Comment · Tue, June 11, 2024 · ND Owner
Yall wanna explain dis 😂
Original post in this thread
bruhman123534t6 · 0 points
“We received a letter from an attorney representing Nootropics Depot, which sells the Nootropics Depot Shoden product that was Not Approved in this Review as we found only 23.5 mg of the 42 mg of withanolides that we expected based on its label. The letter claims that "the testing method you employed... was materially deficient, was not designed or intended to result in a fair and complete analysis of the withanolide glycosides in the Nootropics Depot Shoden... and resulted in a material understatement of the withanolide glycosides..." The letter demands that we retract our information about the product and cease publication of this Review, and, essentially, threatens legal action if we do not comply. We have no reason to believe that the information that we published about Nootropics Depot Shoden is incorrect and, therefore, do not intend to retract our information about it or delete this Review. We are alwa…
What they were answering
totallyjaded · 1 points
The Herb Pharm result stood out to me on that one. On other products I've looked at on CL, Herb Pharm is kind of... shit. They've got a nice backstory going, if a person wants to pay for that, I guess.
What you point out is what I think is one of the innate problems with CL. If you're not looking at their findings critically, there's a lot of steering going on. Intentional, or otherwise. Especially when getting into things like "This got a blue highlight because the label says if you take four 000 capsules, you get what it says you get." Which is fine, I guess, but I feel like playing multipliers isn't really an honest assessment of one product over another.
Not that I think they have some ulterior motive for it, beyond some iHerb commissions. But I really wish the data was presented differently.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
I've never heard of Herb Pharm before. We have some on the way to test. I want to run all the brands they did on both the USP and Shoden method, and look at the chromatograms as well. Sometimes you can learn a lot with the chromatograms.
You are right, at the bare minimum CL needs to update how they present information. You can mislead immensely just by presenting data in certain ways. However, my main issue is with the validity of the methodology at all. Take lion's mane for example. They did a round of testing for that a while back, and ranked products.
Here is how they tested lion's mane to rank products...
According to them, they didn't even test for the identity of lion's mane... They just tested beta-glucans, which can and are spiked from other sources. There are multiple Chinese suppliers right now that will ask you what ratio of lion's mane to yeast beta-glucans you want, to get the exact % you want to see. If you do proper identity testing via HPTLC, you can catch that spiking. For CL to not even test whether the products were lion's mane or not is absolutely ridiculous! That's the bare minimum you should do! To then rank solely on beta-glucans, without understanding the limitation of that quality marker, is just the icing on the shit sundae.
In that same round, they ranked chaga as well. For chaga to work, it needs to grow wild on birch trees, then be harvested in a short period in the middle of winter. This is because birch trees concentrate nutrient in themselves to survive the winter months, and the chaga then absorbs these nutrients and bioconverts them to the actives we want in chaga. You can't cultivate chaga and have it work the same as wild chaga harvested in winter, as it won't have the actives. Consumer Lab doesn't take that into account at all. Does Consumer Lab even test to see if the products they ranked were even chaga? NOPE! Do they test to see if products are fruiting body or mycelium? Nope! They just look at the label and recite that as fact... Yep, they just take the brand's word for it. You might as well just close your eyes and randomly pick products at that point.