 In this video, I'll look into weight loss supplements if you're interested in more on weight loss. Look no further than my book, How Not to Diets, and of course, lots of videos. If you go to nutritionfacts.org and just type in weight loss in the search bar, you can watch it to your heart's content. According to a national survey, third of adults who've made serious attempts at weight loss have tried using dietary supplements for which Americans spend literally billions of dollars every year. Most mistakenly thought that over-the-counter appetite suppressants, herbal products, and weight loss supplements had to be approved for safety by some governmental agency like the FDA before being sold to the public, or at least include some kind of warning on the label about potential side effects. Nearly half even thought they had to demonstrate some sort of effectiveness. None of that is true. The Food and Drug Administration estimates that dietary supplements in general cause 50,000 adverse events annually, most commonly liver and kidney damage. Of course prescription drugs don't just adversely affect but kill more than 100,000 Americans every year, but at least you notionally have the opportunity to parse out the risks versus benefits thanks to testing and monitoring requirements, typically involving thousands of individuals. When the manufacturer of the ephedrine containing supplement Metabolife 356 had it tested on just 35 people, only minor side effects were found, such as dry mouths, insomnia, and headaches. However, once unleashed on the populace, nearly 15,000 adverse effects were reported before it was pulled from the market, including heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and deaths. Given the lack of government oversight, there's no guarantee that what's on the label is even in the bottle. FDA inspectors have found 70% of supplement manufacturers have violated so-called good manufacturing practices, which are considered the minimum quality standards. This includes things like basic sanitation and ingredient identification, not 7% in violation, 70%. DNA testing of herbal supplements across North America found that most could not be authenticated, and 68% of the supplements tested the main labeled ingredient was missing completely and substituted for something else. For example, a quote-unquote St. John's Ward supplement contained nothing but senna, a laxative that can cause anal blistering. Only two out of 12 supplement companies had products that were accurately labeled. This problem isn't limited to just fly-by-night phonies in some dark corner of the internet. The New York State Attorney General commissioned DNA testing of 78 bottles of commercial herbal supplements sold by Walgreens, Walmart, Target, GNC. Four out of five bottles didn't contain any of the herbs on their labels. Instead, capsules were often little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice and house plants. In my last video, I noted that one investigation found four out of five bottles of commercial herbal supplements bought at major retailers didn't contain any of the herbs on their labels, instead often containing little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice and house plants. At least you hope it just contains house plants. Weight loss supplements are infamous for being adulterated with drugs. In a sampling of 160 weight loss supplements that claim to be 100% natural, more than half were tainted with drugs, active pharmacological ingredients, ranging from antidepressants like Prozac to rectile dysfunction meds like Viagra. Diuretic drugs are frequent contaminants, which makes sense in my keto videos. I talk about rapid water losses, that billion-dollar gimmick that has sold low-carb diets for more than a century, but why the Viagra? At least the spiked Viagra and Prozac are drugs that are legal. Researchers in Denver tested every weight loss supplement they could find within a 10-mile radius, and alarmingly found a third were adulterated with banned ingredients. The most common illegal adulterant of weight loss supplements is Subutramine, which was sold as meridia before it was yanked off the market back in 2010 for heart attacks and stroke risk. Now, also blamed for cases of a slimming supplement induced psychosis. An analysis of weight loss supplements bought off the internet, advertised with claims such as purely natural, harmless, or traditional herbal, found that a third contained high-dose banned Subutramine, and the rest contained caffeine. Wouldn't you be able to tell if caffeine was added to a supplement? Perhaps not, if it also had Tamazepam added. Controlled substance Benzodiazepine down or sedative found in half of the caffeine-tainted supplements. Doesn't the FDA demand recalls of adulterated supplements? Yeah, but they just pop right back on store shelves. 27 supplements purchased at least six months after the recalls were released, and two-thirds still contained banned substances. 17 out of the 27, with the same pharmaceutical adulterant found originally in six containing one or more additional banned ingredients. Aren't the manufacturers penalized for non-compliance? Yes, but fines for violations are small compared to the profits. One of the ways supplement makers can skirt the law is by labeling them as not intended for human consumption. For example, labeling the fatal fat burner DNP as an industrial or research chemical. That's like how designer street drugs can be sold openly at gas stations and convenience stores as bath salts. On other ways to claim synthetic stimulants added to slimming supplements are actually natural food constituents, like listing the designer drug Dimethylamylamine as geranium oil extract. The FDA banned it in 2012 after it was determined that DMAA was not found in geraniums. And who eats geraniums anyway? Despite being tentatively tied to cases of sudden death and hemorrhagic stroke, DMAA has continued to be found in weight loss supplements with innocuous names like simply skinny pollen made by beefit with Trish. There's little doubt that certain banned supplements like ephedra could help people lose weight. There's only one problem, wrote a founding member of the American Board of Integrative Medicine. This supplement may kill you. Are there any safe and effective dietary supplements for weight loss? When popular slimming supplements were put to the test in a randomized placebo-controlled trial, not a single one could beat out sugar pills. A systematic review of systematic reviews of diet pills came to a similar conclusion. None appear to generate appreciable impacts on body weight without undue risks. That was the conclusion reached in a similar review out of the Weight Management Center at Johns Hopkins recently, which ended with this. It is fitting to highlight that perhaps the most general and safest alternative herbal approach to weight control is to substitute low-calorie density foods for high-calorie density and processed foods, thereby reducing total calorie intake. In other words, more whole-plant foods and fewer animal foods, and junk. By taking advantage of the low-calorie density and health-promoting effects of plant-based foods, we may be able to achieve weight loss, or at least assist weight maintenance, without cutting down on the volume of food consumed or compromising its nutrient value.