Verifying Supplement Quality

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello,

I am trying to learn about how to verify supplement quality, as I understand there is large financial incentive in the marketplace for cutting corners.

I have read elsewhere that Jordan recommends buying GMP certified supplements only. I also read an old post where he recommended subscribing to ConsumerLab.com for a year.

In trying to figure this all out, I noted that many manufacturers advertise their product as produced in a GMP Certified facility. Is there some way to verify this? For example with bulksupplements.com you can go here and get some nice warm fuzzies from that. However I didn’t have any luck finding other companies through the NSF search, to include Barbell Medecine.

I also checked out ConsumerLab. While it seems to be a decent 3rd party test, very few of the products I would be interested in purchasing are listed.

This just comes from a place of wanting to take care of my body. If you’re taking a bunch of whey protein, and it happens to be contaminated, that’s quite a large volume of contamination you’re taking in.

2

I am reasonably confident I never recommended subscribing to consumer lab or similar, as I do not think they (or similar) companies offer a useful service.

cGMP verification can be done via the label of the supplement. Third-party supplement quality testers that use rigorous methodology like NSF, USP, and Informed Consent will list the companies that pay for their services. This is not the same as cGMP, though most of these third party companies require cGMP certification.

As i’ve mentioned in our recent protein guidelines article, I would recommend using supplements that are cGMP certified, third party tested by NSF, USP, Informed Consent (or similar) and evidence-based. This was one of the reasons we got into the supplement game in the first place.