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A few weeks after she started taking a supplement she bought on TikTok, Tamara Bundy woke up feeling awful. She had bought moringa capsules from a brand called Rosabella after the influencers on her feed<\/a> claimed they would help with inflammation, bloating, weight loss, and \u201coverall well-being,\u201d she says. But suddenly she was bedridden and vomiting with cramps so bad they felt like labor pains. Bundy assumed it must have been something she ate \u2014\u00a0until she saw someone post on TikTok that Rosabella moringa capsules had been recalled<\/a> owing to possible salmonella contamination and wondered whether her daily vitamin habit could be to blame.<\/p>\n Rosabella moringa isn\u2019t the only supplement suspected of making people sick. Earlier this year, at least 55 people<\/a> got salmonella after taking Live It Up Super Greens powder \u2014\u00a0another product containing moringa-leaf powder. Others have been treated for liver damage<\/a> after taking pills that contained dangerously high doses of turmeric. The FDA recently warned<\/a> that certain supplements sold on Amazon as tejocote root actually contained yellow oleander, which is poisonous. On Reddit, even supplement enthusiasts wonder whether the 20 capsules they swallow daily\u00a0could be giving them lead poisoning<\/a> or why their ashwagandha pills are giving them heart palpitations<\/a>. Others fret about whether the labels on their bottles are even accurate<\/a>. One study published in JAMA<\/a> found that many supplements marketed for sexual enhancement actually included sildenafil \u2014\u00a0a.k.a. Viagra. Recently, gym bros were outraged after a redditor sent a popular protein powder to a lab for testing and claimed the contents were actually cake mix.<\/p>\n These days, everyone wants to tell you about their \u201cstack\u201d \u2014\u00a0and it\u2019s not just random influencers on TikTok who want to sell you pills and powders with mystical properties. Naomi Watts has a magnesium blend<\/a> to \u201csoothe nighttime racing thoughts\u201d during menopause; David Beckham is the co-founder of IM8, a 90-ingredient powder<\/a> designed to help people achieve \u201coptimal health and longevity\u201d; and Kourtney Kardashian is selling vaginal probiotic gummies<\/a>. Even doctors<\/a> and telehealth platforms<\/a> want you to buy their branded fiber gummies<\/a> and chocolate protein powder<\/a>. If it seems like a suspicious number of people on your feed suddenly have their own supplement line, that\u2019s because anyone can start one \u2014\u00a0no medical expertise or FDA approval required. You don\u2019t even have to tell customers where the supplements you\u2019re selling are made\u00a0or prove they\u2019re safe.<\/p>\n In fact, some influencers with recently launched supplement brands could have spent just ten minutes on a website. If you Google \u201cHow to start your own supplement brand,\u201d it doesn\u2019t take long to find Supliful, one of a handful of new start-ups designed to make the process easier than ever. On Supliful\u2019s website, you can browse its catalogue<\/a> of over 200 products \u2014\u00a0everything from creatine powders to NAD+ capsules \u2014\u00a0which are sitting in its warehouse in blank bottles, waiting for you to slap your own branding on them. In less than an hour, you can start selling your own branded berberine from your Shopify storefront.<\/p>\n Supliful\u2019s founder, Martins Lasmanis, a 37-year-old entrepreneur who recently moved to New York from Latvia, tells me he came up with the idea for the company after trying to launch his own protein shakes and discovering what a headache it was. Finding a manufacturer to make your product used to take \u201chours and hours of old-school research,\u201d he says. Why bother to vet suppliers when you could sell a ready-made product under your own name? Once you put your label on it, would anyone know the difference?<\/p>\n When I visit Lasmanis at his co-working space in midtown, he\u2019s eager to show me just how hands-off Supliful has made the process. Pulling up the brand\u2019s AI assistant, he starts typing: \u201cLet\u2019s say, \u2018I want a supplement to improve sleep without melatonin for busy executives.\u2019\u201d The chatbot recommends a sleep-support supplement, which Lasmanis tells me he plans to sell in his own Shopify storefront. As a side hustle, it\u2019s an easy way to bring in $10,000 a month, he claims.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s so low-lift.\u201d He tells me I could start selling my own supplements later that afternoon.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not exaggerating. When I got home, I pulled up Supliful\u2019s catalogue and picked out a few products I\u2019d seen people talk about on social media: magnesium, creatine, and some chocolate libido strips (why not?). From there, Supliful prompted me to design my own label using Canva (Supliful provided the nutritional facts) and link the product to my online storefront. After 20 minutes of teaching myself graphic design, I was ready to start selling my own magnesium-glycinate capsules.<\/a> When my first customer hit \u201cpurchase,\u201d Supliful would put my label on a blank bottle\u00a0and ship it out from its warehouse in Denver. I\u2019d pay the company $11.65 plus the cost of shipping. I could charge whatever I wanted (the premium supplement brand Thorne sells a similar-looking bottle<\/a> for $26). All that was left to do was come up with some creative advertising \u2014\u00a0never mind the fact that I had nothing to do with the product formulation and couldn\u2019t tell you for sure what was in the bottle. In fact, I didn\u2019t even know where the supplements I\u2019d be selling were coming from. Lasmanis would tell me only that they were made at a handful of factories in the U.S. and wouldn\u2019t get more specific.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure many influencers put more time and thought into launching their signature elixirs than I did. <\/strong>But when you start looking behind the curtain, a lot of supplement brands are just as shady about where their pills come from. There are thousands of supplement manufacturers in the U.S., and they vary widely in terms of quality. Yet it\u2019s rare for brands to disclose where their products are made \u2014\u00a0never mind where the ingredients are sourced. (Technically, companies don\u2019t even have to tell you when their products were made: The FDA doesn\u2019t require that supplements list an expiration date.) It\u2019s not unusual that \u201cthe ingredients are coming in bulk quantities from China and then there\u2019s a warehouse in the U.S. where they\u2019re putting the powder into the pills and the bottles \u2014\u00a0and no one has any idea what\u2019s actually in the powder,\u201d says Pieter Cohen, a professor at Harvard Medical School who studies supplement safety. While manufacturers are supposed to comply with current good manufacturing practices \u2014\u00a0a list of rules to ensure sanitary conditions in factories \u2014\u00a0the FDA only inspects<\/a> a limited number of factories each year. It also doesn\u2019t require third-party testing before supplements hit the market.<\/p>\n If you want to make sure the contents of your creatine actually match what\u2019s on the label, Cohen says you should look for one certified by either NSF or USP \u2014\u00a0which means it\u2019s been tested by an independent lab to confirm the ingredients and the dose and screen for heavy metals and other contaminants. (One person I spoke to at NSF told me to beware of vague claims like \u201cthird-party tested\u201d: \u201cAnyone can just go and get that label off Google Images.\u201d) Yet going through thorough third-party testing is expensive and time consuming. \u201cMost brands don\u2019t want to do those things because it shrinks their margins,\u201d one supplement maker told me \u2014\u00a0and there\u2019s no good regulation to prevent them for doing whatever they want and selling it.<\/p>\n Supliful is launching new products each week, like brain-focus powder and methylene blue drops. Lasmanis tells me the company doesn\u2019t have anyone with medical or nutrition expertise on staff. When I ask how it makes sure its product formulations are safe \u2014\u00a0given that certain ingredients, like melatonin or even turmeric, can be dangerous in the wrong dose \u2014\u00a0Lasmanis says it relies on its manufacturing partners. When I sent the magnesium I ordered from Supliful to an accredited lab to get it tested, the results showed that it did in fact have a higher dose than the 275 mg. listed on the label. This didn\u2019t exactly reassure me, though Lasmanis said the magnesium levels observed were \u201cnormal and expected.\u201d\u00a0In the future, Supliful even plans to use AI to help users design their own custom formulas.<\/p>\n According to Cohen, all of this is \u201c100 percent legal\u201d: \u201cThe way the supplement industry is set up, anyone off the street can sell anything at any dose they want, regardless of any safety concerns.\u201d It doesn\u2019t even matter if they know what they\u2019re selling. Djeffson Athis \u2014\u00a0a \u201cbusiness-scaling coach<\/a>\u201d with 25,000 followers on Instagram \u2014 has used Supliful to launch two supplement brands with his sister, which he says brought in $500,000 in sales last year. He tells me one of their top-selling products is a supplement that helps stabilize blood sugar<\/a> \u2014\u00a0but when I ask what\u2019s in it, he\u2019s not sure. \u201cYou\u2019d have to ask my sister; she\u2019s a doctor,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m mostly the marketer \u2014\u00a0I don\u2019t pay a lot of attention to the ingredients.\u201d When I ask how he determined the supplements he was selling were safe, he tells me he looked at reviews on Google.<\/p>\n Lasmanis says he\u2019s \u201cvery confident\u201d in Supliful\u2019s manufacturing process and that they\u2019ve shipped out 2 million products with no health issues so far. But even if someone did have an issue, it\u2019s not clear they\u2019d know that Supliful was to blame. The fitness coaches and influencers who use the company to start their own vitamin lines aren\u2019t required to tell their customers that. When Bundy got sick after taking the moringa capsules, she had no luck getting a refund from TikTok and couldn\u2019t even figure out how to contact the brand. (A spokesperson for TikTok said that sellers are responsible for handling product recalls and refunds. Rosabella didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.) A week after the recall, the company appeared to still be selling the same supplements. In retrospect, Bundy says, \u201cI just feel really stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n This post has been updated to include comment from TikTok. <\/p>\n Stay in touch.<\/p>\n The latest in style, self, culture, and power in your inbox.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n