Good-Bye to the Supplement Guru by Alex Rogers

When it comes to supplement experts I have come to realize that there are very few experts that exist nowadays.  Very few you say?  Yes, very few.  Let me explain.  About 20 years ago before the internet you had to read the bodybuilding and muscle magazines to get your supplement information.  However, very seldom, the information in these magazines was good.  Because very frequently the article in those magazines was really just an article meant to sell you something.  For example if the so-called supplement expert wrote an article about how great he thought creatine was and concluded that everyone should use it, the very next page in the magazine was a full page ad of a company selling their creatine.  Muscle Media 2000, for those who are old enough to remember this magazine, was the king at this.  They would have someone write an article about a supplement and then at the end of the magazine have all the supplements to buy related to those articles.  This practice is still done today and it still works.  Open up any Muscular Development magazine for example and you’ll see an advertisement for a product made to “look” like an article written by a supplement expert.  It’s meant to fool the reader into thinking it’s an article in the magazine and not an advertisement.  It’s typically written by the supplement company in a way to give you advice what supplement you should use.   I would never, take any advice from any magazine nowadays.  Everything in bodybuilding magazines has an alternative motive meant to sell you, the reader, something. And most of the time it’s a supplement.  And when that happens everything is a lie and the magazine becomes nothing but a catalog to sell supplements and a slay to their advertisers that give them ad dollars.  Thankfully the internet was born and the bodybuilding magazines monopoly over information on muscle building came to an end.

Not soon after the heyday of the bodybuilding magazine era, something called the internet was invented (maybe by Al Gore), and a wealth of information was available to every wanna-be muscle building folk at our finger tips.  Wealth about supplements, weight lifting, anabolic steroids, and food was just a few Google searches away.  Bodybuilding forums started popping up all over the place and the self-proclaimed supplement expert was born from the womb of these forums.

Bodybuilding related forum sites launched via the internet and on these forums, a forum member would ask a question like, “When should I use L-Glutamine?”, and some forum expert, would post the answer.  But as time went on more and more self-proclaimed experts would exist on that particular forum.  Before you know it when the same question was asked on the forum years later, you would have 10,000 experts telling the guy when to use L-glutamine.  Then all the self-proclaimed experts would argue with each other about who was right and who was wrong.  It seemed to me at least that the most respected trolls, eh hem I mean forum supplement experts, were just the ones with the most posts.

It didn’t take long for the owners of these bodybuilding forums to capitalize on their forums popularity.  This is how Bodybuilding.com was started.  Forums became a great place to pimp your supplements if you were a supplement company owner because a recommendation from someone is a much more powerful advertising tool then anything in the world.  And a recommendation of a supplement on a forum is really a review.  So guess what happened next?  Review sites started popping up on the internet.  A place where people could review a supplement and post what kind of results they had with that product.  It didn’t matter anymore whether the supplement expert said it was a good supplement or not because there was 1,000 supplement experts spewing their opinions.  All that mattered was if “JoeBodybuilder823” said that if he liked it or not on his review.  (And the funny thing is that joebodybuilder823 could be a 14 year old kid)

Fast forward to 2014 and the bodybuilding internet forums have changed dramatically.  Now there are literally 1,000’s of bodybuilding forums and 1,000’s of experts on them.  Not only that but the forums are controlled by the advertisers on them.  For example, my company doesn’t sell products on Bodybuilding.com.  Do you really think that I could do a review on Bodybuilding.com’ forum and post a thread about my Molkegen Whey Isolate?  Yeah right.  It’s not a public forum.  It’s a private forum meant to look like a public forum, which kind of reminds me of North Korea.  They only allow you to see what THEY want you to see.  Once this happens the forums becomes illegitimate and worthless.  You only see what the owners of the forums WANT you to see.  Anyone that contradicts a popular supplement is most likely banned.  Once this occurrs and is still the case today, the era of the supplement expert on the forums is over and done.

Nothing left to talk about.

The FDA has made it clear that in order to come out with a new supplement you have to get their approval.  Now make sure you understand this.  A new supplement is not something that a supplement company as you know it makes and puts on the shelf at your local supplement store.   A new supplement is actually a new ingredient that has not existed previously for sale. This my friends has not been done in years.  Therefore in actuality a new supplement for muscle building has not been created in years because the FDA has not given their clearance to sell this product to the public.  FYI here is a typically example of a company breaking FDA law;  supplement companies selling creatine nitrate.  The FDA has made it clear that they did not approve this product for sale as a dietary supplement.  If you want a quick way to make money via a lawsuit, go by a creatine nitrate supplement, use it, say you got sick and then go sue the company that makes it.  You would have some great ammunition in court because this product should not be allowed to used as a dietary supplement.  The FDA has made it clear that creatine nitrate is not approved!  I’m just being extreme with that example, I don’t recommend doing that, I’m just expressing my frustration with the sports nutrition industry.  Anyway, this in turns leaves absolutely nothing for supplement gurus and experts to talk about anymore.  How many times are we going to see articles about whey protein and creatine?  How many times are we going to see articles about BCAA’s and CLA?  When there is nothing new to talk about the old supplement experts have nothing to say.  Slowly but surely they disappear from the internet.

The New Supplement Expert.

Today, right here in this article I’m announcing the definition and birth of the new supplement expert.  So you old supplement experts that still want to have a career read carefully.  The new supplement expert is not someone that knows about creatine, whey protein, amino acids, or whatever else is from 10 years ago because that has been done over and over again and for the reasons I have stated above.   The new supplement expert is someone that has a complete understanding and comprehension of the FDA’s, Code of Federal Regulations 111’s.  The FDA CFR’s 111’s are the government’s regulations to make and sell a dietary supplement.  All supplement companies must follow the 111’s.  This includes private label supplement companies.  If you have your company’s name on the supplement you must follow the 111’s.  This might be brand new information for some but just because you do not physically make the supplement does not mean you do not have to follow the 111’s.  Don’t go on the notion of (because I have heard this 1,000 times from many private label supplement companies), well my manufacturer told me that they take care of all the FDA regulations.  Well yea, of course they do because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be allowed to operate, however this does NOT make you immune to the 111’s.  Technically you are, according to the 111’s, a holding and distributing company.  And therefore you are responsible to follow the 111’s.  The days of saying,  “Hey I got $10,000.00, let me start my own supplement company!” are over.  Before you even think about your label design, logo, and getting price quotes, you better instead figure out how you’re going to construct you operating manual!!  And doing all that takes time and education.  Getting educated will eventually lead you to become my new version of the supplement guru.

If you are a supplement company owner you are therefore bound to become what I am calling the, “New Supplement expert”.  This new version of the supplement expert must be familiar with the following, but not limited too.

1)    Testing supplements for identity

2)    Testing supplement for strength

3)    Testing supplements for purity

4)    Master Manufacturing Records

5)    Batch Production records

6)    Microbial testing

7)    Qualifications of labs

And this is just the tip of the ice burg.  The new supplement expert should have a complete understanding of the above.  If not well then they are just another internet troll trying to become a self proclaimed supplement expert giving their opinion on supplements that are 20 years old and been done 1,000 times over.   Telling someone how to use creatine and whey protein is amateur supplement stuff.  Telling someone how to make sure the supplement they just bought is manufactured in accordance with government regulations is expert knowledge.

Mark my words people.  In 2014 the dietary supplement industry is going to change a lot.  No longer are you going to have supplement companies popping up left and right selling whey protein, BCAA’s, and creatine.  The industry is going to get a lot smaller and the new supplement experts that I coined will start to emerge on the bodybuilding forums.   (Well probably not on the forums  unless the dictators are overthrown)  You’re going to see less products and nothing new over the course of the next few years.  Sad I know.  However, I feel my company, will still come out with new products, but nobody else will.  Tectanic bordered on a new supplement but because it comes from a special spinach powder, however I don’t really call this “new”.   Tectanic is nothing like anything else  on the market.  I have a few other products up my sleeve that I’m working on that you’ll never see on the retail shelf.  But in the mean time, enjoy the high quality supplements that we are now providing, because each one you buy from us literally undergoes about 5 to 7 chemical and analytical tests to make sure the strength, purity, and composition are all top grade quality.  And if some troll on Bodybuilding.com forum challenges you about Proteinfactory.com’s quality…ask them to ask their protein supplier to show them the 3rd party certificate of analysis…7 out of 10 will not have it.  (Which means they are breaking the law)!

Thanks

Alex Rogers

Supplement Expert version 2.0

President

Proteinfactory.com