Audio only on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/barbell-shrugged/id509969439

Barbell Shrugged Ep 3 “The Supplement Industry Exposed”

Mike Bledsoe: I didn’t bring the iPad this time.

Doug Larson: Some ones got an iPad don’t they?

Mike Bledsoe: I was too busy trying to learn Spanish on it

Chris Moore: How is that going?

Mike Bledsoe: Terrible. I think the program is good, but my ability to sit down and actually do it is terrible.

Doug Larson: You were all pumped about that first day. You were like man I’m going to do this everyday. Learning Spanish everyday, I got my app set up and I’m ready to go. Next day I said you do it? You were like ‘no’.

Chris Moore: That’s his personality trait get excited, get motivated, lose interest in details and move on to the next thing. I share some of these traits.

Mike Bledsoe: Its true. I would have to say…

Doug Larson: We will talk about that on the next podcast if we do anymore.

Mike Bledsoe: One out of ten ideas actually stick, but I start about ten a week.

Doug Larson: You got to spend about a thousand dollars on equipment to keep you rolling.

Mike Bledsoe: Yeah. Its like I have to set up a weekly meeting with my friends, spend a thousand dollars on audio equipment and then we’ll make it happen.

Brad Pope: Donde esta ***** (1:35)

Mike Bledsoe: Joey Diaz is an actor. He has a really funny story you can YouTube it.

Chris Moore: Are we recording now? You didn’t even do an intro to the show.

Mike Bledsoe: We’re not doing the show yet. This is the preshow.

Brad Pope: This is the warm-up if you will.

Chris Moore: This is the preamble, okay.

CTP: You don’t just start with 4:25 on the clock.

Chris Moore: Is that an inside joke? Did I say that before? What are you doing?

CTP: No

Chris Moore: That’s a very specific thing you said, you can start with more weight then you think.

Doug Larson: Some people can start with 425. I don’t know if Chris can start with 425.

Chris Moore: I’m confused about you.

Brad Pope: That’s a solid warm-up for me.

Mike Bledsoe: Joey Diaz I guess has this story about this six week period where he sold Whitney Houston and Chris Brown cocaine.

Brad Pope: This sounds good.

Mike Bledsoe: They’re in California and he some how gets hooked up, and they’re spending like $1100 a day for six weeks on cocaine. Everyday he gets a phone call and he finally put it together $1100 is there per diem. So everyday they are getting their per diem money and blowing it on blow. So he would go into this house and buy $1100 worth of coke. He would cut it so he had some to take for himself. For anyone who knows anything about cocaine when you cut it you can make more with less.

Doug Larson: Cocaine expert, Mike Bledsoe

Chris Moore: You mix it with confectioners sugar.

Mike Bledsoe: Yes. I learned that from Cheech and Chong actually. Ajax works well. He has this six week story where he partied with them one time. They had to get some more just to get to the Grammys. Interesting story in light of all the recent news.

CTP: He said that like a week before that happened too.

Chris Moore: This is a case of dead that I don’t think surprised me at all. I’m surprised she hasn’t been long dead. She has always looked terribly high for the last fifteen years.

Mike Bledsoe: Any of these musicians are like keel over and die from overdose.

Chris Moore: She would just sit on stage and just rolling with the profuse unparallel sweat, after being on stage for like one minute. An then the rambling in between line it was very obvious. But now sweet angel rest in peace. May her voice entertain the angels.

Mike Bledsoe: I’m not going to feel sorry for her one bit, for the record.

Chris Moore: Heartless

Mike Bledsoe: I am a heartless bastard.

Chris Moore: You start up by saying oh terrible news this week like you’re a fan. Like your iTunes catalog is filled with the entire Whitney Houston…

Brad Pope: I’m not going to lie. I jam the shit out of the bodyguard soundtrack. Just putting that out there.

Mike Bledsoe: So Lucas posted something really good on his wall, which was a Chinese kid singing ‘I will always love you’. Probably better then Whitney Houston ever did it. I thought that was pretty good.

Chris Moore: Boy Chinese can do everything.

Mike Bledsoe: Hey if he can sing better than her. He could probably hold his crack better than her too.

Brad Pope: too soon…

Chris Moore: Yeah you went over some sort of line there.

Mike Bledsoe: Sorry, not really.

Chris Moore: And that leads us into… Barbell Shrugged

Mike Bledsoe: Barbell Shrugged

Chris Moore: Do your little introductory swag. Barbell Shrugged, Shrugging Barbells, talking about stuff and doing the stuff ep. 3 volume 1

Mike Bledsoe: That was just Chris Moore with the musical intro. I’m Mike Bledsoe. We have Doug Larson here as well, and our guest Brad Pope who is supplement industry extraordinaire/expert.

Brad Pope: Something like that.

Mike Bledsoe: So brad?

Brad Pope: Yeah
Chris Moore: As our guest, we have questions prepared for you.

Mike Bledsoe: I wouldn’t say we were really prepared. You work in the supplement industry. I don’t know how deep in the details you really want to get. You can maybe put your disclaimer out there for us.

Chris Moore: Dip your toe in the water and see how it feels. We’ll get going from there.

Brad Pope: Out of Grad school, me and some friends got involved in the supplement industry. We initially started selling and being involved in the supplement industry. Later, we were kind of consultants for other people and analysts on how to move products. Kind of reverse in the way you would traditionally do it. We started moving products out of the United States instead of into the United States. Typically when you have a supplement company they’re sourcing materials mostly from China. Sometimes you know if its easier to get geographically in another part of the world they will pull from there. We started producing here and moving to China. The reason we did that is because everyone knows China is up and coming and has a middle class growing. As that middle class grows they are coming more concerned with health and beauty products, which is where our niche market was when we started moving in. So we ran with that for a couple years. Now we consult with other companies to help them get there products to that market and fill that niche.

Chris Moore: Is it a natural side effect of you spend less time working, rice patties and slaying the way, and you have more income and time to worry about wrinkles and vitamins.

Brad Pope: That’s correct. 100% correct

Mike Bledsoe: They are starting to have the same first world problems we have.

Brad Pope: That’s right.

Chris Moore: You start going ‘where can I get my shark fin concentrate?’

Brad Pope: That is so unbelievably accurate. You have no idea, Chris Moore.

Doug Larson: You’re not selling anything that we would normally buy. You’re not selling creatine and fish oil. You’re selling more obscure products like he is suggesting.

Mike Bledsoe: It’s not obscure for the Chinese.

Chris Moore: Do you have shark fins and fucking bear prostates or something? They are all over right?

Brad Pope: Some things that have caught on in the Western supplement industry like fish oil is pretty big over there and alternatives to fish oil like krill oil, because of the mercury content of the fish native to China. As far as the bodybuilding stuff that traditionally people pick up over here. It’s really not there in China. There market is completely different. Chinese medicine is based kind of on… I would call it homeopathic maybe that would be a pretty generous description of it I guess.

Mike Bledsoe: Mostly antidotal?

Brad Pope: Yeah a lot of antidotal. Its not all hocus pocus, but some of it definitely is just like some of the bodybuilding stuff here is definitely “scientifically” based hocus pocus. Over there is more of a traditional roll of medicine. I guess they look at it like homeopathic internal medicine. That’s basically what there supplement industry is based around.

Chris Moore: Or whatever there fathers fathers father took for toe fungus.

Brad Pope: That’s right.

Chris Moore: Or for a urinary track infection he suggested to you. Hey I drank this root extract juice tea and I felt better so hints this is a cure for that.

Brad Pope: Right. And now they have gotten into this weird state where they like kind of a hybrid. You know we like this extract that has been part of our culture for generations and generations. What really drives sells is when you have the traditional remedy that’s backed up with even a modicum of scientific evidence. So then its like we have known this for years but now it’s confirmed by science. It’s just flying off the shelves when you find a situation like that, from a marketing standpoint.

Mike Bledsoe: You have been involved with trying to find some scientific evidence to back up some of the claims of some of these supplements?

Brad Pope: Sure, in the nice cases. In other cases, it’s more of a challenge of how to market things in that direction regardless of whether or not. Just to keep it real. Trying to find a way to meet that marketing demand regardless of whether the product actually does qualify. I think you all were talking the other day about Honey Nut Cheerios on your last blog.

Chris Moore: Fucking delicious

Brad Pope: Trying to find some way to correlate what this extract does in the same way that Cheerios tries to correlate fiber to there product.

Chris Moore: If you gave me an hour and said tie A to B. Here is your connection go on pubmeds*** (10:03) see what you can find. You can do it. The good thing and the bad thing about evidence is that there is a lot of it but you can cherry pick the shit out of it. Like we said last week, a hundred studies on compound A would probably get you going. One study is of note but useless. Any sort of error and bias or a missed decimal point you know screws all of those results up.

Brad Pope: It’s really interesting you know. A lot of the problems are the same that plague both industries. You know you have problems with the American supplement industry just like you have problems with the Chinese industry. In the Chinese industry, it’s kind of like the wild, Wild West. I mean you could show up with a box of snake oil and be like ‘hey this is ancient Chinese cobra’.

Chris Moore: Is this also unregulated over there?

Brad Pope: I mean they have a regulatory body. We have the FDA and supplements are largely unregulated here.

Chris Moore: I may forget how it shook out. At my work, we all got a little nervous when the stories of what China did to the guy who should have been the one protecting the population from that milk incident. What’s that chemical they found in milk? It’s some sort of toxic substances in milk that was going…

Brad Pope: It starts with an M too.

Chris Moore: Apparently the guy who was in charge of making sure that didn’t happen. I think he was executed. I think the government said ‘you have screwed up and I think the penalty for this is death’. We’re like oh boy we have unregulated product going to China. So I wondered wow American companies putting in compounds how does the government… maybe now they’re so focused on this weird, bizarre capitalism they got going on, like hey if it makes money lets do it.

Brad Pope: Yeah, sure. The milk thing was pretty egregious, a lot of people died and some kids died.

Chris Moore: Can’t be over looked.

Brad Pope: That’s very different then having a supplement that doesn’t do what it says it does of the label.

Doug Larson: I haven’t heard about that at all. So they were adding a compound to milk and it killed people?

Brad Pope: Some how the milk.. You know it’s the same thing that happened with raw milk. You know the reason why raw milk it outlawed in a lot of states is because there is something to be said about pasteurization and removing impurities and bacteria and things like that from milk. I think what had happened actually. They were… I don’t want to get into details because I am not sure. Some how the milk was tainted. I think it was being handled in the same production environment that other things were being handled in and it was tainted. So people were drinking tainted milk and dying, mostly kids and old people.

Mike Bledsoe: Kids and old people. So if your young and have a health digestion just do whatever you want.

Brad Pope: Yeah you can probably get passed that.

Mike Bledsoe: That’s the way I see it. I might get a little sick but whatever. One of things I thought was really interesting. I remember the day that I was in the gym and I was coaching you. I don’t know how we got on the topic on what you do. You were like ‘oh I export supplements to China’. And I was just like what? This doesn’t make any since like the world just got turned upside down. I was immediately interested in what you did. We got in a lot of conversations about the regulation of supplements here in the United States. The ability to make sure what you’re getting or buying is what you’re really getting. We talked a little bit about some breakdowns. There are different levels of manufacturing or communication. Something can breakdown to where your not really getting what you thought you were getting. Even outside the whole whether creatine actually works or not, there is the whole issues of whether your actually getting creatine when the bottle says creatine.

Brad Pope: Right. It goes so far beyond that. Calling it a breakdown is like calling the earthquake in Haiti a minor tremor. It’s so mind blowingly bad. When we actually had our hand in the supplement industry, we were ordering supplements from China. They would just not send us at all what we had requested. I think we talked about this. We had ordered some creatine monohydrate, and they’d send us like water. I mean no attempt at all to try. The specific instance was we ordered some AAKG, which I’m sure some of you probably know what that is. It was basically an anti-caking agent not at all in the supplement industry. Not even anything you would use for any supplement product. It was in a dram labeled AAKG.

Chris Moore: They just put random shit in the dram.

Brad Pope: It’s a coarse powder just the same, and somebody that really knows what they’re dealing with would probably know. If you’re not on top of your testing or what’s called the GMP, which is what the FDA calls the good manufacturing process. If you’re really not on top of that kind of process, which a lot of small supplement industries or suppliers just can’t be from a cost perspective, you have no idea. So you get to does creatine work and creatine actually in that bottle? And the answer a lot of times is maybe, maybe not.

Mike Bledsoe: Interesting. So if I buy a bottle of protein or something like that and it has the GMP label on there. What is that telling me exactly?

Brad Pope: That tells you that the company is claiming that they are maintaining good manufacturing practices. The problem is the FDA has their arms tied up in so many different things. You know I think Chris works for Smith and Nephew and he can tell you the FDA is probably very involved with there work and business.

Chris Moore: Overly

Brad Pope: They are not very involved in dietary supplements at all. They are just not that concerned with it. It really falls in the same level as pet food. Occasionally they audit… I think the audited maybe 300 facilities last year in nutritional supplement industries, which is not even scratching the surface of the supplement industry. The people that they audit are normally larger scale players like EAS who has a presence in Wal-mart or Wal-greens.

Chris Moore: Dancing on the line between supplement and food?

Mike Bledsoe: From what I understand, a lot of manufacturers… I mean companies are getting the same supplement manufactured, so creatine for one company there’s like twenty companies using the same manufacturer. They are just packaging it a little differently. That being the case, how many manufacturers of supplements are out there in the United States?

Brad Pope: There are endless. I mean that number changes probably by the hour. How many small scale suppliers there are. Now, you do have a very limited supply of raw ingredient suppliers. One of the big players in this is Mitsubishi who makes the cars. They are also a big conglomerate. They deal a lot in supplies. That’s usually a pretty safe place to get your products from or your raw ingredients from.

Chris Moore: That sounds incredibly odd. Mitsubishi stereos, cars, supplement ingredients

Doug Larson: I was super shocked to hear that.

Brad Pope: If you really want to see the scale of it. We’ll talk about the natural…

Mike Bledsoe: The bigger raw supplement producers are probably more trustworthy that you’re getting what you’re really getting. What’s the deal on that?

Brad Pope: The reason is that large scale guys can afford the cost of the GMP processes. The GMP processes are really complex. It has a lot of rules and a lot of regulations. Like I said if you and I were starting a supplement industry there is probably no way to get our head around it without…

Chris Moore: You would have to hire a whole staff to run this procedure.

Doug Larson: So that’s all completely voluntary?
Brad Pope: No, it’s not voluntary. If you open a supplement industry, you are liable for keeping your facility up to GMP standards. The problem is there is really no accountability.

Chris Moore: Who is going to audit you?

Brad Pope: Yeah, exactly. The FDA has to go through medical devices, drug companies, food, cosmetic products and then maybe they will get to you the same time they get to dog food. The chances of you getting audited are so small.

Doug Larson: There is a lot more FDA involvement then there used to be, right? Is it heading that direction where they are starting to do more with dietary supplements then they used to?

Brad Pope: They say that. There is a big claim every year. There’s a private company that normally if a small scale supplement vendor comes into the industry. They will hire this company to kind of foe audit them, and take them through to GMP process. That company is called NSF and they work pretty closely with the FDA. They publish every year, how many supplement places were audited and what…

Chris Moore: Those are the agencies that are a lot better at making sure people are doing their job.

Brad Pope: Oh for sure

Chris Moore: We should pay people to audit you. Then have the FDA review a summary report that’s certified. That would be a better way of going forward.

Brad Pope: That would be great, if you could kind of get by with that. If the FDA actually audits you, it’s really just about your paper trail. It doesn’t even have to be true in most cases. Its just can you present a convincing case that you were doing the things that you needed to be doing. And whether or not you are actually doing them or not. The FDA maybe comes out for two days maybe three. The only way the FDA comes out normally is if there is an adverse report on your product. If a customer calls and says ‘I took this product and my face fell off’.

Chris Moore: That’s fucked up.

Mike Bledsoe: How many times have you gotten that report Brad?

Brad Pope: I think we’re on six now, audit six. No we have never been audited. If the FDA gets that adverse report, then they make a decision whether they want to come out and audit. Normally if you don’t get an adverse report on your product then they are not going to bother at all.

Mike Bledsoe: So if your paper works in order then your covered pretty much?
Brad Pope: Sure. Like I said you could be grinding up puppies in the back and throwing them in your whey protein. As long as you have that paperwork that says you’re not doing that.

Chris Moore: That’s high quality protein.

Doug Larson: That might sell in Asia.

Chris Moore: Doug come on. By the way, now that we touched by on Asia. The milk thing, I’m consulting Wikipedia ‘the 2008 milk scandal’. Apparently he had a bunch of infants and adults coming down with varies stages of kidney failure and renal stress and death. Apparently it’s tied to a chemical melamine, which among other things was being used to give the perception that milk and formula had a higher protein content then it actually did. It was used I guess as a cutter.

Mike Bledsoe: They were cutting their milk man.

Chris Moore: A cheap chemical that someone probably did some sort of test and said ‘this is fine. It won’t cause any problems’. Used it in large amounts then all the sudden…

Mike Bledsoe: It probably worked find on the rats.

Chris Moore: Some period of time after your testing window. They say ‘oh we tested this and after a couple months no one has any problems’. A year, two years, five years people get these problems or whatever. Holy shit storm you head is decapitated. They solved that problem.

Mike Bledsoe: They were probably just testing it on rats. Oh the rats are still alive…

Chris Moore: Yeah the rats are still alive so hey…

Mike Bledsoe: Lets give it to two million people. They have a population problem anyway, right?

Chris Moore: You know China can hear this?

Mike Bledsoe: They don’t have real Internet.

Brad Pope: But not understand it. Fitr.TV is actually probably blocked.

Mike Bledsoe: Oh yeah, anything that’s giving them subversive information.

Brad Pope: Oh yeah. Shortly before my journey into the fitness world, I played a lot of Warcraft for those of you that may not be able to tell from my nerdy voice. I played a lot. I went over there I remember I was so frustrated…
Mike Bledsoe: Also known as WOW.

Brad Pope: That is correct, WOW.

Mike Bledsoe: I learned that from Daniel Tosh.

Brad Pope: Did you? Thank you Daniel Tosh, wherever you may be tonight. So I was just really frustrated because I couldn’t get to my Warcraft page.

Mike Bledsoe: When you were in China?

Brad Pope: Yeah. What in the world could I possible do to subvert your authority? I’m not secretly planning a coo through Warcraft.

Mike Bledsoe: You can chat in WOW, right?

Brad Pope: You can for sure.

Mike Bledsoe: That’s probably what it is.

Brad Pope: Yeah, maybe

Mike Bledsoe: Probably hard to monitor all the chat that’s going on inside of a video game.

Brad Pope: The company that owns Warcraft opened some strictly Taiwanese servers. So China probably doesn’t take to kindly to that. That may be why they blocked them.

Chris Moore: They don’t mess around in China.

Brad Pope: No they do not mess around.

Chris Moore: That’s such a weird… I don’t quite understand. Communist, hyper, capitalist, no holds bard, its just a weird mix of all sorts of things.

Mike Bledsoe: I’m not even sure… Brad would probably know better exactly how their economy operates. I know it used to be where the government pretty much owned all the companies, and they would allow people to run them. I think they are getting more and more autonomous. I think the government is having a hard time letting them be as autonomous as they want to be.

Brad Pope: Yeah. That’s a pretty fair estimation. The irony is, in addition to the supplement industry, I’ve spent a lot of time in Asia. I lived in Japan for a little while, and visited China a few times. They funny thing is in Japan it’s a very conservative culture. Japan actually feels more closed then China does. When you have your feet on the street in China people are really super friendly and they are great to be around and are very hospitably.

Chris Moore: What about the food? The food is probably drop dead amazing, right? No? Can you not get like meat on a stick in the street?

Brad Pope: Oh you can for sure. But you know…

Mike Bledsoe: What kind of meat is it?

Brad Pope: Yeah. You go and they serve you…

Doug Larson: It’s like the supplements. You don’t really know what it is.

Mike Bledsoe: It’s Labrador.

Chris Moore: I was told by wise people whatever was being cooked and being sold and eaten around you. No matter what it is consume that thing. If there is something off to the side that’s a little more comfortable to your pallet, don’t eat that. That is what makes you sick. So if someone is serving you a skewer of beating hearts from cobras, which I saw Andrew Zimmer eat one time. Someone cut a cobra open and gave him the beating heart of a fucking cobra. An he ate it then he had snake ice cream.

Brad Pope: Yeah basically organic

Chris Moore: Whatever they’re eating. I think I’ve heard that from Bordan (25:14)**** a guy that travels at work nonstop. He is like ‘yeah eat whatever they got man, just do it’.

Mike Bledsoe: Yeah. I went and ate authentic Chinese once with some Chinese friends of mine. I asked them ‘just don’t tell me what I am eating’. You can tell me after, just don’t tell me before.

Chris Moore: You don’t want to be the guy that shows up and gets offered something and say ‘oh no I don’t want that’. You look like a fucking asshole American they all think you are.

Mike Bledsoe: Funny story. We sit down and it’s me and one other round eye…

Brad Pope: Round eye… Welcome to 1960.

Chris Moore: It was me and one other then ***(25:45) Charlie.

Brad Pope: And it was Steven Seagal. It was.

Mike Bledsoe: Me and my buddy were the only two white guys there. There were like eight Chinese folks, and we’re all hanging out. We’re all having a good time. I’m like ‘don’t tell me what I am eating’. One of them is obviously a fried chicken foot. It’s just the chicken foot, right. So its family style so I pick my chicken foot off and I stick it on my plate and five minutes go by. I stick the chicken foot in my mouth. I chew it up and I swallow it. I have a couple friends there. My friend Taw***** looks at me and goes ‘hey bro did you put the chicken foot back out there after it was on your plate? That’s not very sanitary dude. I don’t appreciate that.’ I was like ‘no I ate it’. He as like ‘well where’s the bone?’ I was like ‘no I ate it’.

Chris Moore: You notice anything overly crunchy?

Mike Bledsoe: I just thought that’s how they did it. I didn’t know anything. I was like oh well I’m an idiot. I had to convince them that I didn’t put it back. I was like ‘but not I seriously ate it’. They were like ‘there’s no way you did that’. No I ate it.

Chris Moore: Toenails and all

Brad Pope: Just right down in there

Mike Bledsoe: Between that and some other stuff that was like raw eggs that had that consistency to this day I still don’t know what that was.

Chris Moore: The biggest problem with Americans is texture.

Mike Bledsoe: It’s probably because we cook everything.

Chris Moore: When I was in Horn for the first time, a suburb of Amsterdam, with family. I was offered pickled haring, which a lot of people love. They eat it. You take this pickled haring and you smush it with raw onion and just eat it. So it’s like a gelatinous pickled fish. Like six or eight inches long. There is a picture of me. Oh yeah this will be fine and I put it in my mouth. It was like firm fishy, jello. I bite into it and it’s this sort of jello feel in my mouth. Its took every molecule of my body to fight and go ‘don’t throw up and the kitchen table’.

Brad Pope: You will have a lot of those experiences if you ever adventure to China.

Chris Moore: Yeah. It’s worth it. It’s a great memory. The texture is super challenging. Like in Korea when they have the potent kimchi*** (28:10) stuff or the fermented fish eggs. Andrew Zimmern one time pulled out, this dude is in Vietnam or Korea or somewhere, and he pulled out a fermented almost hatched duck egg. So he pulled this thing out of an egg. It was a feathered fuck embryo with a yolk sack attached to it. He just ate it and bit through the whole thing. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. He said ‘it is very, very swampy. I’m getting a lot of feather, swamp and mud tones’. That’s just an asshole comment.

Mike Bledsoe: I saw that episode. I think it was in Cambodia is where he was actually at.

Chris Moore: We may have been watching it at the same time.

Mike Bledsoe: We may have watched that together. I think what it was, is that he bought a so many week old like this is three week old duck. He is like oh okay. He opens it up and is like this is not three weeks. This is at least six. Its like too far along and he is like I don’t know if I should eat this. Then he eats it anyway.

Brad Pope: That’s so gross.

Mike Bledsoe: It was pretty awesome. Ashley can’t watch that. Ashley, my wife, is extremely prone to throwing up at any giving moment. All you have to do is make a gagging noise, and she is running for the bathroom as fast as she can.

Chris Moore: And she can’t see anyone in a mask.

Mike Bledsoe: Nope.

Chris Moore: Even if it’s a piece of paper over somebody’s face.

Brad Pope: Is that true?

Mike Bledsoe: Exactly, yeah. It’s very true.

Doug Larson: It’s super true. If you put your hands over your face, she it totally scared.

Brad Pope: Who?

Doug Larson: Ashley

Mike Bledsoe You can’t take her to a theme park.

Doug Larson: Mickey Mouse is the scariest person on the planet.

Mike Bledsoe: Something may have happened to her as a young child. She may have blocked it out. As far as I know, she has no real reason to be terrified of masks, but you never know.

Doug Larson: Halloween is the worst holiday ever for her. It’s so bad.

Mike Bledsoe: She hates it. It’s really funny for me.

Doug Larson: Wait so Brad, how come you have specifically chose just to go to China? Like how come you haven’t tried to break into the American market at all?

Brad Pope: To be honest, the product we sell is more in the vein of that sort of traditional Chinese remedy. So we don’t think it would be very popular here. Another point, it saves us a lot of money not really having to deal as extensively with the FDA as we would if we had a presence in America. For the cost involved to keep up the testing and the stuff that GMP require, it would just be monetarily less enjoyable.

Mike Bledsoe: What is that?

Doug Larson: Are we suppose to evacuate?

Chris Moore: That’s a message from our sponsor. Do you need an alarm?

Mike Bledsoe: All right. Everyone turn off their phones. James!

James Cheney: I thought you wanted to know when time was up.

Mike Bledsoe: Oh that was it?

Chris Moore: That was our first segment?

Mike Bledsoe: Oh, we used a different timer this time.

Brad Pope: Lets take a break and visit that when we get back.

Mike Bledsoe: Yeah. Lets go ahead and take a break. We will be back with Brad talking about…

Brad Pope: Boring stuff…

Chris Moore: After a message from our sponsors

********** Commercial **********

Mike Bledsoe: I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

Brad Pope: Mike is about to walk off set.

Chris Moore: Welcome back from your break watching video “insert name of video here” I hope you enjoyed that video. It was great.

Mike Bledsoe: So Brad we were getting into why you guys do not delve into the US market with your supplements.
Brad Pope: Yeah. We touched on that a little bit. I think first of all we talked about how our product is a niche product in China. We just don’t feel like that niche would translate well into the American market. On the other side of that, we also talked a little bit about how small suppliers of supplements have a hard time wrapping their head around the update requirements. The FDA does some things that are really good, but they create a large barrier to entry for small people trying to get into the market. There is a whole lot of just ridiculous rules. That gets carried over from the Pharmaceutical industry or the food industry that they have taken and tried to adapt them to the supplement industry. A really good example is the labeling for nutritional supplements. Nutritional supplements labels have to be… There has to be a written process in place and documented throughout every batch that you run of label accountability. How many labels did you use? How many went to scrap? It’s a transaction cost of doing business. I understand that from a pharmaceutical standpoint. If you mislabel aspirin and you give someone the wrong dosage, they could probably die. Asking a small supplement industry to have a label accountability procedure, and 50,000 other procedures like a label accountability procedure, it just gets cumbersome and expensive. Let alone the testing. The FDA requires “That you test every batch of raw ingredient that comes into your facility for handling”. So there is a quarantine phase. You either have to test it in house or ship out to independent laboratory, and weight for the results to get back before you release it from quarantine.

Chris Moore: So you pay and weight for that or you pay for a testing facility of your own, which is crazy expensive.

Brad Pope: Right. If you are a small scale operation, a single test is five or six…

Chris Moore: Maybe have five employees in there.

Brad Pope: Right. There is no way a small scale company can one, really navigate these rules effectively. You definitely have to have someone that knows the process. That understands the process of an FDA audit and a GMP audit. And two, you have to have someone that really gives a shit. Who thinks that the FDA has a valid point and feels that having these processes in place will be good for the company. Knowing they may or may not be audited.

Mike Bledsoe: I would be terrible for that job. I’m like FDA who? Screw those guys.

Brad Pope: It gets so ridiculous. Ill give you guys a couple of examples real quick then we will move on. The FDA wants you to test for water potability. What that is, is basically the quality of your drinking water. Which is pretty easy now because they have test that you can use on your own. When your first getting started, they want you to go to the municipality often times and get a report from the GIS. I would go to Memphis GIS services or Memphis geographical services and have them pull the water potability reports and have those on file.

Chris Moore: That doesn’t make any sense. Every business in this area to prove that the water that they all use… It seems like its not there responsibility. Its like fuck we are hooked up to the city’s water supply. It is their job to make sure the water is okay.

Brad Pope: Right. What the FDA would say to that is ‘well you have to do it on a weekly bases from a different water source each time and if it’s not up to par which you have to constantly monitor for’…

Mike Bledsoe: Different water sources within your town?

Brad Pope: No. If you have four sinks in your facility, they don’t want you testing from the ‘good sink’. So they want you testing all around your facility.

Chris Moore: I guess you could have rusty pipes or something.

Mike Bledsoe: You might have lead in your pipes somewhere.

Brad Pope: The FDA makes no policy for that, so if it’s a rusty pipe on the city’s end and on your end. It doesn’t matter. The FDA says the burden falls on you. If your water falls out of those potability measures, it’s your responsibility to filter it. It’s not necessarily that one policy, but it’s so many of those policies. It gets real expensive really fast, and the transaction costs are really high. If you actually do it right, which no one does. Even the big players there just really…

Mike Bledsoe: So are the big supplement companies that have a lot of money, are they more likely to give you a higher quality product? I see a lot of stuff online and I have a lot of people who seem to be pre-knowledgeable about supplements. They usually point to the smaller companies that are much more niche then EAS. EAS is getting everybody in every gym type of thing. Then you have this niche product. They’re only going after the people who follow the warrior diet. If you do the warrior diet then you are going to take these supplements. That’s extremely niche.

Chris Moore: I did see. There was some sort of report just a few months ago, where somebody tested multivitamins in a grocery store. Cheap brands versus the higher up brands, and found that the cheaper brands/Kroger brands had more consistent mineral content then your centrums or your daily whatever. There was no benefit for paying premium for vitamins.

Doug Larson: Kind of on that note, maybe a year ago now. Consumer reports did a bunch of research into heavy metals in protein powders and a variety of other supplement. That was a whole fiasco in the whole fitness world.

Brad Pope: Absolutely I remember that report.

Doug Larson: I know a lot of people for a while were swearing off ‘I’m never doing supplements again’. They had lead and arsenic and a variety of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

Chris Moore: Mercury?

Doug Larson: Yes Mercury and all of the stuff that you should obviously not be putting in your body, in high enough concentration. I was expecting lawsuit after lawsuit to follow those reports.

Brad Pope: Probably didn’t happen

Doug Larson: I don’t remember seeing them. There very well may have been because they were for big products. I remember muscle milk was like top of the chart.

Mike Bledsoe: Oh yeah. Cytosport was up there.

Brad Pope: To address Mikes point, we need to make a delineation that compliance with the FDA really doesn’t have anything to do with the product quality. It does to some extent. Just because you compliant with the FDA doesn’t mean you product is any good. It means you have a really good paper trail and your facility is probably pretty clean.

Mike Bledsoe: Your good at keeping yourself accountable for your procedures. It doesn’t matter what your procedures are like. You procedures could be total shit.

Chris Moore: Maybe your more inclined to have a shitter product. You have you restore margins by having cheap ingredients because you had to pay so much for the quality.

Brad Pope: That’s exactly right. What the small players normally have on there side is they have genuine passion for their product. They are really concerned with what’s the quality of this protein that we are putting into our protein powders. What’s the quality of whey that we are putting in our whey powder? Where as when it gets a Wal-Mart distribution type level, they’re just looking for the bottom dollar whey protein that they can get. They are making it as cheaply as they can to get as many as they can on the shelf. It turns into a volume game. There are pros and cons to each one, and as a consumer you have to decide. Are you going to go with these larger FDA compliant facilities that you know are going to turn out a relatively consistent product? Regardless whether or not it’s consistent shit. Or are you going to go with the new guy on the block, who is really interested in getting the maximum result out of this product.

Chris Moore: I guess this is a good lesson. This translates to food and everything else.
Brad Pope: Right. That falls really on the conscious of the consumer.

Mike Bledsoe: That is a good point. I know that we, at our gym, get our food from a couple different sources. One of them is directly from a farm. I know some people from our facility that have been to that farm.

Chris Moore: You might want to elaborate how you define the word farm.

Mike Bledsoe: What do you mean?

Chris Moore: Because there are all kinds of farms. There are farms with fucking pigs caged up in chicken wire.

Doug Larson: An industrialized farm…

Mike Bledsoe: This would be a sustainable farm. I guess what’s called sustainable farming or beyond organic or something like that.

Chris Moore: In your mind, picture the children’s book old McDonald, that kind of farm. A guy walking around taking care of animals and plants.

Mike Bledsoe: They have more then one this going on. Most farms actually have a single item that they grow or they raise. So they only do cattle or they only do corn or they only do apples. They have to import and export a lot of product. Where as with these other farms they don’t import or export hardly anything. They use manure instead of some chemicals for fertilizer and stuff like that. They go beyond the standards for organic. Organic standards are pretty low. They go beyond that and they know that the customers really appreciate that. They make deliveries all over Tennessee. I think they have a hard time delivering some of their products outside the state, because once you start crossing state lines with certain products like raw milk. You’re a felon at that point. You’re breaking federal laws. Which is pretty interesting in itself but we wont go there today. This particular farm, West Wind Farms, where we get some shipments to our facility. There are people from our facility that have actually gone and put eyes on the farm. Okay this place is legit. They really care about the animals. The cage free chickens are actually out pastured chickens. They are not put in a barn with a tiny door and called cage free. That’s the type of facility I’m talking about. We can do that with our food. We have done that with our food. That’s pretty much the only place a get my food is from places, where I have almost a personal relationship with the owners. And have full trust that they are doing what they say they are doing.

Chris Moore: I think you’re this close to wanting to kill his own cow.

Brad Pope: Hey man, Faction hunting club

Chris Moore: kiss it on the check, pet it, learn its nickname, and then slit its throat
Mike Bledsoe: Who hasn’t done that?

Chris Moore: I haven’t done it. You know I haven’t done it. I could never kill a living thing. I will just eat his corpse. It’s much easier and my conscious is so clean.

Mike Bledsoe: By the way guys, for the audience, we are planning to go for a weekend and Chris Moore make his first kill and eat it.

Chris Moore: I am so domesticated man. It’s ridiculous.

Mike Bledsoe: We are going to turn him into a Ferial Chris.

Chris Moore: Yeah. So I will behave like a look.

Mike Bledsoe: He is going to grow tusks and everything. Anyways, we can do that with our food. We can visit the farm and we can go locally. Obviously it’s going to cost more. Can we do that with our supplements? Is there a way to kind of check on shit ourselves?

Brad Pope: It’s definitely more difficult to do in the supplement industry. One of two things happens the company either gets a direct line to a source of whatever ingredient. We will take whey protein. That’s one here that everyone uses or fish oil. They have a direct line to the guy that makes the fish oil, which is actually really rare. What normally happens is they interact with a broker or an agent or a larger distributor to get theirs. Larger distributors can be almost hostile, when you start asking: where did you get this? Is this from wild codfish? Or where is this sourced? They don’t want to give you that because you can just end around them. If you’re ordering your ingredients from China, the guy in China doesn’t care if he is sending to you or to Mitsubishi. He would rather just send straight to you at a higher price or whatever. It’s hard to get that direct relationship with your raw ingredients suppliers. It can be done and it is done is some cases. For the most part, you are at the mercy of which raw ingredient supplier do you trust the most?

Mike Bledsoe: And that’s if you’re running a supplement company?

Brad Pope: Correct

Mike Bledsoe: He is an individual and I’m the end consumer here.

Brad Pope: You are going to have to go a step further.

Mike Bledsoe: I am buying it from a website or from a guy that says ‘hey our whey protein comes from pastured cows’. The cows aren’t cooped up and grain feed. ‘Its cool pressed, non-denatured protein. It hasn’t been exposed to high heat.’ They are saying this stuff and it’s on the label. When I take it of course I’m like ‘I read the label this stuff is way higher quality’. Psychologically I’m going ‘man I feel really good’.

Chris Moore: I feel more huge already.

Mike Bledsoe: I recognize that. I am testing this stuff on myself but I know that I am taking it. It is really hard to do a double blind study on yourself.

Brad Pope: Some people may call that impossible actually.

Mike Bledsoe: I tricked myself. What we could do I could set the supplements up and Doug could punch me right afterwards, and I wont remember anything.

Brad Pope: I’ve seen Doug work the bag. It seems like a good plan.

Chris Moore: You don’t want Doug punching you.

Brad Pope: To answer your question, it’s even harder for the consumer because they are one separate move. I have to go to the supplement company. They have to tell me who their supplier is. I have to go to the supplier, and they have to tell me who their source is. If I want to do all the research myself, that can get really tough for a consumer to do. Most people don’t do really well with tough. If you want to do it, you could probably track it down but it would take some effort. It could be done but its usually not.

Mike Bledsoe: Personally I’ve been thinking about my own health. Then of course anything I do for myself, I want to do for the members of the gym as well. I don’t want to be off on one path and leading them down another. I want everyone to be on the same page, and I want everyone to get the best stuff highest quality. I’ve been trying to figure out what I can do to figure out what’s best. What would you suggest if I wanted to make sure I was getting the highest quality protein without any of the crazy additives or chemicals? Down to the other supplements as well, just using protein as an example. What would you suggest would be the smartest way? Maybe not all the way where I have to track down the guy chopping down or feeding the cow, but what makes sense. Economically even too.

Brad Pope: I think if you are really interested there are a couple things you can do. There are a couple ways we have seen people handle this. First, you are always going to be a little bit safer with minimum ingredient supplements. That make sense? Like fish oil it’s one ingredient. You know what it is.

Mike Bledsoe: Stay away from the proprietary blend with 18 different ingredients?

Brad Pope: Correct. I’m sure everyone here has seen ‘Bigger, Faster, Stronger’ which is a documentary on steroids. For the audience members that haven’t seen it…

Chris Moore: Go see it.

Brad Pope: Definitely go see that movie. There is a scene in there where he starts his own ‘supplement label’. He just basically grabs some rice flower, you know the minimum amount of ingredients that he can put in this product to call it a product. He gets some day laborers, and they make it in his kitchen. They all hide behind, the thing we have all seen before, the proprietary blend. You really want to stay away from really complicated formulas. If you are really concerned about purity, it’s obviously going to be easier to trace the purity of a single ingredient supplement versus a proprietary blend.

Mike Bledsoe: That’s one thing that we do already. We don’t sell products that have creatine in them. We just sell the creatine.

Brad Pope: That being said, from a retailer’s standpoint some larger retailers do this. Periodically they will send off their supplements for an analysis test, from an independent laboratory. An FDA certified laboratory or even not an FDA certified laboratory, a University or whatever. That’s usually a pretty cheap test. You can get that done anywhere from $300-$800. Depending on how complicated the product is and how much they need to breakdown. You know kind of he nature of the supplements. That’s really worth doing.

Mike Bledsoe: Can I use a test like that if I want to send off one of these higher end smaller companies? Like can I compare the non-denatures cold press protein versus the EAS protein? Just to see which one has a higher quality and that kind of stuff.

Brad Pope: In that case, they would probably give you a purity. They would say ‘this fish oil is 99.98% fish oil, this fish oil is 86% fish oil.’ You’re obviously better with the 99.98% fish oil.

Doug Larson: If your talking about purity, say something is only 80% like whey protein for example. What else is in it? I know you got potentially artificial sweetener or anti caking agents or plain filler maybe. Just to make it look bigger.

Brad Pope: You just nailed the big three anti caking is something you have to put in there. The amount is pretty small normally. Rice flower, which again you see in Better, Faster, Stronger, is a huge filler. I can probably but wont name fifteen different suppliers who…

Doug Larson: So what is the purpose of rice flower? Just to give it more volume? You can put it in a bigger container and sell it for more money.

Brad Pope: Just a filler… Like Mike eluted to…

Chris Moore: Just like cocaine…

Brad Pope: Like some people have a little bit of that special magic that turns a kilo into a kilo and a half of cocaine.

Mike Bledsoe: This is interesting, because there is this one supplement that I have been using. That’s more expensive, smaller company. I am not going to come out and promote them just yet.

Chris Moore: Not until they give you free shit.

Doug Larson: They’re on to me.

Mike Bledsoe: Yeah, that’s right. I will be making some phone calls this week. I’m getting more protein per volume. The scoops are smaller but I’m getting the same. That’s what the label says, anyway. So is that a good chance that EAS I was using had more fillers?

Brad Pope: Right. The smaller companies are usually really honest. They know they are fighting an uphill battle against larger suppliers. They’re normally a lot more willing to tell you, yes we get this from here. Go ahead.

Chris Moore: Sorry I interrupted you. I apologize. You got to know in this world. If you’re picking up two products, and it’s suppose to be the same thing and one has more servings and is cheaper. They’re calling both things whey protein powder. Your first thought has to be something is going on to justify the difference in price. It should be an assumption that they have done something to lower the quality of that.

Mike Bledsoe: You don’t always. You can have an appearance of a higher quality product and just charge more money. I know that happens. Usually you get what you pay for most of the time. One of the things is like say EAS versus one of these smaller companies is it really worth the artificial sweeteners, filers and all that kind of stuff. Do I need to be putting sucralose in my body everyday? Not only that. Is this other company that is smaller do they have sucralose in their product but they’re just not saying they do. I am paying the extra buck to avoid those artificial sweeteners, and getting a higher percentage of protein per whatever. Are they just taking EAS back and dumping it into a different container in their facility? Then charging me double. That’s where I’m coming from.

Chris Moore: You’re anti-capitalist? They are capitalizing.

Brad Pope: To answer that, most of the smalls companies are honest. If you are getting a product where some test is run and they find out its inferior. It is usually just as much of a shock to the small suppliers then it is to you the consumer. Normally what happens is the small supplier has been deceived by there raw supplier. In most cases you are safer. Like I said small suppliers are usually more honest. Larger suppliers you have to accept them for what they are. They are looking to make the bare minimum profitable whey protein. We say EAS and other companies like that but the large distributors of whey protein are looking for how can they…
Chris Moore: It’s inherent to the business model.

Brad Pope: Exactly right

Mike Bledsoe: So if I want to offer my members and just my customers period a higher quality protein. I probably should be going to the smaller companies. That’s kind of what I am getting out of this.

Brad Pope: My suggestion would be yes.

Mike Bledsoe: And you said they would be more willing to be open.

Brad Pope: Absolutely

Mike Bledsoe: You think I could get the owner of one of these companies interviewed and all that kind of stuff, and visit the facility.

Brad Pope: Yeah. There is probably one girl who answers the front desk, a couple guys who run in and then the owner. It’s probably four or five. It’s not rocket science to run a supplement business.

Doug Larson: Do you know any small companies that we could go after, here in the United States?

Mike Bledsoe: Don’t say go after, say interview.

Chris Moore: Investigative journalism

Mike Bledsoe: Yeah that guy said go after them. No way.

Brad Pope: Yeah. I could probably refer you to some that we’ll name off air. Kind of point you in the direction of how that process runs

Chris Moore: Like a local Maw and Pop supplement company, you know have been in business for 35 years. It’s just your average everyday supplement manufacturer.

Brad Pope: Potent Pro Protein manufacturers, I could probably put you in touch with those guys.

Chris Moore: In my mind I picture a local Maw and Pop fucking maple syrup distillery. This has been in our family for years. We just sit around making one bottle a day. I wonder if they do the same thing like protein powder. We craft every bottle of protein to your specifications. We hand seal it and stamp it with wax and a seal.

Brad Pope: A lot of times the deception doesn’t really… You’re splitting hairs when you get to deceiving people on the ingredients. Where people really get deceived is on the product itself. The efficacy of heavy water is one that we’ve had to deal with a lot.

Doug Larson: That’s probably your best seller.

Brad Pope: It is a pretty good one.

Mike Bledsoe: What do you put in your heavy water? Is it a proprietary blend?

Brad Pope: Yeah. It’s a proprietary blend.

Doug Larson: That’s all he sells is proprietary blends. Don’t trust those guys.

Chris Moore: It’s a proprietary water and mercury blend. It should make the water heavy.

Mike Bledsoe: Who needs two eyes? You only need one.

Chris Moore: Guaranteed to have an effect.

Doug Larson: Only the heaviest metals in our water.

Brad Pope: Like I said the deception normally comes on the premise of the product itself. What you need to be looking at, once you get entering the supplement world I guess you would say is, what’s the research behind this product and does it actually work? Does it have pure reviewed evidence that shows exactly what they’re putting in the bottle is exactly what was tested.

Mike Bledsoe: For that specific brand or are you talking about just creatine in general?

Brad Pope: Creatine in general. There are so many bogus supplements out there. There is a really good website called information is beautiful. They recently just did a really cool.

Mike Bledsoe: It’s a great site.

Chris Moore: I haven’t heard of that site.

Doug Larson: Oh really

Brad Pope: They do a visual representation of all these statistics.

Chris Moore: I’m in pubmed everyday.

Mike Bledsoe: This has got pictures.
Chris Moore: Whoa. It’s like reading but not.

Mike Bledsoe: It’s my type of website all right.

Brad Pope: Chris Moore may have a little more free time then I do. I don’t have six hours a day to surf pubmed. Just kidding Chris.

Chris Moore: That’s my job. I’m looking for evidence. What was the website.

Brad Pope: Information is beautiful dot com. They do a really good job. Even supplement that do have some creditable use often get attributed to these things that they are absolutely useless for. You know like St. Johns wort curse cancer. No it doesn’t. It has some useful benefits, but that’s not one I would suggest.

Doug Larson: I think one of those guys did a Ted** (59:45) talk, didn’t he?

Brad Pope: Yeah

Mike Bledsoe: He used that.

Doug Larson: Look up snake oil something. Snake oil supplements on information is beautiful. It’s got this cool interactive chart. Where basically it has the supplements with the most efficacy towards the top for the specific thing that there suppose to be helping. It will say fish oil and inflammation. It will be right up top. The size of the bubble is how many studies have been done for that particular element or what have you. It has a Google doc that is publicly shared and it has all the different articles that it’s referencing. It takes you straight to pubmed. It’s fantastic.

Brad Pope: What’s really interesting is you’ll see fish oil way at the top for inflammation, and then way at the bottom for some other thing that it allegedly cures.

Doug Larson: So for like joint pain or something?

Brad Pope: Right.

Doug Larson: Maybe it kind of helps with that, but there are no studies that show that. Even if you have people say it does.

Brad Pope: When your first getting into supplements, that’s the thing in the current environment that you need to be looking at the most. Does this product really do what it says it does? Who says it does was it actually says it does? And how do they prove it?

Chris Moore: Don’t listen to your buddy at the gym who is a bodybuilder and swears by it. Spend some time going on decent sites. It sounds like information is beautiful dot com is one hell of a one.

Doug Larson: They do a very good job of summing up large volumes of information into one small picture.

Chris Moore: Seek out actual evidence.

Mike Bledsoe: There is one supplement that stands out to me. Anytime we have a conversation about this. This is nitric oxide. It’s not that it doesn’t work. I think most studies have said it cases an 8% increase in vasodilatation. Then there is this other study that they played music that the person liked and it cased like a 20% increase. I think I will wear my Walkman to the gym instead.

Chris Moore: You have a Walkman?

Doug Larson: Everything just has to be better then nothing.

Brad Pope: Sure.

Mike Bledsoe So they’re spending $60 a month on this N.O. supplement.

Chris Moore: Which technically has an effect of some kind that 8%.

Mike Bledsoe: But not $60 a month. If I had all the money in the world, I probably still wouldn’t take it, because I wouldn’t want to take the time to put it in my system. Warming up probably increase vasodilatation probably more then 8%.

Mike Bledsoe: What?

Doug Larson: Warming up, just starting to do some activity probably vasodilates you more then 8%. That’s a total fucking guess on my part and I don’t know what the percentage would be.

Chris Moore: These guys in these gyms taking out $60 bucks putting it towards meat, or spending an extra hour a day sleeping would have the best kind of effect for the guys.

Doug Larson: The same people that can’t afford high quality food spend $60 a month on *** (1:02:38)

Chris Moore: I can’t afford grass fed beef.

Mike Bledsoe: I can’t afford it. My bar tabs only $200 a month.

Chris Moore: It’s like the girl who says ‘oh I would have returned your call but I have been really busy’. That sort of shit. Or the guy who says ‘I would have got that but I have limited money’. You have money for everything motherfucker.

Brad Pope: Somebody sounds a little jaded.

Doug Larson: We are getting a look in Chris’s high school life.

Chris Moore: Especially old Valentines Day memories…

Brad Pope: This is the Valentines Day edition to Barbell Shrugged.

Doug Larson: We are all here, and we are all going to get our asses handed to us.

Chris Moore: Anytime somebody says I wish I could do that but it’s horseshit right.

Mike Bledsoe: The other thing is people want… What I hate is when people are like ‘well these are the supplements I am taking. What else should I take?’ I say fill out a diet log for the next three days and give it to me.

Brad Pope: You will never see that diet log.

Mike Bledsoe: It doesn’t matter what you are taking if your diet is shit.

Chris Moore: Food is of the most important thing.

Brad Pope: Still back to the point, nitric oxide or NO2 I guess is what the call it in biz.

Mike Bledsoe: the NO supplement

Brad Pope: Sometimes those products aren’t even nitric oxide. They are what are called ‘nitric oxide activators’. So you are getting absolutely zero benefit. They are packaging in the purported benefit of nitric oxide into branding for their product. You see that all the time.

Chris Moore: Two or three words are the same.

Brad Pope: Right, pretty close

Chris Moore: 66% equivalence

Mike Bledsoe Two out of three words agree. What about that other word?

Chris Moore: That’s pretty good. Most products don’t have any words that agree.

Doug Larson: So speaking of being totally deceived. Oh god we’re out of time.