Steve Jobs is one of America’s greatest inventors. I love my iPhone. I was watching something on Steve the other day and saw during one of his press conferences that he even invented “scrolling” on mobile phones. Pretty freakin awesome. Something as simple as “scrolling”.
Steve Jobs was awesome at creating new products, and someday someone will come along that was like him that could do what he did for computers and mobile phones, but it ain’t Tim Cook. But I must ask, why can’t we have someone like that in the supplement industry? Where is the Steve Jobs of the supplement industry? The last great product that TRULY changed the supplement industry FOR THE BETTER would be whey protein. Could be creatine but I would have to lean towards whey protein. Who invented whey protein you might ask? I’m not sure, it could have been Davisco Foods since they’ve been around since the 1940’s. But anyway, why is there ZERO creativity in the supplement industry? There has not been a NEW supplement invented since Dr. Colker, and I created Myo-T12. The world’s first follistatin rich egg yolk powder. You can maybe say mTOR from Cheminutra, but nobody is writing to home to mama about that one. Supplements today quite frankly suck. They suck because they have been around since the 1990’s and nothing innovative has come along since then. Supplements today are all just repackaged with newer and newer labels.
These supplements with newer and newer labels are protein powders, pre-workouts, BCAA’s, and creatine. All have been around now for about 30 years. Let’s take protein first.
If I were to list the most recently “invented” new proteins they would be this.
- Plant proteins. Very, very lame. You had a lot of companies recently trying to sell hemp protein, buckwheat protein, rice protein, and even insect protein (crickets) I have tried them all. Nothing is as good as whey or egg as far as the bodies ABILITY to use the amino acids in the protein. Ever hear of something called Biological Value? It is a scientific method to determine how GOOD or the quality of a protein source actually is. These companies selling plant proteins seem to make you want to forget this little protein quality scale system that we have. Have you EVER seen the biological value of HEMP? Don’t bother looking you’ll never find it. And there is a reason for that. Hemp protein sucks, it might look good on paper, but the body has a very, very hard time getting the nitrogen out of the protein and using that to create a positive nitrogen state in the body.
- Silk Worm Protein. Believe it or not, I sold this for a while. It comes from a company in Korea. The molecular weight is 150-200 daltons…actually a little lower than Peptopro (the world’s fastest digesting dairy protein). However by definition, I do not think the FDA classifies this as a supplement so you cannot sell it. One supplement company I THINK tried to sell it as SILK amino’s. Not sure it is still around.
- Beef Protein. This made a comeback in recent years, but it is nothing new. I sold it during the 90’s. I guess you can say my Muscle Shake is new because it was the first beef protein from New Zealand. But technically it is beef protein.
There you have it. Those are the latest “ADVANCEMENTS” of protein powders. Literally, nothing new since the 1990’s. That is almost 30 freakin years. In over 30 years, we have not had one single advancement in protein powder technology, pretty sad to say the least….no Steve Jobs of protein around here. If anything I would have to say that my fertile egg yolk powder that I developed with someone else would be the latest and greatest. Regardless of whether some people liked it or not, it was the first powder in the history of the world to have active follistatin in it. I actually traveled to Germany to make the stuff, I sold my interest to a company, and they pretty much destroyed the thing. But that story is for another day.
Next supplements are BCAA’s. I cringe when a customer calls me up and tells me they are taking free form amino acids. I just shake my head. BCAA have been around since the 1980’s. Maybe even earlier. I remember when I was in high school and using Cybergenics and swallowing big horse pills with BCAA’s in them. I just can’t believe these things still have the selling power that they do. Free form amino acids suck, they are pretty much worthless, and there is absolutely no reason anyone should use them when all you need to simply do is take a scoop of whey protein and get all your BCAA’s in there and more. It is cheaper, tastes better, and you get more BCAA’s.
If you want to reach deep at innovation recently in regards to BCAA, you can look at my Advanced BCAA. Technically it is a whey protein powder. The company that makes it somehow figured out that they could increase the BCAA’s by 20%, making the total powder 50% BCAA. Normal whey protein is typically around 30 to 35% BCAA. My Advanced BCAA is 50%.
Next supplements up are pre workouts….all started by some asshole that took a drug, made up a cool name and told people to take this pre workout. Obviously, that drug was DMAA, which is not really a healthy supplement, nor a muscle building supplement. But nonetheless, it spawned the pre-workout category. After the FDA yanked DMAA from pre workout supplements, supplement companies simply used caffeine which is hundreds of years old, if not thousands. In addition, all the other supplements that companies put into their pre workouts like CITRULLINE MALATE, THEOPHYLINNE, and ACETYL L-TYROSINE all have been around for at least 10 to 15 years, maybe longer. Nothing cutting edge at all, healthy, or beneficial for muscle growth. And of course decade old supplements.
If you want to look at something cutting edge, look at my Tectanic Red. It is the first supplement in the history of the industry to actually TEST for natural nitrates, a key player in muscle performance and the “pump”. It is the only pre-workout that lists in milligrams the nirates on the back of the bottle.
Lastly creatine. Oh, where do I start? The first creatine came out in the 1990’s. After that, you had a huge rush of supplement companies trying to make it better. You have all sorts of versions of creatine. None work better than plain old creatine monohydrate from Germany. Anything new? Nope not since the 1990’s.
Those are your top supplements today. Pretty sad don’t you think? To see that most of the supplements being sold today are literally almost 30 years old. Where and who are the innovators in the supplement industry today? Nowadays EVERY supplement company and EVERY supplement company owner thinks they are an innovator and an expert formulator. It is a joke. There is nothing new, there is nothing innovative. These companies and their moron owners just try to fool you into thinking they are EXPERTS in supplements when meanwhile they have never stepped foot in a manufacturing facility with the exception to make some phoney marketing video. They simply take ingredients that are 30 years old and call up a contract packager and put them together. Anyone can do it including yourself.
In addition, the internet has made it very easy for ANYONE to claim they are a supplement expert. You have guys all over Youtube claiming to be supplement experts time and time again. I have made some videos to make these guys look like fools, like this video.
Let me make it clear to you. There are very, very few supplement experts out there, and NONE of them are on YOUTUBE. Youtube is filled with just wanna be experts when at best you have just as much knowledge as they do. They are actually worse because they give you BAD information just to SELL you their supplements.
In addition, there are NO innovators in the dietary supplement industry. Not Dr. OZ, not Jillian Michaels, not Ronnie Coleman, not Phil Health, not Rich Froning, not Dr. Axe, not Joe Rogan, and not that new idiot from bulletproof coffee.
NONE OF THEM HAVE EVER CREATED A SUPPLEMENT AND NONE OF THEM EVER WILL!
All of these so-called supplement experts simply take supplements that are 20, 30 years old a repackage them as new. Like bulletproof coffee. All that idiot did was to convince people to use MCT oil. MCT oil? That stuff has been around since the 1980’s. Are you serious?
However, the supplements that I have created in the past take brains and true R and D. Like my fertile egg yolk for example. I developed a way to maintain the follistatin in dried egg yolk powder. The trick was that the egg yolks needed to come from of course fertilized eggs and then dried. But you need a kill step to get rid of the bad stuff like e.coli, and listeria. Heat pasteurization kills the follistatin. So I traveled to Germany where they had a machine that would kill all the harmful bacteria but keep the follistatin intact. It was very awesome technology, and I enjoyed creating a new supplement. I only regret selling my rights and not patenting the invention myself.
Tectanic Red, that’s legit as well. Granted it didnt take me as long as fertile egg yolk, but it is innovative.
Look I’m not claiming to be the Steve Jobs of the supplement industry. If my fertile egg yolk, “worked” and people we’re putting on 20 pounds of muscle I would not be writing this article right now. I’d be in Hawaii surfing barrels and collecting royalty checks every month, and I would have called myself the Steve Jobs of the supplement indutry. But the fertile egg yolk powder did not work as I wanted. As it turned out, it turned out to be an anti-catabolic product. Not an anabolic. Meaning I feel it helps prevent muscle wasting but does not promote muscle growth.
In conclusion, when I first started in the supplement industry you had a guy by the name of Dan Duchaine. He has since passed away, but I believe he was the last “Steve Jobs” of the supplement industry. Dan wrote awesome articles on supplements, steroids, food, and anything related to muscle building and fat loss. He never really came out with an “iPhone” type supplement, but I believe if he were alive today he would have done so already.
We now have to sit and wait till someone, maybe myself, will come out with a supplement that is truly innovative. I still have the LOVE for supplements, and that is all it takes. But don’t hold your breath because it’s been almost 30 years now that something has come out that was innovative. And in the meantime, try not to be fooled by fancy labels. Just know that the supplements you’re consuming, if they’re not mine, most likely are touted as being cutting edge, innovative, developed in a laboratory and formulated by an expert. But the truth is they were invented over 20 years ago and formulated by some guy that has just as much knowledge about supplements as you.
Alex Rogers is a supplement manufacturing expert. He has been formulating, consulting, & manufacturing dietary supplements since 1998. Alex invented protein customization in 1998 & was the first company to allow consumers to create their own protein blends. He helped create the first supplement to contain natural follistatin, invented whey protein with egg lecithin, & recently imported the world’s first 100% hydrolyzed whey.
