The supplement industry is exactly that, an industry and it is doing an excellent job in creating a market for hopes and dreams.
The effectiveness of most supplements leaves much to be desired; aside from protein, creatine, caffeine and vitamins it is pretty much all hype.
So, how do you spot a sleazy supp?
1. Claims like “steroid like effect”. Nothing works like steroids which is why they are classified as drugs and cannot be sold openly in most countries.
2. The fake news article: “as seen on CNN” with a quasi CNN opening but then it leads to cnn.ru or some sleazy site with some scantily clad women.
4. Hiding ingredients… it goes along with point 2. Often, these pages send you though 4 or 5 websites without listing the actual ingredient. Once you dig through it, it says” proprietary mix” which basically means “we put a bunch of stuff together that may or may not work but we are not telling you what it is”.
5. Overuse of really cool graphs, in particular bar charts.
That said, those ads are crafted very well. Even I found myself a few times tempted to buy but if it seems to good to be true, it more often that it isn’t.