Fat incinerator. Metabolism booster. Thermo activator. Some over-the-counter sports supplements advertise ingredients with purported performance-enhancing properties, but it’s anyone’s guess what’s really in that pill or powder.
“I just had to shake my head,” says Pieter Cohen, a primary care doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance in Somerville, Mass. “It’s incredible that in 40 percent of the products, the manufacturer doesn’t even bother putting any [of the ingredient] in.”
Cohen and his colleagues chemically analyzed 57 sports supplements with labels that listed R. vomitoria, methylliberine, halostachine, octopamine or turkesterone — plants or plant compounds that could potentially serve as stimulants or muscle-builders. Only 34 contained the ingredient claimed. Six had about the right amount; 28 had inaccurate amounts that varied wildly, from 0.02 percent to 334 percent of the quantity indicated on the label.
“That’s alarming,” says Luis Rustveld, a dietician and epidemiologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who was not involved with the work. Some people may be very sensitive to these ingredients he says, and “they may be getting a whole lot more than they thought.”
2023-07-26 07:00:00
Link from www.sciencenews.org