4 Tips (and a Warning) When Choosing a Supplement Company

Whether your search for the right supplement has taken you to brick-and-mortar stores or the internet, you’ve more than likely noticed the sheer number of options available. The choices seem nearly endless, especially when it comes to online storefronts like Amazon. And with so many supplement manufacturers out there, how can you tell which ones to trust?

In this guide, we’ll cover what to look for in a supplement company to help you make the right choice for you and your health. We’ve got four important tips and an important precaution.

Perhaps the most basic but still surprisingly necessary detail to determine first is a company’s legitimacy. The lengths shady companies will go to in order to appear legitimate can be surprising — they may fake everything from reviews and quotes to business addresses, manufacturing locations, certifications, and more.

While it is important to verify a company’s legitimacy when shopping in person, it’s even more relevant when you’re shopping online. Websites like Amazon, eBay, and Temu are filled with supplements from fly-by-night companies that can be anything from low-quality to plain unsafe. Some of these companies even add undeclared pharmaceutical ingredients to their supplements, including things like erectile dysfunction medications, weight-loss drugs, and synthetic steroids, among others.1 2 Not only is this illegal, but it could seriously harm your health.

It’s also important to watch out for counterfeit supplements. Although the idea of counterfeit supplements may sound strange, it’s a serious concern. For example, a legitimate supplement brand, NOW Foods (often stylized as just “NOW”), was the target of a counterfeiting scheme on Amazon in 2023. The company discovered that a fraudulent merchant was selling 11 different products with fake “NOW” branding containing capsules filled with rice flour and traces of sildenafil (an erectile dysfunction medication).3 Despite Amazon launching its anti-counterfeiting initiative “Project Zero” in 2019, the fraudulent seller still managed to sneak through.4

So, the big question is: How can you tell if a company is legitimate or not? Here are some of the ways we investigate supplement companies.

• Search the company name online: Are there customer reviews available? If there are reviews, is there a mix of positive and negative ones? Does the company have a Trustpilot or Better Business Bureau page? Does the brand have a history you can easily find online (such as the year the company was founded)?
• Check out the company’s website: Are there ways to contact the company to ask questions? If you can ask a question, do you get a suitable answer (or any answer at all)? Does the website have actual photos of real people who work for the brand (not just AI-generated or stock images)? Is the copyright year on the website footer current? And if you can’t find a website at all, that’s a warning sign.
• If the product is sold on Amazon: Is the product sold and shipped by Amazon or a third party? If it’s a third party, is it the supplement company itself or an authorized reseller? (This is a case where being able to reach out to the company is important.)

Generally, if the answer to more than a handful of these questions is “no,” then the company is likely not worth your investment. Of course, not every brand will have a Trustpilot page, an up-to-date copyright year, or photos of its management team on the website, for example, but these details can add up to paint a picture of a legitimate supplement company.

Since the FDA doesn’t regulate supplements in the same way it does prescription drugs, it’s up to supplement companies to take extra steps to ensure consumer safety — and it’s also up to consumers to check that the company is doing so.5 6

Some typical signs of proper safety measures include:

• Production in a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliant location7
• Use of testing to ensure things like quality, purity, and potency
• Proper allergen warnings for, at least, any of the eight major allergens if they’re present (milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soy)8
• Making products — when possible — that are gluten-free, non-GMO, or friendly for various diets
• Using well-researched, science-supported ingredients (more on that later)

As always, no matter what supplement you decide to use from whatever company, we recommend speaking with your doctor first. You never know what could interfere or interact poorly with a medication or medical condition.

When consumers purchase a supplement, they usually hope for two things: that it works and that it’s safe. One way brands can try and ensure both of these is by using well-researched ingredients with good scientific support. Not every company will list out or cite the studies, trials, and other scientific data they used when designing their supplements, but we tend to prefer those that do — it’s often a sign that those in charge did their due diligence and properly investigated the pros, cons, and safety of the ingredients and doses beforehand.

If you can, it’s also worth taking the time to look through any research that’s cited by a company. To try and verify what a company says, you can first try reading through the abstract and the discussion or conclusion of a cited study; those portions often contain the meat of the information in simpler terms. You can also try searching for specific keywords or doses within the webpage.

Some places to look for trustworthy information online include:

• Mayo Clinic
• Cleveland Clinic
• Johns Hopkins
• MedlinePlus
• NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS)
• PubMed
• Innerbody (Hello!)

Honesty and clarity about the facts

When purchasing a supplement, it’s essential to be mindful of how a company describes its offerings. Here are five indicators that suggest a health and wellness company isn’t being entirely factual:9

1. Claiming that its product is a quick fix
2. Promising a supplement is a “miracle,” “treatment,” or “cure”
3. Saying an ingredient or product is “special” or “secret”
4. Ignoring scientific facts or twisting the truth
5. Targeting specific vulnerable audiences like older adults or those with cancer

It’s worth noting that, when shopping for supplements (or anything, really), you’re likely to come across companies using marketing jargon in an attempt to grab your attention and convince you to try their products. This isn’t necessarily an indicator that its products are unworthy of consideration; we’ve come across companies with high-quality products that happens to be a bit heavy-handed with their use of buzzwords. What’s important is that the company is honest about what its product can do and uses scientific research to back up those claims. Transparency is a very valuable company attribute in situations like this; it’s when a company doesn’t support its promises with adequate data that the use of this language becomes highly suspicious.

While return policies may not be the most deal-breaking detail, they’re still an important factor to consider when deciding whether or not to purchase from a supplement company. When a brand offers you the ability to get your money back (or most of your money) within a certain amount of time after purchase, it doesn’t feel as daunting to try a product and see if it’s right for you. Now, the reason this isn’t always a dealbreaker is that, sometimes, it’s the only major drawback. Throughout our time researching supplement brands, we’ve come across our fair share of otherwise excellent companies with “unopened product only” guarantees or “no refunds offered” return policies.

However, an important thing to watch out for is when a supplement company’s guarantee or return policy length doesn’t align with how long a supplement may take to work. For example, if you purchase a testosterone booster supplement that could take about a month to work, but the company only offers a 10-day guarantee, then you really don’t have enough time to determine whether or not the supplement could actually help you.

Generally, we advise against absolute brand loyalty, but this may be particularly important when it comes to large companies that offer a vast array of supplements. While large supplement companies may offer high-quality products that are sometimes the best in class, they may still fall short of other large — or smaller and very niche — companies when it comes to specific types of supplements. (We’ve found this to be the case countless times, like with some nootropics and NMN supplements, for example.)

This means that, even though you might have identified a generally high-quality company — one that is legitimate, adheres to good safety practices, shows that it’s guided solidly by scientific research, and protects you with a good return policy — it still might not be your best choice for a particular type of supplement. Other options may provide a better value. By searching outside of your usual brand(s), you just may be able to find supplements with better dosing, lower prices, or other perks. This is why shopping around, comparing companies, and conducting research are all vital steps to ensure you’re spending your money wisely.

By investing enough time and dedication to research, you should be able to tell a worthwhile supplement company from an untrustworthy one — and that’s certainly valuable. Knowledge of a brand is a very important factor in avoiding wasted money on the products of unscrupulous, deceptive companies. Beyond that, it could help you avoid patently unsafe products. But in the end, to ensure you’re getting the best value, that level of research alone isn’t sufficient to identify your best options; there’s no substitute for comparing specific products among high-quality companies. A company’s attributes don’t necessarily translate into a particular supplement being more or less worthy of your investment. For example, while the best multivitamin for you could come from one large brand, you may find your ideal milk thistle supplement from a different large company or a smaller, niche company.

Of course, that also translates into hours and often days of daunting research, and most of us lack the time to do this properly. That’s why we’re here to assist you along the way. We conduct thorough research, test products, and critique your options at both the company and product levels across the competitive landscape in order to help you make the right decision for your unique needs.