Good to Go by Christie Aschwanden

Author:Christie Aschwanden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780393254341
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

8

Selling Snake Oil

On a spring day in 2017, I paid a visit to a GNC store in an upscale Palo Alto strip mall to find out what they could offer me for recovery. The shopkeeper greeted me with a smile, and when I asked what he had for recovery, he pulled a giant tub of protein powder down from a shelf. For $55 (a little less than $4 per serving) GNC Pro Performance® Amp Amplified Wheybolic Extreme 60™ Original promised to fuel “a 30% increase in muscle strength” with its “amino acceleration system.” This claim was followed by a pesky asterisk, pointing to a disclaimer: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.”

The package did point to some science—an 8-week study that supposedly showed that athletes taking the stuff while performing an intense resistance exercise training regimen made greater gains in muscle strength and size than those on a placebo. The label also claimed that an 8-week study of 30 healthy male volunteers found that the men taking the supplement showed equal gains in maximal muscle strength and muscle endurance compared to the control group. It sounds promising, but what does that really tell us? It’s hard to assess studies based on these single-sentence descriptions.

The shopkeeper wasn’t much help. He told me that the store’s owner swore by this stuff, but he didn’t know anything about the studies referenced on the label. The labels tout science, but the sales seemed to rely on personal anecdotes and success stories from the shop owner or some guy next door. The tub also said it contained the “highest-quality, fast-absorbing forms of whey protein—isolates and hydrolysates,” but when I asked him where and how the ingredients were manufactured, he admitted that he didn’t know.

Back at home, I went on the GNC website looking for more details about the studies referenced on the label, but still didn’t find enough information to be able to look up the studies for myself. What I did find was lots of products for recovery—forty-four in all. The claims were mind-boggling. One purported to “work synergistically with the body’s own mechanisms of renewal” and touted an enzyme blend supposed to promote “joint comfort and healthy circulation” and to encourage “accelerated muscle and tissue recovery.” Every claim came with an asterisk to indicate that it was unsubstantiated by any outside agency. Another recovery supplement was said to contain a “scientifically engineered formula” that has “pinpoint accuracy on the body’s reservoirs to build and replenish.” Whatever that means.

If the trademarked proprietary ingredients seemed too engineered, I could turn to an equally dubious array of “natural” products. On a recent trip to my local health food store, I found an entire display shelf packed with recovery products—everything from an “organic recovery nectar” (made of freeze-dried coconut water) that promised to “decrease recovery time and soreness” and “help repair torn muscles,” to a watermelon-flavored drink mix that claimed to “optimize muscle recovery” and “reduce fatigue and muscle soreness.”

How legit are

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