Supplement Product Labeling Lies

If It’s On The Label, Then It Must Be True
by Darlyn Britt

Health supplement label guidelines were established by the Food and Drug Administration to ensure purity and provide consumers with helpful information. These mandate an accurate listing of all product ingredients and notations of active ingredients/constituents in each product.

Just how accurate are their claims? Nature’s Sunshine recently tested a few of our single herbs against some competitors. Here’s what we found.

We tested Nature’s Sunshine Kava Kava against three popular brands, measuring the amount of kavalactones (the key active component) per capsule. Nature’s Sunshine Kava Kava was the only one of these products that actually contained the amount of kavalactones indicated on the label. The others fell short. And of the four brands tested, Nature’s Sunshine’s product was the least expensive.

We tested Nature’s Sunshine Korean Ginseng against another leading brand, measuring the amount of ginsenosides (the active component) per capsule. Nature’s Sunshine Korean Ginseng guarantees a potency of 12 mg ginsenosides per capsule, which it met or exceeded in our test. You would need almost three times as much of Brand A’s product to equal the ginsenosides available in Nature’s Sunshine’s product. And Nature’s Sunshine Korean Ginseng costs less.

We compared Nature’s Sunshine High-Parthenolide Feverfew with a leading brand, measuring the number of micrograms of parthenolide in each capsule. Nature’s Sunshine’s product contained almost 24 times more parthenolide than its competitor and met its label claim.

While consumers would have more confidence in the health supplement industry if this were true, it simply isn’t. Label claims can be wrong, and the only way to know this is by testing the products. Since most consumers have no way of doing this, they simply trust manufacturers to provide true information.

Labels don’t always tell the whole story! Trust Nature’s Sunshine to deliver what we say we will every time.