Supplements: What happened with our investigation (CBC Marketplace)

we're behind the scenes in the market, okay, I'll take it from the top to take you inside a store, we'll name names and deliver results like never before. I really need someone to talk to me. It's a story about our story about vitamins. and it complements everything I'm taking, if it doesn't help me, where would I be if I didn't take it? A market program that most of you have never seen. I think we need to tone it down a bit with an ending that none of us Canadians expected. spend almost a billion and a half dollars a year on vitamins and

supplements

the night of November 13th began with our regular broadcast in Atlantic Canada, we didn't know it then, but our program contained serious errors, more than half of these shakes GNC protein leans skyrocketed, then the unimaginable

happened

in Paris, the terrorist attacks left one hundred and thirty people dead, the rest of the CDC's programming was devoted to the tragedy, and the rest of Canada never saw our show that night.

Parisians are off the streets tonight, the city in fear. Although many did not see our supplemental story, it had already been published,

what

you are seeing now is a retraction, an explanation and an apology to you and the companies that were harmed. I'm Tina Bennett. I live in Pickering Ontario and this is my husband Bruce, our original story began like so many others with questions from our viewers. I take fish oil for my heart and wonder if it is worth the money. And we're taking, you ask questions about fish oil, vitamin C, and protein. powders and we wonder if you really get

what

you pay for.

An

investigation

by the New York Attorney General found the answer was no when it comes to certain herbal

supplements

in the U.S. Only 21 percent of the products we tested contained the product listed on the label. . Could something similar be happening in Canada and finding that we pack up our shopping days for big names, emergency, your favorite brands and send them for independent testing? We send our protein powder, vitamin C, and fish oil to a leading lab in Michigan, one that has all the credentials you'd want and could trust FDA-registered scientists with decades of experience, a lab also used by supplement industry, that lab was chosen by a The San Francisco company called lab door has been endorsed by highly reputable organizations such as the Mayo Clinic.

What we will find is that Neal Phan Adar is a co-founder of lab door. He analyzed the lab tests for the vitamins and supplements we purchased. It's surprising how much information there is. Inside these bottles that we simply don't have access to, these are really the products that you put in and on your body and therefore they deserve to have the same level of testing that the door of our pharmaceutical laboratory has tested products and the factory. The results were posted on his website to help guide consumers about what vitamins and supplements like ours do or don't contain.

The door to the testing lab we were tasked with revealed that some of the fish oil was rancid and there were other shocking lab test results that we now know are wrong. First, this vitamin C powder made by Pfizer, the emergency product was rated as our worst value in the category. The actual content was 332 milligrams, not 1000. It had a third of the amount of vitamin C it says on the package. Exactly that's all, not exactly. Even though we didn't know it at the time and there was this protein powder made by GNC, what was your most surprising finding?

This product had by far the most evidence of protein gains of any we tested today. Saint Adar told us it was mainly a filling problem. In industry, a company is using something that looks like protein but is in most cases cheaper or easier to use. After our conversation with the lab door, we reached out to Pfizer and GNC for their reaction and interviews. Hi, I'm Tracy Ager from the CDC Market, both companies declined to speak on camera and, as companies often do, questioned the results. Both defended their products. Pfizer said the testing methods were incorrect. Canadians are spending a lot of money on protein powder.

GNC said the results were meaningless as always. We consult. Industry experts and Health Canada went to the lab door to get clarification and with both sides of the story we felt confident going on air. That's when our story took an unexpected turn after broadcast, the companies continued to insist our results were wrong, and we found the lab. Dora was unable to answer one of GNC's key questions about the test results. It was clear that we needed to investigate further over the next few weeks. We did different lab tests on GNC protein powder. None found problems. We were surprised and decided to try other products again. - turns out the fish oil was actually rancid, that's a big betrayal, but the lab door got it wrong about another protein powder that they said had an 8% increase when it was fine and got it wrong about the low levels of vitamins , an emergency for people who search when they go. to your site, how did the lab door get so wrong with so many questions that we asked Neal Phan Adar to meet us in Toronto?

This is the GNC Total 25 Lean Shake and you told us that this product was enriched, yes that is not correct so we found no protein spikes in this product so it is perfectly fine so yes there are no spikes of protein in this product. It's a complete change. We presented their inaccurate test results to Canadians. You kept those test results. What do you say about that? I think this is a real challenge with testing like this, when you test any of these products, there will be these problems, so you will never mention that to us before saying we will test here.

They are the results, I support him, yes, absolutely, and so, that is why, that is why we are here, we published that announcement, they are for our precise explanation, he does not have any, he says he is still investigating, we present the results of the tests to companies. and they questioned them strongly, but you stood by the test results, how come we have done this test over a hundred times and have not seen a problem like this? We still don't know exactly what

happened

, but we want to know what. could have happened, we had to go to McMaster University in Hamilton, this is your love, yes, Stuart Phillips is a scientist who studies the effects of protein supplements on humans.

He's helping us understand lab testing, when a lab gets something wrong, what are some possible reasons for that? Well, like anything else in life, I think that when a laboratory fails at something, human error, dirty and contaminated glassware, a machine malfunction, there are all kinds of reasons why things can go wrong and, Of course, they go wrong, so we just get bad information. I think you have a laboratory that made a mistake but since we discovered that it was not just a mistake we told the fan Adar that your inaccurate results led us to retest the Pfizer emergency and you told us that this only had a third of the vitamin C that the label said, but our test results say that this product has 100% vitamin C.

I understood that there is nothing wrong with this product based on the claims on the packaging. Yes, so you were wrong. I think there are a lot of things where we look at why. That could have happened and our job is to achieve it, it's just constantly seeking that one hundred percent perfection even when we're not achieving it, so in the situation that we've learned and we have a new method, it's a little late to the market. Yes, because we have reported incorrect results. Yes, and this is a difficult story for us to tell you. You know personally on our team that we have spent many sleepless nights knowing that we trusted an established laboratory and you were wrong.

You're incredibly frustrated because you left a voicemail for our

marketplace

team apologizing for getting incorrect results. Yes, do you feel responsible for that? I do and it's incredibly frustrating for us because this is all the work we do, we work. We are just constantly testing products, this is ours, this is our daily work and we have no one to blame but ourselves. We are reviewing our testing protocols in the market and how we work with laboratories, in case people are now skeptical about test results from laboratories. I'd be a little sad if everyone walked away and said that's how testing labs work.

There are always problems because it undermines all the other researchers, both industry and scientists, who do this kind of thing and in one day. today, so I hope that's not the message people take away, what do you say to Canadians who got incorrect information based on the test results that you gave us? So we are very sorry and we apologize to your audience and we promise to improve ourselves and I think that's what we have, that's what we have for you. Market Plays trusted a lab with top-notch credentials and the lab was wrong, but we also apologize because CBC regrets giving you incorrect information. information and any damage it may have caused to the companies in our report.

We share this story with you because your trust is important to us. We work hard to make sure we deliver the kind of journalism you expect.