I view GNC and the Vitamin Shoppe as modern day retailers of snake oil. If you want protein, in the form of whey, I suppose these stores can provide you with an expensive alternative to what you can find on Amazon. However, the rest of the garbage that they retail there is the equivalent to 19th century snake oil, tonics designed to cure everything from obesity to cancer.
The other agencies involved are the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Defense, the Anti-Doping Agency and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
GNC has been under scrutiny by state law enforcement authorities this year, and last month Oregon sued the company claiming it sold supplements made with illegal ingredients. At the time, GNC called those claims “without merit.”
GNC in March reached an agreement with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its Herbal Plus products, pledging to more stringently test its supplements and follow FDA manufacturing recommendations. Schneiderman’s probe, which was also focused on retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Walgreens and Target Corp., sought information about the origins of ingredients in supplements and the health benefits described on labels.
Both GNC and VSI are prey, not predators, in this new retail landscape. The great Amazon anaconda is coming for them, to swallow then whole (no homo).
The DOJ will be holding a press release at 3:30 to discuss these matters.
NHTC is down in sympathy too.
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I can’t wait for the government to tell me how much I can bench press or squat because of bone and joint concerns. Please big government, help protect me from myself! Should I take vitamins? Should I eat sugar? Should I get out of bed?
I agree many if not most of the stuff is bullshit. But when does the consumer get to decide?
I buy nothing from those vendors. Amazon has much better prices on the same stuff plus free shipping..
Plus, the guys who work there are usually dicks, which would be funny if the worked at Dicks, but they don’t, so it isn’t.
You can tell the quality of a tonic by how shiny the massive font on the label is.
Hopefully Amazon doesn’t start dispensing FDA regulated medications or I am out of a job too.
Drugstore dot com does though and aren’t they an Amazon owned company? They might not dispense controlled substances though. Like Oxycotin via an Amazon drone. But prescriptions they do I think?