Article on SI regarding supplements

[Kronz]

Kind of long to post it here so I'll just drop the link.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1155395/1/index.htm

Check it out if you got some time. I thought it was a great read.

[Q-TwEEzY]

Good read, very informative of shadiness in the supplement industry.

[Kronz]

In a statement to SI, GNC said that "like many other retailers, GNC occasionally participates in manufacturer incentive programs on a specific product.... We believe that GNC's customers are informed and intelligent consumers who are not so easily swayed."

MuscleTech is a well-known spiffer—offering up to $8 per sale, according to GNC employees—and one of the industry's most prolific marketers. (A recent 486-page issue of Muscular Development included 62 pages of ads for MuscleTech products.) During a slew of lawsuits several years ago related to the company's no-longer-made ephedra products, some of MuscleTech's tactics were exposed. According to one suit, one magazine advertisement included before and after pictures but failed to mention that the woman, Marla Duncan, was actually a fitness model. Nor did some of the ads indicate that the before picture was taken shortly after she gave birth.

That was a minor misstep compared to MuscleTech's manipulation of the findings from clinical studies. In one instance the company allegedly tried to have subjects who dropped out of a study because of heart palpitations and high blood pressure not counted in the data. MuscleTech's actions were so egregious that upon the January 2003 settlement of one suit in Oklahoma, previously sealed documents were released so the company's actions would be, in the words of the judge, "publicly known and incapable of repetition in future cases."

:smh: