Most ads for sports supplements feature obvious incentives: washboard abs, swooning women, and the promise of acrobatic sex. One not-so-obvious ploy is the "consumer health alert" used recently to promote a muscle-boosting powder. The ad boasts that the ingredients "are so powerful that the FDA has instituted a research panel to ban the sale of it over the counter. Please act immediately before this product is banned."
In the past decade, performance-enhancing supplements have grown into a $1.6 billion industry, but even the experts don't know if the companies are selling risk or reward. "Twenty years ago, if you said dietary supplements, that meant vitamins, minerals, and protein powders," says Ann Grandjean, executive director of the Center for Human Nutrition in Omaha, Nebraska. She studies supplement use in Olympic athletes. "Today there are so many products that qualify as supplements, when people ask me what I think about them, I have to say, 'Can you be a little more specific?'"
