Comment · Sat, March 19, 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
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.
Gotit - makes sense. And honestly, prob not super worthwhile given the disputed role of whether multi's offer much in the way of protection + benefits beyond basic deficiencies
Also, most of these industry associations are marketing tools for the brands, not consumer protection tools.
Makes sense - this is a sad but sobering thought.
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.
Glad to hear it! It sounds like mushrooms in particular are especially hard to produce and guarantee quality (unlike say something more widespread like vitamin d). Are mushrooms especially challenging or are most nootropics similar (I imagine some nootropics are a bit easier when they're a patented extract e.g. KSM Ashwagandha) ?
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
Mushrooms are more challenging because the science is not as far as botanicals. With ashwagandha, you know that the withanolides are the main actives. You have methods to test them. You have reference standards to compare to. With mushrooms you don't really have any of that. We have had to build our own methods from scratch, and we have been working for years now to develop our own reference standards to push the lab testing standards of mushrooms forward. It's much more difficult with mushrooms at the moment.