Jane Black

But unless the FDA is aware of an imminent hazard or they do their own testing and can prove that a supplement is unsafe, which takes years and lots of money, the FDA can't take a product off the market.

But the Federal Trade Commission can bring a case against them for false advertising.

But people are still buying it.

It's currently in the top five of Amazon's list of blended vitamin and mineral supplements.

Take green tea supplements.

That sounds like a thing that just grows in nature, but the green tea in your supplement is rarely the actual leaves that you see in your teabag.

Or turmeric supplements.

They often contain 10 times the amount recommended by the World Health Organization.

After the break, we're talking about the regular, everyday, familiar herbal supplements and vitamins that so many of us have in our kitchens right now.

Yeah.

Marion is basically a legend in the food, nutrition, supplement world.

She has a background in molecular biology, has written 17 books on the politics of food and supplements, and has been a public health advocate for decades.

For Marion, it's not just that supplements are unregulated when it comes to the safety of their ingredients.

She's worried about an even more basic problem.

Like, what even are the ingredients?

Technically, supplements are supposed to contain what they say they do.

Yeah, because the FDA will sometimes spot check food ingredients to make sure they're for real.

But on a supplement... You have no way of knowing.

And, and, sometimes supplements have stuff in there that really shouldn't be in there.

And they have found similar variations in echinacea supplements and elderberry supplements.