Supplement Marketing: Mission or Manipulation?

I'm a nutrition science PhD, who also has bachelor's and master's degrees in nutrition science.

In my former life, before I went to get those degrees, I was a person who lived most of my life with chronic illness. I was failed by the trad medical system and thus, I believed that wellness cared and had the answers. I was the vulnerable consumer who tried countless diets to "fix" my chronic issues; I tried supplements and protocols; went to alternative practitioners of all kinds; believed that medical systems, Big Pharma, and insurance companies were all a total scam and that alternative practitioners had the real, empathetic human care.

Spoiler alert: The wellness industry is as big of a scam, if not more, than the other stuff. There are good actors and bad actors, sure. And there are good medical practices and bad; insurance is almost always a gotcha; but wellness?

Behind the Scenes of Supplement Marketing

I worked with several supplement companies in my former life before I went to grad school and became a real scientist. As such I can say with certainty: they do not care about accuracy. They care about money and sales.

Sure, I'll add my own disclaimer: I didn't work for all of them. But I worked for several big name players in the game. Their willingness to manipulate customers with liberal and lax uses of 'data,' to cherry-pick citations, to outright lie about the evidence they had or the 'expertise' of who formulated their products, to buy "award-winning" labels or pay-to-play on "top doctor-picked supplement lists" is what actually and directly led me to become a PhD critical analyst of wellness. That's probably the best thing that "supplements" ever did for me: drive me right into ethics-based science.

As a vulnerable consumer with complex health issues, I believed the words of wellness folks... until I got behind the scenes and realized it was not empathy that drove them, but the appearance of empathy. They use the known frustrations with the medical world to drive sales. It's a persona. And as someone who was their target market, I didn't like realizing that I had only ever been a bullseye for their quarterly sales goals, not an individual human with actual needs and inherent value.

Most who work in supplement marketing are just contractors who are good at visual elements: photos, videos, graphic design. They're contracted for those skills, not because they know what they're saying about the science. The higher-ups in supplement marketing usually have some sort of bachelor's or master's degree in science, maybe even a nutrition certification. Maybe they're even a CNS, a dietitian, or a PhD. But industry is industry. Many with actual credentials likely start to work with supplements because they too believe the "helping people" message.

But at the end of the day, a vast majority of supplements are not proven in the way they're marketed; they could be actively unsafe for many (interactions with meds; unknown future effects when taken in high doses or for many years); and they are often seriously inflated in actual cost, so they're lining the pockets of formulators, marketers, and fancy-sounding brands at the expense of usually-vulnerable consumers.

On the Vulnerability of Consumers

When I say vulnerable consumers, I don't mean weak-minded or easily manipulated.

Consumers can be vulnerable for many reasons:

• Chronic illness or autoimmunity
• Complex diagnoses for which the medical world has no treatment or 'cure'
• Issues too complex to actually get diagnosed; get dismissed as 'just lose weight' or 'exercise more'
• People who are naturally aging (and being made to think that's a disease in its own right)
• People entering menopause
• People struggling to get or stay pregnant
• People who want their bodies to look like TikTok influencers
• People who do not have strong family or social support networks; loneliness is it's own legitimate form of vulnerability
• People who have been diagnosed with depression or anxiety or given other brain-related labels
• Moms with small kids; moms with kids who have food allergies; moms who fear having 'mom bodies'; moms who think they're not enough
• People who are into fitness and teased with the idea that they could always do more to perfect their physique, muscles, appearance, endurance, performance, etc.
• Humans

Pick a thing that bothers a person and it can become an effective way for wellness companies to target consumers.

But Not All Supplement Companies Are Bad, Right?

Maybe you take supplements and you feel they've helped you. I'm not telling you to stop. (I'm actually definitely not telling you what to eat or not eat, take or not take. That's a discussion for you and a qualified provider in a one-on-one setting.)

What I am saying is that companies, even when their entire brand is built on science/care/empathy/evidence, exist in a capitalist ecosystem that must make money. They won't take quarterly or annual losses for you. If a product isn't selling, it gets revamped on how to market ("who else can we make feel that they need this product??" – entire meetings are built around this) or it gets shelved.

Anyone who offers mass-market advice doesn't have your best interest at heart. Whether it's a supplement brand, an author with a wellness book, or an Instagram influencer – they're in it for the money, the fame, or both. They don't know your name, they don't care about your individual set of conditions or needs. They can talk a good empathy game, but they can't actually dispense individualized compassion or care.

Mission, Marketing, or Manipulation?

So supplement companies (and any other wellness products, brands, or personas): they often talk a big game about their "mission." Sometimes their founder also had a chronic condition. Sometimes they decided to formulate a specific product because their kid needed it and it didn't exist. Maybe they have eco-friendly values and they saw a market need.

Those can all be true and they're still marketing to you.

Not all marketing is bad. Many marketing folks have have careers in different fields and I have zero thoughts about their ethics. Persuasion isn't always the same as manipulating.

However, when products are marketed for human ingestion and come with health claims that are not absolutely, accurately, and ethically promoted... that is a major problem. The FDA disclaimer that they put on their products in the teeniest print possible does nothing but protect them from liability. Even those who make claims that do violate the FDA's rules get warning letters, and often, nothing else. Because the FDA isn't actually some massive organization that can police supplement companies, despite how supplement companies feel about their marketing constraints. Even the most egregious offenders who claim that supplements can cure things rarely get taken down.

The FDA cannot protect you from bad-faith actors or even marginally-incorrect marketing claims. When it comes to supplements, if it sounds too good to be true, or even just generally nice, you've got to read it through the least generous lens. Assume they want to make money (because, they have to). Assume they are taking the smallest curdle of truth and inflating that to maximum legal allowance (because, they are). Assume they are working with big names and paying them a premium promotional fee. And assume that words like "clinically tested" or "scientifically backed" mean nothing, because they don't.

I have literally seen companies that use "clinically tested" when they really mean "I gave it to my kids and some friends and coworkers and they were fine." I have seen them use "scientifically backed" when they really mean "there are studies in PubMed when you search this, but I definitely didn't read any of them, and none of them were done in humans."

It's not cynicism to say proceed with caution. It's, unfortunately, common sense.