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Comment by chrisbennet | Hacker News Reader

Given the recent revelation by the New York attorney general's office [1], what confidence do you have that you are actually getting what is on the label?

(I didn't down vote you.)

[1] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/new-york-attorney-g...

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Fairly confident, although I do believe there is snake oil on the same aisle. I've used brands Natrol and Nature's Bounty.

I understand DHEA as a steroid hormone that is a precursor to testosterone. I consider the drug's banned status in athletic competition as a signal it might be effective.

From Wiki: "DHEA is legal to sell in the United States as a dietary supplement. It is currently grandfathered in as an "Old Dietary Ingredient" being on sale prior to 1994. DHEA is specifically exempted from the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 and 2004 It is banned from use in athletic competition."

While DHEA may indeed be effective, if 80% of the natural supplements that were tested did not contain what the label said, one might conclude that there is an 80% chance that a bottle labeled "DHEA" really doesn't contain DHEA.

80% of /store brand herbal/ supplements. This is an important distinction. Brand names were fine.

Yes, after closer reading of the news articles it does seem that they only mentioned "store brands". However, I couldn't find anything where it said brand names were "OK".

My Google foo is failing me, I can't seem to find an actual report, just news articles. Help a fella out with a link?

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