Uncensored

QUESTION: Scott, give me the straight dope, bro: How am I supposed to know what’s the best supplement to take and what’s a total scam? I mean, let’s be serious: Every store I go to has the clerks telling me one thing, yet ads in magazines and on the net tell me to use something else. I’ve also read on SupplementGenius.com that some products don’t even meet label claims. What companies can I trust?

ANSWER: Yes, you’re not alone in your thinking, Mike. In fact, I would estimate that nearly 90 percent of all the supplements out there don’t have a single clinical study on the finished product sold in stores. What’s worse is that some of these same products don’t come close to meeting the legal requirements to even be sold here in Canada! We even have counterfeit US supplements being sold in stores in Canada. Imagine getting what you think is the real deal only to find out that it wasn’t even sold by the Canadian distributor of the supplement you bought. In fact, one insider recently told me that one of the top-selling pre-workout powders in Canada is illegally smuggled into Canada by cigarette smugglers! If you’ve been reading SupplementGenius.com and Muscle-Insider.com, you’re doing all you can to arm yourself with the info you need to protect yourself. But did you know that some store clerks are given cash kickbacks to sell one product over the next? Yes, I’ve actually seen a kickback done with staff that had a clerk get a $15 commission (if you can call it that) just for selling one supplement! This kind of backroom deal happens all the time, and it’s why some stores seem to recommend one product over an equally and some- times superior product. I’ve actually seen one company give NHL tickets to the store clerk that pimps out the most products for it! Okay, here’s another dirty supplement tale that will shock you. A top supplement company couldn’t understand why its key product wasn’t selling better. The company was advertising a lot and the product had a great formula, taste, and price, but for some reason, it just didn’t seem to sell. The company allegedly hired an independent research firm to pretend to be an ordinary supplement shopper and call a bunch of stores to ask for its product. What did they find? Well, almost nine out of ten calls were answered with a recommendation to not use the product asked for but to instead use another brand of supplements! The consumer asks for a particular product he’s heard great things about, and the clerk uses his supplement knowledge to convince the person to use something he didn’t ask for! Nine out of ten times is a bit more than a coincidence, in my books. So what’s MUSCLE INSIDER doing to be a part of the solution? Well, we’re excited to introduce the first-ever CANADIAN SUPPLEMENT AWARDS! I will evaluate each supplement that makes the cut from a scientific perspective, overall value, and reputation in the industry. If there’s something shady that these guys have been up to, chances
are that I already know about it or one of my “insiders” does! But I won’t do this alone because I want honest feedback from you on what works and doesn’t work in the real world and not just what “might work” based on what the label says it contains. Together, we’ll come up with what products are truly the best in each class. See who the nominees are in our next issue which hits stores June 17th.