The supplement industry strikes me as dubious! Is there a better way to think about this?
I’ve seen consumer labs.com has done some independent 3rd party testing but it’s not on everything.
There are nootropic outfits that will send you the COA on request. Obviously, who knows what that piece of paper is worth. They could have bought a clean report or could have done a bait and switch.
For my part I research user reviews before I buy something . If a company has been caught lying in the past, I avoid them. No affiliation, I’ve found nootropics depot and lift mode to be well regarded in the Ethernet, generally.Also, Thorne, cellcor, life extension. But again this doesn’t solve the problem of trust. Strangely a lot of internet denizens have a loyalty of their suppliers and typically users report just on what they perceive to be effects and physical properties of supplements received. I also give some weight to anabolic steroid forums. Think what you want about them but the meatheads are real citizen scientists in the realm of chemical ingestion and prone to distrust (and astroturfing on the flip side).
I think some of the smaller companies just buy things off of places like Ali baba. Larger companies still source a ton of their stuff from China. The better smaller companies make an attempt to be transparent with COA, the larger ones just work off their name recognition.
This lack of trust of Chinese consumables extends far beyond just supplements and even the honey industry is implicated in fake products. Recall chinas baby formula fiasco a while back or that they made aquadots out of GHB or the toxic paint they use on toys. Etc. Plenty of reasons for distrust of drop shipped or sourcing from overseas/China.
It’s the Wild West out there in the supplement world and even worse in the “research chemical” peptide world.
I wish we could have a crowd sourced funding for 3rd party testing.
With the way binning works at Amazon, you can't trust that you will get a legitimate product even if you ordered the same thing you made sure was legitimate last time.
Supplements are dubious, buying things on Amazon you consume is especially dubious.
There are some signals here and there about the legitimacy of various vendors but I’m generally skeptical of all of them, just some more than others.