SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it's settled its first action against a marketer who used fake paid reviews to boost sales of its product on Amazon.
The FTC had accused Cure Encapsulations of paying AmazonVerifiedReviews.com to write and post fake reviews to maintain an average Amazon rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars for the company's garcinia cambogia weight-loss supplement. The agency had also accused the company of making false and unsubstantiated claims, including reviews that said the product caused weight loss of two or more pounds each and "literally blocks fat from forming."
[...] Under the terms of the proposed settlement, Cure Encapsulations is barred from making claims about the health benefits of dietary supplements without supporting clinical evidence. The defendants are also required to notify its customers of the allegations against it and identify for Amazon which reviews it purchased.
A $12.8 million judgment was levied against Cure Encapsulations, but it will be suspended when the company pays $50,000 to the FTC and fulfills other tax obligations. The full amount of the judgment will be immediately due if the commission finds the company misrepresented its financial condition.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:16PM (2 children)
As I've heard it, "multivitamins do nothing but turn your urine orange if you're eating a healthy, well-balanced diet".
Which is good to know, but not really relevant to most people. What I want to know is, is a multivitamin useful if you're *not* eating a healthy well-balanced diet? Because I don't know very many people that actually do that, and can personally say that quite often multivitamins *don't* turn my urine orange, so presumably my body is extracting something useful from them. And I've heard that the majority of American's suffer from a vitamin-D deficiency, and almost as many from an iron deficiency, so taking such supplements is probably a good idea for most people. And I don't recall any big problems with such things.
As you get into herbal and "mystery" stuff though, things definitely get iffy. DNA analysis has shown that even the big brands are likely to be shipping mostly grass clippings with little if any of the claimed ingredient. And they don't list potentially serious interactions with even very common medications.
As one example, St. Johns Wort is a commonly used antidepressant that's been shown to be roughly as effective as prescription antidepressants against mild and moderate depression. It can also neutralize hormonal birth control. Something you might find in the fine print on page 27 of the original birth control instructions, but that I've never seen on a package of St. John's Wort.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spamalope on Wednesday February 27 2019, @06:18PM (1 child)
Yep. There are a few like that which work pretty well, although not really in the diet supplement category.
Valarian root is a good sleep aid, and it's got some kind of action that keeps me from needing prescription muscle relaxers though that takes a week or two of using it as a sleeping pill to really kick in. (and about as long to wear off) I use it with Benadryl as a sleep aid and don't have the terrible side effects of Ambion. (that stuff is caused memory fixing and recall problems for me and everyone else I've talked to who took it - several took it longer and had amnesiatic episodes, sometimes while asleep - that whole Roseanne thing, she really could have been having a nightmare on the stuff)
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday February 27 2019, @08:38PM
I've had good results with Gingko and Ginseng as well, although I bought the herbs in bulk and made tea rather than buying pills. Epimedium can be fun as well. And of course Valerian and Chamomile are great for sleep (although personally I find Valerian to be a bit too strong for me, knocks me out well but then I have trouble getting up the next morning). One of the other major issues with supplement pills is that they frequently don't actually contain what they claim to contain. I forget exactly which herb it was, but I recall one that I was looking into a few years ago where part of the plant is therapeutic and part was toxic (leaves vs roots or leaves vs flowers, something like that)...and of course most of the common supplement brands contained both parts. Or some of them just contain sawdust or some other filler. So I think you're much better off if you buy bulk herbs and make a tea from it or something like that, the dosage might not be quite as consistent in theory, but in practice the dosage in those pills could be absolutely anything.
As for vitamins...My girlfriend just got a trio of vitamin pills prescribed by her doctor, and she's on medicare too so I kinda doubt they'd be willing to pay for those if there was any doubt as to their effectiveness. The biggest problem with those AIUI is simply that your body can't typically absorb that much that quickly, so a large percentage of it does go straight through. I've got some multivitamins that I take sporadically which seem to help when my diet gets particularly atrocious...but I like to break 'em in half to spread the dose out a bit as well, which I assume probably helps a bit....