>Vitamins used to be priced according to manufacturing cost. Slowly, the low-cost vitamins have been up-priced to match the expensive ones. Vitamin C is about $10/Kg in bulk, but about $100/Kg at a US drugstore.
How does one even know if the Vitamin C is Vitamin C? There is no government agency that confirms supplements and vitamins are what they say they are, nor are there penalties. The only thing I have heard of is the USP branding being a signifier of higher likelihood of the supplement/vitamin being what it says it is.
Sounds like a pretty clever startup idea. Consumer Reports, but for everything. Then a seal that manufacturers can put on their product that certifies the assay of ingredients. Does a Coke actually have 120 calories? Is a Vitamin actually what it says? Is the bottle actually recycled? Consumer Reports is often opinion based with some quantitative data and they don’t review everything. Is you olive oil actually from Italian olives? Are those organic pears actually organic? Products that get “the seal” can market that fact. And if consumers care enough, they’ll pick products that are certified to be what they say they are. If I am buying high end paint, the water content matters to me for example.
The FDA should really focus entirely on consumer safety only. (It’s not a safety issue if your olive oil is Moroccan rather than Spanish or whatever.) And the FDA doesn’t have any mission to test if that 18/10 stainless steel sink is actually 18/10 stainless for example.
Selling something that is not what you say it is is false advertising, and falls under the purview of the FTC. Unfortunately, the testing, enforcement, and penalties are all extremely weak.
Trust in the marketplace is a very valuable asset, one that cannot be bought. It has to be cultivated and maintained over many, many years, and having the government do that makes perfect sense as it is a societal benefit.
We need a UL/Consumer Reports for Internet-connected devices that documents and certifies their use of personal data and bandwidth. The regulators are not going to be able to keep up with the changes.
Computer component manufacturers have already caught on. New products are built to spec and then later on in that product's manufacturing life cycle, the parts it's built with are changed to reduce cost but the SKU is kept the same.
They mean there are third party organizations that perform testing. Consumer Reports and such. Or most supplement companies pay for independent testing (some skepticism is warranted since they're the ones paying).
This is literally how all construction materials are vetted and it works great.
Underwriters Laboratories.
If it were feasible to sue retailers for damages due to fraudulent vitamins, approximately 0% of supplements sold would be fake.
The problem is there isn’t adequate scientific evidence to back the efficacy of any of these supplement which is why they aren’t regulated in the first place.
> The problem is there isn’t adequate scientific evidence to back the efficacy of any of these supplement which is why they aren’t regulated in the first place.
While I would agree that good evidence is generally lacking on supplements, that’s different than “is the product as advertised”. Just because vitamin C isn’t a miracle drug wouldn’t justify selling sugar pills as vitamin C.
Local authorities in the UK have a legal duty to implement a food product inspection scheme. It's regulated by the Food Standards Agency. And yes, the labs used are independent.
Stick to brands that have a reputation for quality worth defending.
It's no guarantee, but you want a brand that perhaps charges a bit more because of their long track record of quality. The longer and more solid their track record of quality, the more motivation they will have to make sure that reputation stays intact.
> Three to four samples of each supplement purchased in different parts of the state were tested. Each sample was tested five times, for a total of 390 tests on 78 samples. Schneiderman said that only 4 percent of Walmart’s supplements (“Spring Valley” brand) actually contained the ingredients listed on the label, while 18 percent did at Walgreens (“Finest Nutrition” brand), 22 percent at GNC (“Herbal Plus” brand), and 41 percent at Target stores (“Up & Up” brand).
and brands are bought out by private equity and change for the worse all the time. look at the downfall of many historically great brands/names that are no longer what they once where: pyrex vs PYREX. Craftsmen. MEC. Birkenstock. And so many more.
Costco may one day fall too but their brand is what they sell in store and they do actually seem to do due diligence (also they have the Kirkland brand)
How does one even know if the Vitamin C is Vitamin C? There is no government agency that confirms supplements and vitamins are what they say they are, nor are there penalties. The only thing I have heard of is the USP branding being a signifier of higher likelihood of the supplement/vitamin being what it says it is.