Weekly Post #2

Harmful Ingrediants in Nutritional Supplements

Can products contain ingredients that are harmful for consumers without them even knowing the effects it can have on their body until it is too late and the after math is more devastating than ever believed? Well, this statement is very true and the senate is going to make a stop to this and start looking for tighter regulations. When reading an article that I found on the New York Times website I found an article about the senate regulating on supplements that are believed to contain steroids in this thought to be nutrition supplement. This regulation is being backed by all big league sports teams throughout the nation because professional athletes have faced challenges on anti-doping for failing a mandatory drug test given by the league and the athlete having no idea that the nutritional supplement was steroid-laced.

An interesting, yet very scary statement about Jareem Günter, a former colligate baseball player who suffered bad consequences from a muscle building supplement, which he later found out was spiked with a designer steroid. He suffered liver failure after he ingested this over the counter product and was hospitalized because of this supplement. The senate wants professional sports teams to sign on to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency which would help screen for the human growth hormone urine screening. This policy would undermine the USDA’s testing on professional athletes which is one of the strictest screening tests.

Congress is hard on the line for making the supplement laws stricter to ensure athlete and consumer safety because these big corporations and businesses should not get away with adding these potentionally harmful ingredients to their products. As a consumer myself that sort of scam for consumers is very scary because our lives are at stake without us even knowing it because Congress believes the FDA is not regulation hard enough and testing every over the counter product to ensure that it contains only the ingredients listed.

If congress is successful in passing laws that are stricter and looked at more throughouly people like Jareem Gunter will not have to face life threatening consequences because they had no idea the product they were consuming was bad. I hope that consumers will begin to start using more natural ways of improving their health so that issues such as these don’t make scary, unhealthy changes to your life. To read further into this issue you can go to http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2009/09/29/2009-09-29_senate_seeks_tighter_supplement_regulation.html and read more articles containing updates on these new regualtions being put in place.