Dear supplement company owners please get your labels right

In the past I wrote on how it has been a little frustrating for me when, on occasion, I see what looks like a daft error from an otherwise good to go supplement company on their product labels. I've added that I'd like some basic nutrition knowledge from those purporting to sell products of some nutritional value.

Previously we saw what amounted to some very good sales people answering the helplines & customer service desks at pretty big nutritional companies. In particular Bill Phillip's EAS as was (not now he's sold it on some years back). As a potential customer I'd have wanted to know that the person was a little more on the ball than just reading from the catalogue and spouting the company line.

Equally, while it's not 'knock-able' to be able to say that an owner of said company is great at marketing, awesome at getting staff and so on - and so a good business man and company owner, yet knows less than useful amounts on his product line. Of course running the ship, a la a captain, does not require you to know how to service an engine, fix a sail and so on. Yet most bodybuilding supplement companies are started and employ people with a passion for the sport who they are servicing with their products.

I'd also like to add that I am by NO MEANS any sort of expert. I do however, have a PC with access to a shed load of info and SOME EXPERIENCE. My memory, especially as I get older and or more busy, is not to be relied on so I'll keep files, refer to references and the like. Two minutes of searching via Google nearly always throws up a snippet of info I'll need. If it's a defining bit then copy, paste and save = job done.

As an example of experience myself, my then business partner and a buddy of ours had on one occasion popped down to a company which we were looking to get flavoured Whey Proteins with. We do the usual hellos, drink a welcoming coffee and so on then pop into their developing kitchen / lab. I'd last seen something like it when I worked (many years ago) with the Quality Control and development team at the now defunct Hygrade Meats of Peckham.

We sampled various concoctions at differing levels. They spoke, if briefly, of how some flavours are very hard to mimic (butters for example) talking about biscuit flavour, butterscotch, mint and so on. The high level of flavouring consumption as well as finishing off a pint of a pre-made mix (cos I was hungry) left me farting for England. While there our buddy spotted, as did I, some samples being made up for another company. A mental note was made. They probably shouldn't have left it out (perhaps it was there deliberately for some reason).

Anyway, all those years at Hygrades, more of using supplements and then the added experience of trying to market and sell our own products leads me to be bale to, if not with a degree or certificate, to at least spot what seem like schoolboy errors. 

If, for example, I know that 99% of artificial flavourings are simply chemical mixes with zero fibre content and that the same can be said of most protein powders then when, as was pointed out to me, I see a product apparently coming back with a test result (on the companies own website so they are not being sly by hiding said info) with a 7+ percent fibre content one asks why? It might be a lab error - the decimal point moved. One the main nutritional panel it states 210mg of fibre - not high at all. But on the ILS lab report it says 7%. Now in some lab tests the test itself is done separately for each bit of info and for others it's 1 test for several. Hence some test results are averaged out for the size of the sample (lets use 100g as an average). 

If the fibre content is 7-percent then that's not 210mg but 2.1g or 2100mg. If it was 0.7% that'd be the 210mg. Schoolboy error see? As would be using a lot of cocoa powder in a chocolate protein product and then using the same info on all the flavours. Even, as has been said, giving the lowest result, so as to show better results if the products are tested outside the company's lab of choice by an independent it would seem better, if only in my opinion, to give accurate results.

In the example given it seems to suggest a fibre content of 7% on a toffee flavoured whey protein. It's possible but very unlikely to contain, if any, fibre and having said it does, as per an ILS test, one asks how? 

This then results in no holes to pick at. Given the work being done by many concerned consumers and by the businessmen themselves in a touch market during a recession having an excuse to doubt a product is not going to be good. I completely understand that if said company has, as has been claimed (I've no reason to doubt it), many hundreds if not thousands of products lines it can be hard to keep track of everything being sold nutritionally but I suggested two things which are, I hope, useful.

1) Any product developed in house and sold under the company's own label should, one might hope, be one of the few that they, said company, know everything about and 
2) Just asking for and keeping copies of ALL nutritional info on each product as added to the 100-1000 product line. Give one person responsibility to check over said lines (don't add 20 a week otherwise he'll never catch up!!) and produce an in-house file for ALL working there, esp customer service, to refer to. An idiots guide if you will to Product X. 


Simples.


Finally, if at all unsure just hang fire and bollock the person who developed the product or does the test or prepped the info for you so you, company owner, don't look daft when questioned by a simple gym bunny... with access to google.