Comment · Wed, March 16, 2022 · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
Tens of thousands of fake supplements are being sold on Amazon by SerumLabs (Komprocha, Energecko, Vitablossom, Mistacy, ChriBubble, NMN Max, NMN Plus, Glorifikation, and more)
Original post in this thread
AmzConcernedCustomer · 905 points
The title says it all, and I’ve linked more information here. What started as a suspicion (testing just a few products) led to a full-blown 6-month investigation of a single organization selling tens of thousands of fake supplements a month on Amazon under various brands. Hundreds of people are ingesting these products every day (thousands a month), and we are desperately trying to get Amazon and/or regulators to take notice and put an end to this immediately. Nothing we are doing to spread awareness seems to work. We believe the organization behind this is located in china, so any type of class-action lawsuit or direct legal intervention with them is a non-starter, as they will simply disappear and start new brands. All the evidence we’ve compiled so far can be found here, and we are constantly adding more remaining anonymous as this organization has attacked those who have spoken out against them so far (we are updating…
What they were answering
longdaysout · 2 points
BTW I know you didn't specifically ask for requests but if you were open to suggestions, I think there'd be a great audience for the following:
\- Multivitamin tests. Not sure if this is more complicated, but perhaps a good proxy for a brand's quality is their multivitamin. They have to source and include so many ingredients that I'd imagine inaccuracies would be more likely when there's 30 ingredients in a single pill (vs say a single capsule of 1,000 IU where there's less to go wrong)?
\- Fish oil + Omega 3! I caught up on an old thread where this was discussed and how oxidation can be an issue. Study confirms specific brands here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5431122/. IFOS certification is supposed to help this but as you noted, there are issues with this. My question around this certification is that while a certain batch from a manufacturer can be certified as having passed, does the absence of a batch mean that it failed - or just wasn't tested? That lack of transparency here is a particular concern of mine as a consumer.
\- Mushrooms. I'm new to this but the amount of misinformation in this area is very confusing. Mycellium vs Fruiting Bodies, extraction methods, banned / untrustworthy brands... As a relative newbie, it's taken a lot of reading to form a point of view which I think is right (t…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
- Multivitamin tests. Not sure if this is more complicated, but perhaps a good proxy for a brand's quality is their multivitamin. They have to source and include so many ingredients that I'd imagine inaccuracies would be more likely when there's 30 ingredients in a single pill (vs say a single capsule of 1,000 IU where there's less to go wrong)?
Very hard to test. They are very complex matrices. I would bet lots of money that over 90% of the multivitamins out there don't meet their label claims.
- Fish oil + Omega 3! I caught up on an old thread where this was discussed and how oxidation can be an issue. Study confirms specific brands here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5431122/. IFOS certification is supposed to help this but as you noted, there are issues with this. My question around this certification is that while a certain batch from a manufacturer can be certified as having passed, does the absence of a batch mean that it failed - or just wasn't tested? That lack of transparency here is a particular concern of mine as a consumer.
That's the problem with brand certifications. Unless they are testing every batch, maybe they had good stuff for the certification, then run into quality issues later. This is why it is up to the brands themselves to ensure each batch is tested and held to the same standard. Also, most of these industry associations are marketing tools for the brands, not consumer protection tools. The money is in selling things to customers, not scaring customers away. This skews all these organizations towards erring on the side of the brands.
- Mushrooms. I'm new to this but the amount of misinformation in this area is very confusing. Mycellium vs Fruiting Bodies, extraction methods, banned / untrustworthy brands... As a relative newbie, it's taken a lot of reading to form a point of view which I think is right (thanks in no small part to the huge amount of info you have published on here), but seeing actual side by side test results of beta glucan content from various brands would be amazing.
We have been building much more scientifically-accurate mushroom testing methods for years now. Even beta-glucans are not the most appropriate measure, and spiking is happening all the time now. You have to use orthogonal techniques to really truly assess the quality of a given mushroom. Nobody in the market is doing that.