It's not if supplements do any good

[edhopper]

it's that you are probably not even taken the supplements you think you are.

"What’s in Those Supplements?"
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/sidebar-whats-in-those-supplements/

The authorities said they had run tests on popular store brands of herbal supplements at the retailers — Walmart, Walgreens, Target and GNC — which showed that roughly four out of five of the products contained none of the herbs listed on their labels. In many cases, the authorities said, the supplements contained little more than cheap fillers like rice and house plants, or substances that could be hazardous to people with food allergies.

[dissentient]

1. Damn, don't tell me the anti-vaxx witch hunt is going to extend to taking herbal supplements now

I have to plead guilty to this one, I confess - I have often taken various herbal formulas in the past.
And I am interested in herbs as a way to help maintain health.

Uh oh.

[etherealtruth]

2. The point of the OP is that you don't know what you are actually taking

This isn't "are supplements" effective ... it is about what is really in the product that you just bought


https://www.consumerlab.com/recalls.asp

On February 3, 2015, the New York State Attorney General announced that his office sent letters to four major retailers, GNC, Target, Walmart, and Walgreens, for allegedly selling store brand herbal supplement products in New York that either could not be verified to contain the labeled substance, or which were found to contain ingredients not listed on the labels. The letters, sent Monday, call for the retailers to immediately stop the sale of certain popular products, including Echinacea, Ginseng, St. John's Wort, Saw Palmetto, Valerian, and Ginkgo.

The letters come as DNA testing, performed as part of an ongoing investigation by the Attorney General's Office, allegedly shows that, overall, just 21% of the test results from store brand herbal supplements verified DNA from the plants listed on the products' labels -- with 79% coming up empty for DNA related to the labeled content or verifying contamination with other plant material.

The letters to retailers have been posted by The New York Times and are searchable by retailer and type of product.

ConsumerLab.com has requested additional information from the Attorney General's office regarding the exact names and identities of the tested products and details of the testing. The letters do not indicate whether the products were extracts or whole herb products. Extracts are not necessarily expected to contain DNA, but, instead, specific amounts of key marker compounds associated with the species and to which extracts are typically "standardized." ConsumerLab.com has tested and reported on herbal extract products sold by these retailers, using validated methods for evaluating these compounds, as well as for contamination with heavy metals, such as lead and cadmium, which can occur in herbal supplements. DNA testing does not evaluate heavy metal contamination nor quantify the amount of an ingredient, i.e., how much of an ingredient (or contaminant) is in a product.

[dissentient]

3. Whew, that's a relief then

[herding cats]

4. No, it's about tests done on several big store brand supplements.

Here's a little bit from the article.

From GNC, Herbal Plus brand:

Gingko Biloba:

No gingko biloba found
Did detect allium (garlic), rice, spruce and asparagus

St. John’s Wort

No St. John’s Wort found
Did detect allium (garlic), rice and dracaena (a tropical houseplant)

Ginseng

No ginseng found
Did detect rice, dracaena, pine, wheat/grass and citrus

So, you may be paying for one thing, and getting nothing of what you think you are.

[tridim]

5. Eat herbs, not pills. An easy rule to live by. :)

[dissentient]

6. Sounds good to me!