How to Rate Diet Supplements
Dietary supplements are a massive industry: According to an article from Reuters.com, the U.S. supplement industry alone is worth $22.5 billion per year. Supplements are supposedly designed to help you reach your dieting and nutritional goals faster and more efficiently than you could without, but a discerning consumer will always try to rate supplements before spending money blindly, avoiding the trap of purchasing a supplement that looks good on paper but fails to live up to its marketing hype.
- Difficulty:
- Moderately Easy
Instructions
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Diet Supplement Rating
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1
Consider and evaluate the label claims of the product in comparison to other similarly situated products in the industry to determine whether the product is founded on fact or hyperbole. If the claims made by the manufacturer are generally in accord with the claims made by rival companies selling the same or a similar product, the supplement in question is more likely to be legitimate.
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2
Read the promotional material, and mentally separate it into two categories: fact and promotional propaganda. Ignore all of the descriptive adjectives and flowery language to reach the core of the matter--ignoring reference to "amazing gains," "lightning-quick fat loss" and any other phraseology designed to evoke an emotional response from the reader. If the marketing material contains reference to scientific studies, consult the studies to make sure they actually reach the same conclusions the product's manufacturer says they do. You can likely ignore any supplement that has no basis in science (or one that refuses to provide information on supporting studies)--this is a shortcut to cull away most (but not all) of the supplement scams.
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3
Read user reviews on the product to determine whether individuals are experiencing results similar to those claimed. Be wary of any reviews listed on the manufacturer's site, as certain companies will delete or heavily moderate unfavorable reviews. Even if you are on a seemingly unbiased site, you will still want to ignore the positive reviews (as these could have been easily ghostwritten and planted by the product's maker). Read only the negative and neutral reviews to get a sense of what individuals found lacking with the product and why that was the case to rate supplements more accurately.
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4
Conduct your own research on the ingredients to determine whether there is any merit to the manufacturer's claims. PubMed is a free site where you can find studies on any number of substances. Between that and strictly using Google searching, you should be able to ferret out whether the listed ingredients actually produce any effect at all.
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