The federal government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for overseeing the safety of consumable foods and medicines in the United States. While “supplements” occupy a sort of gray area when it comes to regulation, the FDA does still have some regulatory authority.
In a recent article by Reuters, it is reported that many supplements that are still available for sale through online outlets have, in fact, been recalled by the FDA for their links to dangerous conditions such as cancer, heart attacks, and strokes. According to the article, more than half of the supplements tainted with “bad drugs” were still available for sale. The supplements with the most often adulterated pharmaceuticals are weight loss drugs, sports enhancement drugs, and sexual enhancement drugs.
One of the authors of the study told reporters that they tested 27 supplements that had been banned by the FDA for containing some banned ingredient. The researchers purchased the supplements between eight months and four years after the FDA tested the supplements’ make-up and determined that they were unsafe.