Supplement company NOW reports that it recently found several quality issues among turmeric/curcumin products available for purchase on Amazon. These findings are the latest in a series of tests the company has conducted on several ingredient types, including ALA, Phosphatidylserine, CoQ10, and SAMe, which revealed that companies selling on Amazon’s platform were providing consumers with products that had low potency and were subject to poor quality control.
 
In the turmeric extracts it tested, NOW found potency problems, heavy metals, inaccurate labeling, and the potential addition of synthetic curcumin. Interestingly, among the 23 products tested, and cross-tested against NOW products, all of the Amazon-available products tested much better than expected, and only one product clearly failed potency testing while four others were very low but without any specific label claim. However, further analysis found that there were more problems than met the eye.
 
While virtually all products were labeled such as “Turmeric Curcumin 1650 mg” on the front panel, the side panel would list several other ingredients in their capsules, such as one which listed 1,500 mg turmeric root, 300 mg ginger root, 150 mg turmeric extract, and 15 mg BioPerine per three capsules, for instance.
 
“This can be perceived as deceptive since many customers do not know the difference between turmeric, turmeric extract, curcumin extract, and standardized 95% extract,” Dan Richard, NOW’s vice president of Global Sales and Marketing, said.
 
Now also tested for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury to compare each product, and found that, on average, the products purchased on Amazon had 525% higher heavy metal concentrations compared to NOW’s products. Only one product out of 23 had less heavy metals than NOW, while two products, B’leaf Nature and Eagle brands, were more than 20 times higher than NOW and above California’s Prop 65 limits for lead. Two others, Farm Haven and BioEmblem brands, were both above 100 parts per billion in Cadmium, a particularly toxic heavy metal.
 
Synthetic adulteration was also an issue among the tested products, NOW said. According to radiocarbon tests from the samples conducted by University of Georgia’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies, four of the 23 unfamiliar brands were spiked with fossil fuel-derived organic carbon. These four brands were Vitpro, Me First Living, Eagle, and Primal Harvest.
 
Two of the 23 products, manufactured by Bioganix and Nutriflair, were also mislabeled as vegetarian capsules, as they were in animal gelatin capsules, NOW reported.
 
Accounting for potency, the presence of synthetic curcuminoids, heavy metals, or mislabeled capsules, 12 of the 23 products failed tests. While 11 out of the 23 products did pass testing for these domains, they still had slightly misleading labeling, NOW said. Testing was conducted both at internal labs, as well as at labs from third-party testing company Eurofins.
 
“While we appreciate Amazon’s initial efforts to address these ongoing, egregious problems with sellers on their platform, there is clearly still a long way to go,” Richard said. “The kind of results we found are not what consumers expect when they purchase dietary supplements from sellers they trust.”