The Herbal Supplement Industry Is Not A Very Funny Joke

The regulatory system we have in the US for selling herbal supplements is screwed up. I've thought so for many years, and we're not the only country that fits that description, either. The system is screwed up in so many important ways that it's hard to know where to start, but how about back at the very basics - quality control? Try this paper from BMC Medicine out (open access) and see what you think. The authors, from the DNA barcoding initiative at Guelph, tested 44 different brands of various herbal supplements, purchased in both the US and Canada. They found ridiculous levels of contamination. In fact, contamination is not the right word: one-third of the samples had no detectable amounts of the herb on the label. Instead, there were invasive weeds, ornamental plants from China, ground rice, soybeans, what have you. 10 of the 12 companies whose products were tested had at least one in this lovely category; 4 of them had nothing but. This brings up several interesting questions: for one, how come this garbage continues to sell? Could it be that many of these preparations are of no benefit other than the placebo effect, which means that lawnmower scrapings will indeed work just as well? Second, who's ripping off whom? I would assume that some of these companies are buying from middlemen and repackaging, in which case, they're getting hosed (and passing the hosing along to you!) Doesn't anyone have even a passing interest in seeing if they've been sold the right material...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: The Dark Side Source Type: blogs