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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You may have noticed we're living in the midst of a supplement craze. People are Vitamaxing, biohacking so they can live longer. Everyone's talking about gut health.
I feel very aware of my gut health right now. It's true. The supplement industry is a $70 billion industry in the United States and growing fast. We are talking... Protein powders, pre-workouts, probiotics, fat burners.
There's joint health, gut health. There's glowing skin. I love glowing skin.
Better sleep, stronger nails, all of that.
75% of Americans take supplements. A lot of people.
Like 100,000 different options you can choose from. Now, supplements are everything from creatine or bovine colostrum, sometimes put in a martini, to your daily vitamin C gummies or echinacea. And because there are so many supplements out there, we kind of wanted to see, like, how easy it is to get a new supplement pill or gummy on the market. Like, could we make a supplement?
Okay, what if we want to make a supplement?
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Chapter 2: What is driving the supplement craze in America?
Capsules, tablets, powders, soft gels, gummies.
And then brands or influencers or podcasts sell them under their own labels.
I think it would be cool to have like a little microphone-shaped gummy or a little planet or a little money gummy.
Okay.
A money gummy?
We could do those.
Or maybe we do a powder that you just like add water to and down it real quick. And it's called the money shot. The money shot is the perfect name.
First and foremost, I think what's important would be to define the market.
Frank really wanted us to think about our Planet Money audience and what supplement you find people might want. You know, smart, busy, capable people.
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Chapter 3: How has the supplement industry grown in recent years?
No one does just kiwi. Oh, it's not good on its own. They do strawberry kiwi.
We talked colors. Ours would be green, of course. And right there on the spot, we got an estimate. For the smallest possible order of our fully customized, I would argue very tasty, supplement.
It's going to be around 8,333 bottles. Based upon the ingredients we're talking about, it's going to range from like $4.50 to $7.
$4 times 8,300-ish bottles to $33,000, and then you do half up front.
Which is not that bad if you're looking to start your own business, but there is a cheaper option, too.
For our stock formulas, you're in the game for, you know, $5,500.
Yeah, they do have more than 800 gummies and pills and powders ready to go already. These are their stock options that we can just slap our own Planet Money label on and call it our special Planet Money energy supplement, even though this exact same gummy, same color, same flavor, same shape is being sold already by someone else under a different label.
Be happy to send you samples right after this call and you can try that energy gummy on the website.
Yep. They even had an energy gummy with green tea in it.
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges in regulating supplements?
And a fat-soluble soft gel. 15 grams of creatine before my second call.
Frank, this is so many supplements.
It's not as many as you would think. It's like, on a given day, six or seven.
This week on Consider This, the drama at CBS News. Some of the most respected journalists in America say their corporate ownership is bowing to political pressure. It's intimidation. They've created a climate of fear to make the news organization unwilling to tackle the problem and report the news. Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Croft, this week on Consider This.
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Okay, we are not here to prove or disprove whether supplements work, but we do want to say that experts and scientists tend to agree there is no evidence that supplements make healthy people healthier.
If you're pregnant, there is evidence that folic acid decreases the risk of certain birth defects. And if you have a condition or you're deficient in something like you're anemic or deficient in iron, then yeah, sure, an iron supplement could help with that if a doctor recommends it. But if you're not deficient, then you probably don't need it.
Frank Cantone, the supplement maker who takes not that many supplements every day, he is a big believer in supplements. Frank came to the supplement business from the real estate and clothing and thoroughbred racehorse trainer business. And his social media is still pretty horse heavy.
I just get vitamins ads and horse ads. That's all I got.
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Chapter 5: What happens when supplement regulations are proposed?
And recently, they tested a bunch of turmeric pills on the market and found that one had no turmeric, basically, and others had more than even advertised.
And they have found similar variations in echinacea supplements and elderberry supplements. Consumer Labs found that more than two-thirds of elderberry supplements sold on Amazon did not contain authentic elderberry at all.
This is true of every supplement. Well, maybe not every, but... I can't think of a single supplement... that Consumer Lab has investigated where it hasn't found wide variation.
According to a 2017 study, 20% of liver toxicity cases were tied to herbal and dietary supplements.
Over most of the last 30 years, supplement-related liver failure increased eightfold, so much so that people started having to be put on wait lists for liver transplants. That might be because of user error, like people taking a bunch of these supplements in a day thinking more must be better, but maybe it's other reasons. It's really hard to pinpoint.
Marion says there are some supplements on the shelves that are maybe more trustworthy than others if they're marked with An NSF or USP, that indicates that they've been third-party tested, that the supplements do contain the ingredients listed, and that the amounts are accurate and not at harmful levels. Remember Frank, our supplement maker? His supplements are NSF certified.
And Marion thinks it is pretty important to point out that most supplements, whether they are certified or not, likely are not causing any real harm, even if they likely aren't causing any benefit.
Some of them are harmful, and that's a problem. But most of them are not particularly harmful. So there's a little risk, but it's not a big risk.
I mean, to be honest, that kind of surprised me. I mean, Marian Nestle, woman of science, you would think would be rabidly anti-supplement. Honestly, she's kind of like... Do whatever you want, people.
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Chapter 6: What are the risks associated with taking supplements?
Did she just say supplements make people feel better?
Yeah, but it's not necessarily because their ingredients actually do what they say they'll do.
Yeah, it's this other thing. It has a fabulous placebo effect.
Yeah, you feel like your vitamin C gummy helps you not catch a cold, and then you don't catch a cold. Placebos, baby.
Magic. There's plenty of evidence that supplements are fabulous placebos. And, in fact, I can tell you a story about a study that proved that. But it doesn't matter. Life is really hard these days. And if all it takes is a supplement pill to make people feel better, I'm not going to argue too much about it. I love placebos. Yeah, I do too. They're so powerful. I do too. I do too.
So if you're going to buy supplements, you buy from the most reputable company you can find and keep your fingers crossed.
Just cross your fingers, Jane. Thank you so much, Marianne. I'm feeling good about this. I'm feeling really good.
You know what gets me about all this, Jane? If supplement makers were to just be like fully transparent, right? They put on the bottle, there might not be that much turmeric in here and it may cause liver damage and it may not even be anti-inflammatory. Like we're suggesting, I don't even think that would stop people from buying them.
Yeah, probably not. I mean, we've got a hundred years of history that says nothing is going to come between Americans and their supplements.
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