When is a manufacturer of a sports-enhancing product
lying?
Whenever he moves his lips.
Or more accurately, whenever he makes any claim that his
product has some kind of enhancing effect on the average or even the elite athlete’s
abilities?
In a study published online in the BMJ Open (that’s the old British Medical Journal), a researcher
reviewed the claims made about 104 products that use ads to make a claim that
they can improve or enhance an athlete’s performance.
And no surprise: of the 431 claims made in various ads,
only 74 were referenced, that is, most of the claims were not backed up by an
appropriate scientific citation so they consist mostly of the “Susie said that
she runs better with . . . “ variety.
And of the 74 studies that were cited in the various ads,
only 3 were judged by this independent author to be sufficiently valid to
qualify as a “scientific” study.
In other words, nearly everything you read or hear or see
about a product that will improve your athletic performance or even as in my
case, make it tolerable, is either made up or bogus.
Not only that, again to no one’s surprise, I think, none
of the products made reference to any potential safety concerns, although
everything you eat or use has some kind of potential risk associated with it.
