Investing in a nutrition product is about investing in your health, and you can’t do that if you’re looking for the cheapest product out there. Different brands have different standards when it comes to quality, sources and label transparency. Unfortunately, many brands are promoting less-than-healthy products disguised as health boosters. You have to push past a brand’s marketing hype and find out what those standards are and what results real, unbiased users are getting from their product. Here are three little-known tips for choosing the best nutrition products on the market:
1. Find Out What Science Says
Some brands get away with lying about their product or its benefits, but hard science can’t lie. Look for scientific evidence that backs up the claims of a nutrition product before you purchase it. You can type a search entry into pubmed.gov to scan the largest database of medical studies from credible journals. You might find studies on a man-made supplement or natural herb that yield inconclusive or contradicting results. However, if research shows that a supplement improved health outcomes in real people, what better validation could you ask for?
2. Check for Product Reviews on YouTube
Another way to get the inside story is to find authentic product reviews on YouTube. Video reviews tend to be more in-depth, and it’s easy to spot an honest consumer versus a sponsored ad or affiliate marketer. Even if it’s a sponsored video or a video made by the brand itself, you may find insightful feedback on the product from real users in the comments section. For example, you can find information about Amway’s line of Nutrilite nutrition products on their YouTube channel and see what people are saying about them.
3. Learn How It Was Manufactured
The FDA doesn’t regulate dietary supplements the way it regulates drugs, which means there’s never a total guarantee of effectiveness, or even safety. In fact, there’s not much holding a brand accountable for staying true to its product’s labeling. That means you have to do your research on a supplement before you buy it. Third party testing and certifications allow you to cut through the heavy digging by telling you that a product meets their standards. Perhaps the most well-recognized third-party tester is USP. A USP-verified product is a product that contains what it says it contains in its ingredients, and at the concentration indicated on the label. USP also checks for contaminants, such as heavy metals and microbes. You can use third parties like USP, ConsumerLab.com and Labdoor to help you do your research on supplements.
If a product doesn’t have any third-party certifications, you can contact the company to find out about its manufacturing process. You’ll want to ask about its safety practices and determine if quality is measured at each stage in the manufacturing process.
Finding Quality Products
If you wouldn’t put your health in the hands of an unqualified doctor, you wouldn’t want to chance it with under-qualified health products either. Many nutrition product companies have highly effective marketing strategies, yet their products have less-than-effective health outcomes. Before you make a purchase, you want to find out what real, unbiased users of the product are saying, whether or not the company’s claims are backed by science, and how the product stacks up against third-party standards for safety and quality.
