For years, I, as most people do, went from childhood vitamins to taking none at all!Then as I got older, and become more health conscience, I returned to the store shelf where Mom had undoubtedly purchased my vitamins when I was child.I began taking supplements off the shelf and didn’t see any huge difference in my health.
In fact in some cases I almost felt worse!
So, I stopped taking them, and for a number of years I went away from supplements altogether. Then as I grew older, developed more allergies, and dealt with more migraine headaches, I began to develop a more serious approach to what I put into my body and I began to research supplements more thoroughly.
After years of not getting what I wanted out of store brand supplements, what I really wanted to know is, “Are All Supplements Created Equal?” I thought that somewhere out there the answers must exist and that there should be someway of telling whether or not some supplements are better than others.
What I found was astonishing!
According to ConsumerLab.com, an online consumer watchdog company that has conducted quality testing of some popular dietary supplements. Their findings showed roughly 25% did not contain sufficient levels to provide healing powers.
So what this told me was, for the most part, what I was getting on the store shelf was not worth my taking as my experience had already proved. However, it did not answer my question, “Are All Supplements Created Equal?”
“Surely”, I thought, “There must be something better?” Is there not some sort of standard set for supplements? Is there not some organization that tests and approves these things?
What about the Food and Drug Administration?
What I discovered was the FDA requires supplement manufacturers to provide label information that is “truthful and not misleading.” So then, if the bottle has FDA on it, it must be good stuff in it, right?
What the FDA doesn’t require is that manufacturers obtain FDA approval before producing dietary supplements, nor does it routinely analyze supplements before they are sold to consumers. The FDA simply trusts manufacturers to provide safe products and accurate ingredient lists!
As long as nothing goes wrong, hat’s as far as it goes.
How many people do you know that take time to complain because their not getting what they think they should get from their supplements!?
So, manufactures continue to product inferior, cost saving, products, that may fail to meet actual quality standards if they existed! Mother Earth News (motherearthnews.com) has quoted Dr. Richard Firshein.
“There is a tremendous need for the industry to standardize supplements so people at least know that they are getting a specific ingredient,” says Dr. Richard Firshein, author of The Nutraceutical Revolution and an authority on nutritional medicine. “I know that there are many, many supplements that claim to contain a specific ingredient that actually don’t.” So, that begins to answer our question, if some don’t, some must, right?