The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for setting many labeling requirements on food, drugs, and nutritional products. Over the years, there have been many different things claimed on labels. The key is...some terms are regulated, and some are not. Here are some common regulated terms. 'Good Source', means 10% to 19% percent of your daily recommended value. 'Low Fat' is 3 grams or less, 'Low Calorie' is 40 calories or fewer, and 'Low Sodium' is 140 milligrams or less sodium per serving.
Obviously companies looking for an upper edge over their competition have manipulated terms such as these in any possible fashion over the years. The terms above for example, can easily be manipulated since it is 'per serving'...thus a company just has to increase the number of servings in their product to lower their amounts to the threshold necessary in order to claim any of the terms on their label.
Well...you most likely are familiar with the terms "Made in the USA". If you are like most of your fellow American's you want to support our country with our products over something that was imported from overseas. And more recently, you want to be careful where you are receiving your vitamins & supplements from, to avoid contamination. If that is the case, would you be surprised if I told you that you've been consuming vitamins & supplements your entire life that were manufactured in China, and sold to you under the label "Made in the USA".
In the FTC's own wording...The order does allow the companies to represent that products containing imported active ingredients are “Processed in the United States with
Foreign Ingredients,“
While researching this, I found dozens and dozens of nutritional supplements that all sport those seemingly candid words "Made in the USA". But as it turns out, simple products like acetominophen, vitamin c, niacin, vitamin b6, folic acid, and zinc have not been produced in the United States for nutritional purposes since the early 80's. All these companies that sell you vitamins under their "Made In The USA" label obviously are getting the active ingredients, yes the ones that you are actually consuming, from China, and have been for quite some time now. For example, China produces over 85,000 tonnes of vitamin C per year, about 95% of the global export market. It's a similar story with every other nutritional raw material in the business.
So how exactly now do people get away with that label? Well it's pretty simple...that "significantly processed" clause in the FTC's labeling requirements also includes marketing materials like labels, packaging materials, like capsules & plastic jars, so realistically all somebody has to do is package their products in the US and they are allowed to say it was "made" here. And why all the lies?
Well think about it...what if some company were to put "Made in China" on their vitamin label, and you saw it sitting right next to the other bottle that was "Made in USA", which one would YOU buy? Of course nobody is going to do that, because they'd lose serious sales from it...in fact I only found one major nutritional retailer that displays the country of origin for their products, http://PureBulk.com.
Purebulk.com provides real Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) labels from their chinese manufacturers, as well as testing labels from their US distributors.
This was good to see a company actually disclosing their ingredients. But the fact remains, that most choose not too, and we continue to support them in their endeavors to pull the wool over our eyes.
