How to know if supplements are good?
A 30-year supplement insider on what quality actually means, and the one check worth running before you buy anything.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Whether a supplement is any good comes down to whether it was made in a facility genuinely following good manufacturing practice. There is no stamp for that on a bottle. The closest thing you have is whether the company will show you its certificates of analysis, the real test results, with the real numbers. That's the Show Your Work Test. Look up the brand and see whether they publish their certificates of analysis, see if they show you their work.
The long answer in the video below →
WHAT'S IN THE VIDEO
0:00 - The 10-second quality check
1:08 Thirty years inside the industry
1:59 Two things I was wrong about
3:23 Clean vs toxic: the false dilemma
4:30 Two stories about how fear gets sold
6:05 The five steps that determine quality
9:29 How supplements are actually regulated
11:09 The industry wrote the standard first
12:45 The badge wall: what certifications really mean
14:18 Why the supplement aisle is still safe
14:56 Where quality actually varies
16:19 The Show Your Work Test
17:10 The most common quality failure in America
17:30 How we do it at Sage
The question that most ask.
What matters most with supplements?
Most people will tell you quality. Ask your doctors and they will also most likely say quality. But what does quality mean and how do you check?
Most people will tell you quality. Ask your doctors and they will also most likely say quality. But what does quality mean and how do you check?
FIVE THINGS THAT DETERMINE QUALITY
Every one of them happens before the bottle reaches you.
Quality is not a simple 'Yes' or 'No'. It's a spectrum determined by these 5 things. So when you're trying to find out if a supplement is good or not, consider these factors.
Formulation
Formulation
Who decided what goes in, and why. A marketing team working backward from the claim they wanted to make, or scientists working forward from a dose that was actually studied. Those two numbers are often different; one will formulate to maximize profit and be cheaper on the market; the other, pricier, but more effective.
Sourcing
Sourcing
Where the active ingredients come from and how it is refined by a supplier. The supply chain for this is narrower than most people imagine. Typically there are a handful of suppliers that refine ingredients for thousands of brands for pharmaceutical grade and prescription use. The supplier qualifications is the important part to pay attention to.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing
The actual making of the supplement. All the ingredients and raw materials are tested to ensure accuracy, potency, microbiology, and heavy metals. Afterwards, they are processed into their final form and tested again. This is the stuff you'll see on the packaging label, the supplement facts and ingredients.
Packaging
Packaging
Packaging, including amber glass, foil seals, desiccant liners, and oxygen absorbers, is designed to keep the product fresh and untouched from light, heat, moisture, and oxygen. A quality supplement will have the right packaging for it's form.
Shipping and storage
Shipping and storage
A bottle sits in a truck, a warehouse, and on a porch. For most products this is irrelevant. For live organisms and oils that oxidize, it isn't. Which is an argument for buying things that turn over quickly. Pay attention to how long it's been waiting for a buyer and check it's expiry date.
When the bottle gets to you
When the bottle is in your hands, you may notice one or several badges or seals. They look official and do certify something, but you may be wondering what.
When the bottle gets to you
When the bottle is in your hands, you may notice one or several badges. They look official and do certify something, but you may be wondering what.
What the certifications actually tell you
Most badges on a label are answering a question you didn't ask. That doesn't make them worthless, it makes them answers to questions about values, farming, faith or packaging rather than about whether the product is any good.
Certification |
Certifies |
The question it answers |
Quality or values? |
|---|---|---|---|
Third-party GMP |
The facility |
Does this plant follow documented manufacturing procedures? |
Quality: the closest thing to the signal that matters |
NSF/ANSI 173 |
The product, reviewed annually |
Did it match its label and pass contaminant limits at review? |
Quality: a periodic snapshot, not batch-by-batch |
USP Verified |
Product + facility, annually |
Same, plus retesting of product bought off retail shelves |
Quality: the most rigorous, and very few products carry it |
NSF Certified for Sport |
Every production lot |
Is this lot free of substances banned in competition? |
Quality (narrow purpose): one of the few that speaks to your actual bottle |
Informed Sport |
Every batch |
Same, different certifier |
Quality (narrow purpose): speaks to your actual bottle |
SQF |
The site |
Is the facility managing food safety hazards? |
Safety, not potency |
GOED monograph |
The product |
Is this fish oil below defined oxidation limits? |
Quality, one category |
USDA Organic |
Agricultural inputs |
How was it farmed? |
Values. Does not require heavy-metal testing |
Non-GMO Project Verified |
Practices |
Were GMO ingredients avoided? |
Values |
Kosher / Halal |
Ingredients and process |
Does it meet religious requirements? |
Values |
Gluten-free |
The product |
Is gluten below the threshold? |
Values for most people. Decisive for celiac disease. |
Clean Label Project |
Mixed |
Depends which program — they run both self-funded studies and a paid certification |
Read carefully |
Regulation
There is no pre-approval for supplements
There is no pre-approval for supplements
Nobody at the FDA reviews a finished product and signs off before it goes onto a shelf for sale. Anyone can make anything in their garage and then sell it legally. That may sound scary, but there are some guidelines in place. Any new ingredients must notify the FDA so they can review the safety reasoning. Keep in mind this isn't an approval, it just gives the FDA a chance to object.
Some ingredients are covered as generally recognized as safe, the so called GRAS, and companies can affirm GRAS themselves. This guideline only covers whether a product is safe, not it's efficacy, whether it works or not.
No Federal Authority actually checks if a product does what it is advertised to do.
It is on the Brand/Company itself to follow rules for good manufacturing practices: testing ingredients, written specifications, batch records, & what you're allowed to claim on the label. The FDA will inspect this as best they can and will enforce it after the fact.
The supplement industry essentially regulates itself.
Dr. Jeffrey Bland & the Natural Products Quality Assurance Alliance (NPQAA)
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who later spent a dozen years as Chief Science Officer of Metagenics, convened this industry alliance in 1994–95 with the goal to establish a standard quality guideline to follow on how to test, validate, and verify components across multiple supplement categories. This guideline was sent to Senator Orrin Hatch and it was entered into the Federal Registry where it became part of the supporting record behind the law that governs supplements today. This shows that the people passionate about vitamins, herbs, and food supplements in this industry is serious about providing safety and transparency and want good manufacturing practices to not be optional.
How do I determine if a Brand/Company is following good manufacturing processes?
How do I determine if a Brand/Company is following good manufacturing practices?
You typically won't be able to find the answer by just looking at the bottle. If you look on a company's packaging, the closest things you'll get is the supplement facts with ingredient dosage and one or many badges for certification.
One thing to look up on your own is to see if the company lists their Certificate of Analysis (COA) anywhere. The Certificate of Analysis is actually what gives you a clearer picture of the testing done on the supplement and how closely it reflects what it is marketing. It is done by an independent 3rd party and shows the testing method along with it's limits and numbers. It tells you if this was made well, does it have the right ingredients, and is it in the right amounts.
Companies are not legally required to publish their COAs, so anyone that does, shows that they have nothing to hide and have trust in their product.
WHERE QUALITY GENUINELY VARIES
Supplements are not like wine. Nothing sitting on a shelf is getting better while it waits. Some supplements will degrade more than others with time and handling.
Hard to ruin:
Mineral salts like magnesium and calcium. Most amino acids. These are chemically stable enough that ordinary handling doesn't do much to them.
Worth paying attention to:
Probiotics — you're buying living organisms. Strain identity matters, and so does the count at expiry rather than at manufacture.
Fish oil — oxidizes. Freshness and packaging are real variables, and a strong fishy smell is a signal, not a given.
Botanicals — standardization varies enormously between suppliers. Two bottles of the same herb are not necessarily the same product.
Enzymes — proteins, and they degrade.
Vitamin C — degrades with oxygen and moisture, and faster when it shares a tablet with iron or zinc, because those metals catalyze the reaction.
The difference that matters more than purity:
Form and Dose
Supplements can come in many forms such as Magnesium. Some brands use magnesium oxide and others opt for magnesium glycinate. Magnesium oxide and magnesium glycinate aren't a quality difference, they're a formulation decision, and which one is right depends entirely on what you're trying to solve.
Pricing doesn't matter as much
Price will not always tell you if one bottle is better than another. I've seen two bottles built from the same raw materials, filled by the same soft gel manufacturer, packaged at the same packager, sold at two times the price difference. Many times, you're just paying for the brand name.
Additional things to consider
1. Proprietary blends that hide doses
1. Proprietary blends that hide doses
Very untrustworthy and unhelpful since the dose determines if an ingredient will have any effect.
2. Pixie Dusting
2. Pixie Dusting
Where the ingredient is technically present, but it's at a dose that does practically nothing.
3. No expiration date
3. No expiration date
Not knowing when something will expire is not only unhelpful, but a sign the company hasn't committed to anything.
4. Making a claim about treating a disease
4. Making a claim about treating a disease
Supplements can't treat diseases, they can only support your health.
Remember This
THE SHOW YOUR WORK TEST
Anybody can print a claim on a label. Only some companies will show you what the testing actually found.
1. Look up the brand and see whether they publish their certificates of analysis.
A company that puts its actual test results where you can read them is telling you the testing happened, that they're not afraid of the numbers, and that somebody there decided you were entitled to see them. Most companies quietly decide otherwise.
When you find one, look for three things: the test methods, the specification limits, and the actual results. A document that says "pass" without numbers isn't telling you anything.
2. Turn the bottle over.
The front is marketing. The back is fact. Is there a real dose of the thing you came for, or a proprietary blend hiding it? Is the ingredient list simple enough that you'd know what worked? Is there a date on it?
3. Then the rule that beats all of it.
Buy the product with the ingredient that solves your actual problem, in a format you'll actually take. Put it where you'll see it. Buy a size you'll finish.
The most common quality failure isn't a bad batch. It's a good bottle expiring unopened in a cabinet.
WHAT WE DO
WHAT WE DO
Dr. Jeffrey Bland was a mentor of Brent Eck. When Brent started running Metagenics, he inherited the culture of making supplements properly and carried this into Sage.
We don't carry a wall of certifications and we don't publish a list of scary ingredients we've decided to avoid. Both are marketing, and the video explains why.
What we do is the part that isn't visible: the right form of each ingredient at a dose the research actually used, suppliers we've audited and independently tested, manufacturing under GMP, controlled storage.
And we publish our certificates of analysis, which is the thing this video just told you to go check on every company, including us.
GET THE GUIDE
Where paying more is worth it, and where it isn't.
A category-by-category breakdown across the products people actually buy, plus a one-page table decoding what every certification on a label is really telling you.
Free. One email, no sequence you have to escape from.
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