Chris’s Corner: Safe Supplement Buyer’s Guide, Part 3
4 ways to ensure you’re buying a quality brand.
In part two of this series I mentioned that some online retailers sell low-quality supplements alongside high-quality products. When a website has one brand of curcumin priced at $24.22 for 60 capsules and a second brand priced at $7.71 for 240 capsules, a per capsule difference of over 90%, you have to question the quality of the later. BTW, this is an actual example from a site I otherwise trust and recommend. I didn’t even cherry pick to find the most extreme example. I simply typed in the first herb that came to mind. Also, confession time, I had to use my calculator a little. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy anything from these online retailers, it just means you should look at the following…
4 Questions to ask yourself before choosing a supplement brand:
1. Is it a brand I’ve seen sold by my naturopath or chiropractor, or is it a brand made by one of those companies? The first part of this is easy. If you’ve purchased it from a professional or seen it on our shelves, it’s almost certainly a high-quality brand. The second part is tricky. Just be aware that with a little research, you will find some companies have a retail label (think OTC) and a professional label (think prescription). They are often made side-by-side using the same quality standards.
2. Is it a private label product? If you are shopping at emilysherbs.com and they have an Emily’s Herbs line of supplements alongside professional products; the former will likely be a lower quality product. Emily’s goal with private labeling is not to sell the very best product; dozens of brands already do this. The goal is to put a product out there a person can only get from them, and usually at a price that’s hard to match. Be particularly cautious if an already unbeatable price is then discounted or offered on a BOGO deal. There is a huge asterisk to all of this though. Some professional brands, like Klaire Labs/SFI (maker of the Ther-Biotic line of probiotics), offer clinics a private labeling option. In this case it is the same product but with a label that has the clinic name and logo on it.
3. Is everything in a given line of products the same price? We’ve seen this most commonly with essential oils. Since the raw materials for oils, herbs, etc vary wildly in their cost; you have to be wary of an entire line of products all sold at the same price. “What about homeopathics”, I just heard from somebody in the back of the room, “those little blue tubes are all the same price”. While the price of the raw material for Aurum Metallicum (gold) is probably a bit more than for Calcium Carbonate (chalk), the use of such minuscule amounts in the final product makes the cost of the raw material moot. This is the nature of homeopathics. This is not the nature of oils, herbs, and other supplements.
4. Does the bottle have a really cool label? Professional brands are notorious for their apparent lack of an art department. I could produce more interesting labels, and nobody has ever accused me of right-brain dominance. Since these products are normally prescribed by a doctor rather than selected from a shelf by a consumer, professional supplements have about as much need for fancy bottles as prescription drugs. There are plenty of exceptions to this “rule” so take it with the grain of sodium chloride it was intended, and wash it down with plenty of dihydrogen monoxide*. Ugh, stupid left brain keeps sabotaging my beautiful writing.
*If you are unfamiliar with the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide, or DHMO, please see this circa 1995 website for more details; and then go to the Wikipedia page if you’d like to see research done in this millennium.
Chris Oppitz
INC Office Manager
