Let’s face it: there are too many brands and products in the supplements industry and the marketing spin is overwhelming.
Here are five easy tips to help you choose good supplements:
Brand reputation matters a lot
There are now tens of thousands of supplements brands on the market, all selling very similar products, and all claiming to be the best.
The vast majority of those brands are only a few years old and are barely brands at all. They are just private labels on mass-manufactured products of dubious quality.
The best way to cut down on the noise is to simply choose to order only from good brands. Go with brands that have been around a while and are respected. Unlike the fly-by-nights, those companies have a lot to lose and want to protect their reputation for quality.
Online reviews are not reliable
Do not trust online reviews. The dirty secret in the industry is that many reviews are fake or untrustworthy for other reasons.
As an example, consider Amazon. While Amazon wants to clean up its reviews and is honestly trying to do so, many fly-by-night brands have learned to get exposure there by gaming the review system.
Many “review” sites that you find online are not really review sites at all. They are simply paid advertisements for different brands in which the brands paying the most money very coincidently get the best ratings.
Reviews have become a very dishonest way to manipulate customers. Don’t fall for them.
Anecdotal evidence is not strong evidence
When your aunt tells you about a supplement that made her feel 20 again, nod your head but be skeptical. Anecdotes are, at best, weak evidence of a product’s effectiveness.
The truth is that health is complicated. There are hundreds of factors that affect health situations. Your aunt may have more energy because of the supplement, but it could also be that she had an extra cup of coffee that morning or perhaps she just got some good news that day that lightened her mood.
Don’t discount testimonials completely, but take them with a gigantic grain of salt. Improvements in health can often be as simple as giving your body time to heal itself or even the placebo effect. In fact, the placebo effect sells a lot of supplements.
Good products have scientific backing
Supplement companies use several different strategies to sell products. Sometimes, they tell a supplement with sizzle such as an exotic story. Sometimes, they use dubious testimonials. Sometimes, they use the historical use of an herb in the supplement.
Just because an ancient tribe in the Amazon used an herb to heal a medical condition does not mean it was effective. There have been lots of crazy health remedies in the history of every civilization.
Here is something you need to know: virtually every ingredient used in every supplement has clinical studies done on them. You can find these studies online
If you are willing to pay a bit, Examine.com is a great resource for researching the clinical studies on most popular ingredients in supplements. They consolidate all the studies and assign a letter grade to the ingredient for each health condition it is used to remedy. We use Examine.com a lot in our own research.
In the end of the day, good products can be shown to be effective with real scientific research. Don’t fall for the fables, lore, and sizzle. Ask for the science.
Quality and price are often not correlated
There is a perception in the industry that good products cost a lot. Sometimes that is true, but very often, it is not.
Here’s why: the biggest expense in selling a product is not the cost of making the product. The biggest expense by far is the marketing of the product.
For that reason, the way a product is marketed has far more impact on the selling price than the quality of the product itself.
Companies that sell directly to the consumer (DTC) have the highest marketing costs. In fact, over half of the price they charge is spent on marketing and only 10-20% is spent on the product itself.
Very often, if you are considering a popular product that you are seeing all over Instagram, you can find equivalent products at a lower price if you do some research. Quality, established brands are often a far better value because they are not having to spend as much on marketing.