The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) highlighted its current crusade against misleading supplement labeling with news that supplement company Nature's Youth has completed destruction of approximately 5700 boxes (each containing a 30-day supply) of its misbranded product 'Nature's Youth hGH'.
The company has destroyed approximately $515,000 worth of the product, said the FDA. The firm also indicated it would change the labeling for future marketing of the product in order to comply with the law, according to the agency, which has been clamping down on supplement labeling and claims.
The company was found to be making unsubstantiated "structure and function" claims on its website, and an FDA review of the labeling revealed false and misleading claims. These included description of Nature's Youth hGH as a "proprietary blend of amino acids and precursor nutrients which enhance the body's natural production of Human Growth Factors and Insulin-like Growth Factor-1" that would, among other things, "improve physical performance, speed recovery from training, increase cardiac output, and increase immune functions," according to the release on FDA's website. The product also claimed to be "your body's best defense against aging".
In this case, the company claimed that an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 323:1-6, Number 1, July 5, 1990) provided substantiation for their claim. However, the New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 348:777-778, Number 9, February 27, 2003) included a clear statement that such a claim was misleading, said the FDA, referring to the editor-in-chief's comment: "If people are induced to buy a 'human growth hormone releaser' on the basis of research published in the Journal, they are being misled."
FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan said: "FDA will continue to take strong action to protect American consumers from dietary supplements that are not accurately labeled or that make misleading claims unsupported by scientific evidence."