Many Diet Supplements Contain Dangerous Chemicals

In December, Canadian authorities banned the sale of diet and workout supplements that contain BMPEA, calling the chemical, which is nearly identical to amphetamine, a “serious health risk.” Curiously, in the United States, the FDA took no such action, even though it had found that nine of 21 supplements tested contained the same chemical as long as two years ago. Strange? It gets more strange. Writing in the New York Times, Anahad O’Connor reports that the federal agency never made public the names of the products or the companies that made them, did not recall the products or warn consumers of the danger. O’Connor says the F.D.A. said in a statement that its review of supplements containing the stimulant “does not identify a specific safety concern at this time.” Wait, there’s more. When Dr. Pieter A. Cohen, the lead author of the new study published Tuesday and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School tested the supplements, he and other academics found the dangerous chemical in 11 of 21 products. Cohen says companies often spike weight-loss and exercise supplements with amphetamine-like chemicals, then hide them on their labels under the names of obscure plants, such as acacia rigidula, a shrub native to Mexico and southern Texas. See which supplements were found to contain BMPEA in the New York Times.