In a May 18 Sports Illustrated cover feature titled “Supplements: The Dangerous Obsession with Improved Performance,” David Epstein and George Dohrmann do their best to deliver a knock-out punch to the sports supplement industry and the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which the writers say is the basic reason the sports supplement industry has become “a Pandora’s Box of false claims, untested products and bogus science.”

The piece brings up numerous examples of professional players being punished for using supplements spiked with banned substances, delves into the recent Hydroxycut recall and rehashes the dark days of ephedra. It also features several sports supplement retailers and product developers who reap riches from selling and concocting stimulant-filled products that can be sold “with no proof of effectiveness or safety, and without approval from the FDA.” The story goes on to talk about about how GNC salespeople are paid commission by sports supplement manufacturers to push their products on “unsuspecting customers” who “are sometimes steered to a supplement that is inappropriate for their needs.” It ends with discussion of sports supplement companies manipulating the findings from clinical research or rigging the studies altogether. Taken as a whole, the articles paints a grim portrait of a rogue sports supplement industry that the writers say Nutrition Business Journal research estimates generated nearly $20 billion in U.S. sales in 2007.

The trouble is, the writers use carefully chosen examples to tell only one side of the story—and they misleadingly cite NBJ research to create a picture of an industry that appears much larger than it actually is. In 2007, U.S. sales of sports supplement products totaled $2.5 billion, while the entire U.S. sports nutrition & weight-loss (SNWL) sector—which includes sports supplements, weight-loss pills, meal-replacement supplements, low-carb foods, nutrition bars, and sports & energy drinks—generated just under $20 billion in sales in 2007. Yes, sales of sports supplements have been growing but they still constitute a relatively small piece of the overall SNWL market—and this certainly was not made clear in the way Sports Illustrated cited our research.

Exposés such as the Sports Illustrated article are, unfortunately, not new for the dietary supplement industry, and they will continue as long as there are examples of products containing banned substances, of researching being manipulated, of false or misleading claims, or of people becoming sick after using a supplement—even if these instances do not reflect the overall nature of the supplement industry at large.

The good news is that now the supplement industry has good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and the serious adverse event reporting (SAER) system to ensure supplement product quality and demonstrate the safety of dietary supplements. We also have organizations such as the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the Natural Products Association and NSF International to ably communicate the positive, responsible side of the supplement industry and help ensure the safety and quality of supplement products. But, in this day and age, the industry is likely to need more than that if it wants to protect its reputation and current regulatory structure. To weather the current media storm, all supplement companies are going to need to help defend the industry by strictly adhering to GMPs and DSHEA, by speaking out against potentially damaging products and companies, and by only doing business with those companies whose practices and ideals they support.

Related links:

How Worrisome is the Hydroxycut Recall for the Dietary Supplement Industry?

Industry Making Strides in Improving Tarnished Image of Weight-Loss Supplements

New Supplement Regulations Most Important for Industry Since Passage of DSHEA

I’m a big fan of comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, in large part because he is such a strong proponent of good nutrition (high-fructose corn syrup is his nutritional nemesis) and of creating a U.S. healthcare system that is focused on preventing disease before it takes hold. This was a topic Maher addressed yet again on his April 24, 2009, Real Time broadcast. I’m posting a partial transcript of the discussion here because it touches upon many of the issues NBJ has been thinking and writing about as part of our healthy kids’ market research. I found the exchange between Maher and New York Times’ ethics columnist Randy Cohen over the question of who is to blame for the current childhood obesity epidemic particularly salient for the U.S. nutrition industry.

Bill Maher: We are never going to solve this healthcare crisis unless people make the connection that most of what they buy in the supermarket is making them sick. Then the pharmaceutical companies offer relief, which makes them sicker. I know I am a broken record on this, but it is true. I mean, I read this last week that one out of four children under 4 is obese. I gotta ask the question, because kids don’t feed themselves at that age, is that not child abuse?

Randy Cohen, New York Times ethics columnist: Well, wait a second. I think you’re blaming the victim an awful lot here. There are many reasons why that kid is overweight. One reason is that there is so much car traffic that he can no longer walk to school the way we could when I was a kid. So that exercise is impossible. We’ve cut the budget at his school so there is no gym program, so he doesn’t get that kind of exercise. McDonald’s advertisements are a billion dollars a year to promote [fast food]. You’re saying this little four year old should stand up and say, “No, no! Bring on the carrots.”

Maher: No, I’m saying his parents should.

Cohen: Even when you’re asking an individual parent to stand up against the weight of massive social forces…

Maher: Well, when it’s your child, yes, you should.

Cohen: Well, it would be a lovely thing if everyone could.

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman: I think Bill is on to something here. You know, we’re talking about healthcare reform in Washington. All we talk about is Medicare and who gets what and public and private and all of this stuff. A lot of the health problems in this country are [due to] lifestyle choices. They really are.

Cohen: I reject this. What you’re calling a choice… the reason the kids in my old neighborhood don’t ride their bikes to school is because it is much too dangerous to ride their bikes to school. There is too much traffic. Their parents are right not to let them. That is not a lifestyle choice. That is responding to the actual world that we live in.

Maher: Then go to the park.

Bethany McLean, Vanity Fair contributing editor: They had soda pop and chocolate when I was growing up, and we didn’t have it in the house because my mom wouldn’t let me eat it. She took our Halloween candy away and doled it out over the course of the year.

Cohen: Your mom is so mean [laugh]. But when McDonald’s spends a billion dollars a year to advertise to these kids, they are not doing it because it is ineffective. To suddenly say, oh, why doesn’t this working mother stand up for her kids and say no.

Dean: It’s not just the working mothers. The whole society has to say no.

Cohen: Thank you. Thank you.

Dean: We have to have a wellness society instead of an illness model.

Dana Gould, comedian: My kids are 5 and 6 and we go through this. They do want to go to McDonald’s, and it’s hard to keep the bad things… the bad things just have to be out of the house. And it’s hard. Everybody is running around, everybody is busy. But you do just have to sit down ahead of time, like we do on Sunday night, and say, “Here’s the healthy stuff. These are the healthy choices.”

Dean: Not to beat up on McDonald’s too much. Look at McDonald’s changes in the menu. They’re not perfect, but they have gotten a lot better. Why? Because people like you [points to Dana Gould] have said, “I’m not taking my kids to McDonald’s unless you start having salads and stuff like that.”

Cohen: Whenever someone starts saying, “It’s all the mother’s fault,” that is when I reach for my actually quite legal automatic gun [smiles], because you’re ignoring the tremendous social forces that lead the world to be the way it is.

Maher: Well, for the ethicist, you’re such an apologist.

Cohen: I’m not an apologist, but I think you’re blaming the wrong people.

Maher: I think you have a tremendous lack of personal responsibility… I’m not going to follow your ethics anymore, Mr. Ethicist [laugh].

Cohen: I think you’re seeing people as isolated, atomized individuals when in fact they are social creatures. They are members of communities, and people tend to behave pretty much like their neighbors. So this doesn’t eliminate our responsibility. It means we have a responsibility to create good neighborhoods, and that is politics and that is social policy and that is why Canadians are so slender and attractive. It is because of that. It is a healthier society. It is why Tuscany is so damn pretty and why no one wants their summer houses in Detroit. [laugh]

Gould: But it goes back to what we were talking about before: unlimited consumption. … [we now have] fun size Snickers bars, which are the size of support beams [laugh]. There is no cause for that. No one should eat that much Snickers. At a certain point it stops being fun. It just becomes suicide.

Maher: No one should eat any Snickers. Excuse me, but where you folks set the bar, where you set the goal post on health is going to keep us sick for the next century.

Related links:

U.S. Healthy Kids’ Market Positioned to Tackle Obesity and Other Top Health Issues

Renegade Lunch Lady Takes on School Lunch Programs

Much Work Remains in U.S. Diabesity War, Author Says

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has its hackles up over mounting criticisms of its school lunch, food stamp and other public nutrition programs, which critics argue are feeding America’s growing obesity crisis. The agency—whose food nutrition programs will cost taxpayers about $73 billion and affect an estimated 61 million Americans during the 2009 fiscal year—said no definitive proof exists linking its programs to increased obesity.

“USDA is not aware of any convincing evidence that school meals or other federal nutrition programs cause obesity and overweight. The evidence that does exist is mixed,” Thomas O’Connor, USDA’s acting deputy undersecretary for nutrition, told a House Appropriations subcommittee on March 12.

As the parent of school-age children, I know that all one has to do is check out the menu of a typical public school lunch program to see that the food the USDA is feeding our nation’s children is not nearly as nutritious as it could or should be. That’s why I’m particularly interested in seeing changes occur within the USDA’s school lunch program, which continues to serve high-fat and high-sodium food to school kids every day. Fortunately, President Obama has proposed adding $1 billion a year in funding for child nutrition programs, with a portion of this money going toward improving the nutritional quality of school meals.

Here in Boulder, where Nutrition Business Journal is based, we are lucky to have Ann Cooper—a.k.a. the Renegade Lunch Lady and author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way we Feed Our Children—taking over the public school system’s lunch program. We’re hoping she’s able to do here what she achieved in Berkeley, California, where Cooper eliminated all trans fats and frozen foods from the city’s school lunch program and introduced healthful new menus that emphasize whole grains, low-fat protein and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Cooper discussed the issue of children’s nutrition and the work she is doing to clean up school lunch programs across the country during a packed education session at Natural Products Expo West on March 5. She is also one of the experts who will help shed light on this issue for NBJ’s upcoming Healthy Kids issue, which will publish in April.

You can order the issue, subscribe to NBJ or download a free 32-page sample issue of the journal via the NBJ Website.

Related links:

Much Work Remains in U.S. Diabesity War, Author Says

Healthy Beverage Mandates For Schools Fuels Business For Switch Beverage Co.

Yesterday was a tough day for vitamins and multivitamins in the mass media. This really started in the 2nd half of 2008.

Here are a few links to stories in the news.



Vitamins: No help in preventing cancer, heart disease



Massive study casts doubt on health benefits of multivitamins



Should you keep taking that multivitamin?

F.D.A. Finds ‘Natural’ Diet Pills Spiked With Drugs

Did you know that weight loss pill sales only make up 8% of the total U.S. sports nutrition & weight loss market? Did you know the nutrition bar market is larger than the total low-carb foods market? If not, join NBJ editorial director Patrick Rea and Katia Fowler, Director of Communication and former editor of NBJ as they present the 2007/2008 Sports Nutrition & Weight Loss Market Overview Webseminar.

In this NBJ webseminar, we will answer:

Weight Loss

Does Fucoxanthin have the potential to replace ephedra as the weight-loss market king?

How long will alli suppress U.S. weight loss supplement sales growth?

What will be the best sales channel to sell your new (or old) weight-loss product through over the next 5 years?

Where does the GSK petition stand and what are the next steps for the nutrition industry?

Have the AERs shown any prevalence of stimulant complaints?

What’s going on in low-carb? Will it ever disappear?

Sports Nutrition

Why has the energy drink market’s growth slowed?

Will any sports beverage brand successfully challenge Gatorade?

Did the nutrition bar market continue to rebound in 2007? Which bar brands grew, which brands faltered, and why?

What brands and markets are behind the 8.4% growth in the sports nutrition supplement market in 2007?

What channels should sports nutrition brands shy away from to ensure future success?

What alternative channels for sports nutrition products retain potential for future growth and expansion?