Can my vitamins actually be bad for me?

Americans spend over $30 BILLION on dietary supplements a year. However, a study shows that one third of the vitamins don’t even have trace amounts of the plant advertised on the bottle.

The New York State attorney general’s office held an investigation and gave cease-and-desist letters to GNC, Target, Wal-Mart, and Walgreens demanding them to stop selling many of their dietary supplements. This investigation started based on multiple studies showing shocking results exposing most of the supplements were adulterated.

Here are some of the results:

  • 55% of manufacturers illegally claimed to treat, prevent, diagnose or cure specific diseases

  • 59% had ingredients not listed on the label

  • 33% had contaminants and different fillers not on the label

  • 68% of the products had substitutes for products on the label, meaning the main ingredient on the label may not even be in the bottle 

One of the major problems they found was that ingredients left off of the label patients are allergic to. This includes soybean, wheat, rice and many other ingredients. Despite the results of these studies, most of the companies never changed the quality of their vitamins. 

The FDA regulates all vitamins as “Dietary Supplements”. Unlike prescription medication or over the counter medications, which have to be proven to be safe or effective, dietary supplements do not. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 requires that all products be labeled as dietary supplements, but that is really the only requirement.

That is why purchasing your vitamins from a reliable source is so important! If you are not careful you are likely wasting your time and money. Pharmaceutical grade vitamins ensure you are getting the purest form of the plant so you can actually get the benefit from the vitamins! More oh pharmaceutical grade vitamins to come...




Baker DA, Stevenson DW, Little DP: DNA barcode identification of black cohosh herbal dietary supplements. J AOAC Int. 2012, 95: 1023-1034. 10.5740/jaoacint.11-261.


Newmaster, S.G., Grguric, M., Shanmughanandhan, D. et al. DNA barcoding detects contamination and substitution in North American herbal products. BMC Med 11, 222 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-11-222

Kelsey SchwanderComment