Comment · Wed, July 19, 2023 · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
Independent Lab Testing Results Of Supplements On The Market
Original post in this thread
MisterYouAreSoDumb · 402 points
Hey everyone, it's been a while since I have made a post in this sub. However, I saw a new research study today that I wanted to bring up. It highlights why my main mission over the past 10 years has been to not only advance the lab testing and quality control standards of the industry, but also to educate consumers on what to look out for, and how things work in the background. We are all ingesting these products! We are putting them into our bodies, so it's crucial that companies selling them do everything necessary to ensure they are what they claim to be, and are pure and free from contaminants. That is unfortunately the vast exception to the rule. Many of you may remember my post about turkesterone results from last year.
That whole situation blew way up, and every jabroni on YouTube was making videos about it. Some were saying I was a liar and fraud, and just trying to sell products. Some were saying I was in for massive lawsuits. Most were just doing it to get their 5 m…
What they were answering
93delphi · 5 points
If you have a better list, I hope you will provide it please? That one is from a specialist nootropics board. Yes. They have the occasional bad result in lab tests but less than other brands. I go largely by ConsumerLab and my own experience but have also used that list as a base. If you could cite specifics that would help.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Natrium Health & Nootropics Depot
I mean, I certainly agree with Nootropics Depot, since I own it. LOL. I don't want to get too far into shitting on other brands in this post. Consumer Lab is okay. We follow their results, and I have addressed a couple issues we have had with their methodology in the past. However, overall they are a pretty good service. Lab Door not so much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/5f5hgw/is_there_a_lab_that_tests_and_reports_on/
We tested the Panax Ginseng they had listed as the #1 value rated, and it was completely fake! They argued with me for a bit, and then stopped responding. Then about a year later they private messaged me saying I was right, and their new lab testing confirmed what I had been saying. It was fake Panax ginseng. However, they had it up as the #1 value for a year, and made affiliate commissions on it that whole time. Then when it was proven we were right, they just put in small text "Results Disputed" on the listing. No big apology. No emailing their subscribers letting them know they had a breakdown in their systems, and that they would be making sure it didn't happen again. They seem to mostly care about making affiliate commissions off the products they rank, not about the scientific accuracy of the results they post. That whole situation left a very bad taste in my mouth. No idea what they are doing these days, or if their quality systems have been improved. Frankly, if you fuck up that bad once, I will never trust you again. The only exception is if you immediately own up to it, and make serious changes to ensure it doesn't happen again. However, that did not happen. The big problem is these sites don't use the appropriate methodologies or methods to test, and then base their rankings on faulty metrics. Take protein for example. Most places just test for protein content. However, you need to do an amino acid profile to see if they are being spiked. This is where brands and manufacturers spike the powders with a nitrogen source, which then makes it look like there is more protein than there really is. This was the reason for the whole melamine scandal in China with infant formula. They were using melamine, which is a very high source of nitrogen, to make the formula look higher in protein. Many places look for that now, but that's not the only nitrogen source you can use to spike protein, and many of the big brands still do it. You need a very specific amino acid profile assay to really assess and rank proteins. The problem is that consumers see the rankings on these sites and treat them as legitimate, when they don't realize the methodologies are not correct for the conclusions.