Sleazy supplements and how to spot them!

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?

There are five tell tale signs.

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. 

3. Using a celebrity without them knowing that they are advertising; most likely culprits are the Rock or Mark Wahlberg. 
“Did you see the Rock in Fast and the Furious? Here is how he achieved his physique! Follow this link…”
People, no, just NO! Celebrities have unlimited money and influence, they can get much better “supplements” than some Lebanese herb. Let me ask you this:  if you were to be paid $20 million to look a certain way, would you risk your job by using an unknown substance or rely on drugs that have 50+ years of research? Thought so.

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.

“Check it out: this group gained three times as much muscle than the non supplement group!”
But if you look closer you realize the study was done on six people and the  difference was 200 vs. 80 grams of muscle gained without controlling any variables.

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.

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