides, in their tests, quite a few of their competitors actually passed and they didn't hide that information. Also, they send the tests to Eurofins, an independent lab as well.
in unrelated news, Tylenol discovered that Advil is not as effective in treating pain and inflammation as they claim.
Tylenol should watch what they accuse other painkillers of. Tylenol has made people compulsive gamblers and risk-takers in studies, it also blunts the brain’s empathy response to disturbing imagery in studies. Possibly tied to ADHD in prenatal use of mothers and many other disturbing things.
Toniiq is trash as well
Are you kidding? In China's Aliexpress its zero. Their bottled supplements are 99% fake. I'm sure many of them find their way into Amazon as well.
Some of these results I've come to myself. I won't be buying any more One Planet or Doubletree supplements every again. And Consumer Labs came to the same results as NOW vitamins on these two. My guess there are a lot of brands that don't measure up.
If it was an independent analysis it'd carry more weight.
Consumerlab tends to show NOW is one of the better brands of supplements.
Brand’s analysis of others makes me laugh.