Health Ranger - Mike Adams - DOJ indicts dishonest dietary supplement maker for false labeling, claims (part 2 of 4)
Aired: 2018-03-22
Duration: 13:30


=== Precision Munitions in Supplements (02:58) ===

[00:00:04]  So continuing with our discussion of the U.S. Department of Justice announcing criminal charges and civil penalties also against a couple of dietary supplement makers, let's talk about who's actually getting nailed here in the previous segment of this talknetwork.com report.
[00:00:22]  I described really the targets of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FDA, the FTC, and the DOD. And I also stated, perhaps in a surprising way, that I tend to agree with most of...
[00:00:37]  What these agencies have done in this case, they really crack down on just the worst criminal scam companies out there that are just completely dishonest.
[00:00:47]  They're lying about what's in their product.
[00:00:49]  They're using banned chemicals.
[00:00:51]  They're calling chemicals natural plant extracts when they aren't.
[00:00:56]  They are using just crazy, exaggerated, wild claims in their marketing materials.
[00:01:01]  A lot of them are just really dishonest at every level.
[00:01:06]  As someone who is an advocate of honest, ethical dietary supplements and superfoods, I've known for a long time, especially since I started running my heavy metals analysis lab two years ago, I've known for a long time that there's a lot of shady practices in the industry, so At one level, I'm very glad to see this crackdown on the worst offenders.
[00:01:28]  And it really is just targeting the very worst offenders.
[00:01:31]  Again, this wasn't an attack on the entire industry, not by a long shot.
[00:01:35]  This was a very targeted, almost a precision, what do you call it in the military, precision munitions.
[00:01:43]  This was a guided laser munitions.
[00:01:45]  Bombing attack on just a few companies, maybe 20 or 30 companies that are really kind of the worst offenders out there.
[00:01:53]  And one of them, according to the Department of Justice, is a company called USP Labs.
[00:01:58]  And they're actually based in Texas.
[00:02:00]  And I don't even know where in Texas they are.
[00:02:04]  I'm on their website right now.
[00:02:06]  They're somewhere in Texas.
[00:02:08]  And I'm looking at their homepage, and they have a product called Jack3D.
[00:02:14]  The Ultimate Pre-Workout Training Matrix.
[00:02:20]  And it's called New Kick-Ass Flavor.
[00:02:24]  That's a dragon berry.
[00:02:26]  Anyway, it's called Jack 3D. That right there, just whenever the word jacked is in a product or stacked, you know, jacked or stacked or whatever, those are kind of red flags that some of their products might be Really exaggerated in their marketing claims.
[00:02:45]  There's a lot of that.
[00:02:46]  And their homepage is full of muscle-bound bodybuilders, gym rats, as we sometimes call bodybuilders who just hang out in the gym and pump iron.

=== Caffeine Contained (10:42) ===

[00:02:58]  But they don't know how to swing an axe and chop wood, by the way.
[00:03:01]  They don't have any functional strength.
[00:03:04]  Anyway, USP Labs, if you look at what they have, they have EpiBurn Pro.
[00:03:12]  They have creatine, amino lift.
[00:03:15]  They have some protein products, some BCAA, which is probably fine, branched chain amino acids.
[00:03:21]  Let's see what their EpiBurn Pro product contains.
[00:03:25]  Okay, here we go.
[00:03:28]  EpiBurn Pro Supplement Facts.
[00:03:32]  Let's see, a root extract, another leaf extract that looks like olive leaf, Yohimbe.
[00:03:41]  Yeah, that doesn't look like any problem in that, except, let's see.
[00:03:44]  Oh, this product contains caffeine.
[00:03:46]  Here we go.
[00:03:47]  Simulants such as caffeine may cause a mild transient increase, blah, blah, blah.
[00:03:52]  Oh, yeah, here we go.
[00:03:53]  Caffeine, 100 milligrams per capsule?
[00:03:58]  Yeah.
[00:04:00]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:01]  Okay, one capsule.
[00:04:02]  Here we go.
[00:04:04]  100 milligrams per capsule.
[00:04:05]  Okay, so if someone's slamming six capsules, that's like 600 milligrams of caffeine.
[00:04:11]  That's a lot of caffeine.
[00:04:13]  So obviously caffeine is a big issue.
[00:04:15]  Personally I would never sell anything with added refined caffeine in it.
[00:04:19]  There might be some natural caffeine obviously in certain coffee products or certain Some herbs have kind of a natural small amount of caffeine, but I would never, ever sell something with refined, isolated caffeine.
[00:04:33]  I just think there's too much potential for abuse.
[00:04:37]  Anyway, this company, USP Labs, according to the DOJ, they've handed down criminal indictments to four executives of this company.
[00:04:46]  And one consultant as well.
[00:04:49]  I mean, criminal indictments.
[00:04:51]  Like, these people are going to jail, or I guess they're going to have to hire criminal defense attorneys.
[00:04:57]  This is going to be very, very expensive and very, you know, perhaps scary for them to go through that.
[00:05:05]  I guess, at least according to what the DOJ said, That they had sent warning letters, multiple warning letters, and that companies were just ignoring the warning letters.
[00:05:15]  So, you know, rule number one, if you're a dietary supplement manufacturer and you get a warning letter from the FDA or the FTC or the DOJ for that matter, if you get a warning letter, you know, you should probably pay attention to what the hell that letter says because, you know, warning letters kind of step one.
[00:05:32]  It's like, we don't like what you're doing.
[00:05:35]  You know, you're selling, you're mislabeling, you're misbranding, you're making disease claims.
[00:05:40]  They did mention that they don't like supplement companies claiming to treat cancer or treat Alzheimer's, which, you know, again, I have a problem with that.
[00:05:48]  There are supplements that prevent cancer.
[00:05:51]  You know, they really do exist.
[00:05:55]  But, you know, you can't make those claims under the current regulatory environment.
[00:05:58]  So we don't make any such claims.
[00:06:02]  But let's be honest, you know, vitamin D prevents cancer, right?
[00:06:05]  We know that.
[00:06:06]  Vitamin D, the scientific literature is very clear on that.
[00:06:11]  So, you know, it's like you can't even say vitamin C treats scurvy, even though scurvy is a disease of vitamin D, vitamin C deficiency.
[00:06:20]  And similarly, you can't even say that vitamin D prevents rickets, even though rickets is a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.
[00:06:27]  So if you go out there and sell vitamin D and you claim that vitamin D prevents rickets, you are now a criminal in America.
[00:06:37]  So I have a real problem with that.
[00:06:40]  You know, it seems like if the if the claim is truthful and it is backed by substantiated evidence, then you should be able to make that claim.
[00:06:48]  Yet that's just not the environment that we live in.
[00:06:51]  However, that being said, most of the focus of the FTC and the FDA and the DOJ was on these the real scumbags of the industry.
[00:07:00]  So I approve of cracking down on the worst criminals.
[00:07:08]  A con artist, really, is probably a better word.
[00:07:10]  The real hucksters who are just selling...
[00:07:14]  You know, truly adulterated products that are intentionally mislabeled and they completely ignore the warnings.
[00:07:21]  And some of them, in some cases, they said some people were harmed and they had liver failure.
[00:07:28]  And yet the companies engage in a cover-up.
[00:07:32]  At least that's what was claimed by the DOJ. I haven't obviously investigated all the claims, and I haven't talked to the other side, you know, the parties that were indicted, so I haven't heard the other side of the story.
[00:07:44]  But it wouldn't surprise me if there's some scumbags out there that are engaged in total, truly criminal type of behavior and cover-ups and so on, just because, again, that exists in every industry.
[00:07:55]  There's an element of criminality in every industry, from banking and healthcare to, I mean, you name it.
[00:08:05]  Even dietary supplements.
[00:08:06]  Hey, the food industry.
[00:08:07]  They're crazy criminal people in the food industry that sell hot dogs made out of horse meat or whatever.
[00:08:14]  So that element exists everywhere.
[00:08:18]  In any case, the takeaway from this is that you should beware of high-risk supplements.
[00:08:28]  Which are, again, weight loss with crazy claims, bodybuilding supplements with crazy claims, and doping type of supplements.
[00:08:35]  In other words, performance enhancing supplements that are made with crazy chemicals or come from companies that make outlandish crazy claims.
[00:08:47]  Let's talk about quality, quality control and safety.
[00:08:50]  Just for background, you probably know this about me already, but I am the science lab director of the Natural News Forensic Food Lab.
[00:08:58]  I'm the first person who ever discovered tungsten contamination in brown rice protein.
[00:09:02]  I'm the one who went on the Dr.
[00:09:04]  Oz show and warned about high levels of lead in brown rice protein that's manufactured...
[00:09:10]  Well, I should say it's grown in China.
[00:09:12]  It's imported into the United States and sold as organic brown rice protein.
[00:09:16]  And it's sold in Whole Foods.
[00:09:18]  And it contains lead.
[00:09:20]  And I sounded the alarm on that.
[00:09:23]  Interestingly, the FDA and the FTC, they did not even mention heavy metals in their announcement today.
[00:09:31]  Apparently, heavy metals is just not the high priority right now because they've got people selling dangerous, isolated, pharmaceutical-grade chemicals and calling them dietary supplements, and that's a real high risk.
[00:09:44]  So that's really their target right now.
[00:09:46]  But maybe one day they will crack down on toxic heavy metals in dietary supplements, perhaps.
[00:09:53]  Even if they don't, I'm going to be publishing more numbers anyway.
[00:09:57]  I've got a new lab that's just been completed.
[00:09:59]  We're adding more instrumentation to it.
[00:10:02]  We're going to be publishing numbers of what we find in off-the-shelf products.
[00:10:05]  But our focus is not just dietary supplements.
[00:10:08]  We're also looking at foods.
[00:10:09]  We're going to be looking at everything from breakfast cereals to canned soups.
[00:10:13]  We're going to buy some Campbell's soup and take a look at what's in there.
[00:10:17]  We're going to be buying a lot of popular products off-the-shelf, and we'll be telling you what's in that.
[00:10:23]  You know, like...
[00:10:24]  Chocolate bars, candy bars, stuff that children eat.
[00:10:28]  What's in that?
[00:10:28]  What's in the infant formula?
[00:10:30]  We're going to be looking at that just as much as anything in the dietary supplements and superfood industry.
[00:10:36]  But you've got to realize that in terms of GMP compliance, most of these companies, most dietary supplement companies really do not engage in GMP compliance.
[00:10:48]  So they're not testing I personally do not trust anything.
[00:11:07]  And I'm talking about foods, medicines, dietary supplements, and superfoods.
[00:11:11]  I don't trust anything until I test it in my own lab, period.
[00:11:14]  I will not go to GNC or even Whole Foods and just blindly buy something off the shelf and swallow it.
[00:11:23]  I don't trust it.
[00:11:25]  And that's from experience.
[00:11:27]  That's because I've done so much testing.
[00:11:29]  I've seen so much contamination.
[00:11:32]  I just don't trust everything off the shelf.
[00:11:35]  There are certain brands that I trust, like Gaia Herbs.
[00:11:38]  I keep mentioning Gaia Herbs.
[00:11:40]  I know that they conduct laboratory testing.
[00:11:44]  Nature's Path Breakfast Cereals.
[00:11:45]  I love that company.
[00:11:47]  I don't even know anybody there.
[00:11:49]  I've never even talked to anybody there.
[00:11:50]  But I love...
[00:11:51]  Oh, wait a minute.
[00:11:52]  Have I at a trade show maybe?
[00:11:53]  Maybe I met somebody at a trade show or something like that.
[00:11:57]  But I don't have any connection with them, I'm saying.
[00:12:00]  I just love the company.
[00:12:01]  Their products are just consistently clean.
[00:12:04]  Anyway, I've got to wrap this up for this segment, but I'll continue in part three.
[00:12:08]  So stay with me here on TalkNetwork.com.
[00:12:10]  We're talking about dietary supplements and the Department of Justice criminal indictments against some really fringe operators in the industry.
[00:12:19]  Well, thank you for listening to this episode of the Health Ranger Report.
[00:12:32]  Please support us by visiting our online store at store.naturalnews.com where you can find the world's cleanest laboratory-validated superfoods, nutritional supplements, personal care products, shampoo, chemical-free products.
[00:12:48]  Just about everything for your home and body and health that you might want, including supplements for your pets as well.
[00:12:55]  Everything is laboratory validated in our forensic food lab, and we don't sell something unless it tests clean.
[00:13:03]  I think we're the only online reseller to do this really extensive testing of everything that we sell.
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