How influencers and politicians built an unregulated supplement empire
The supplement industry is booming with little regulation, fueled by influencers, lawmakers, and a failing healthcare system.
If you search social media for workout tips or healthy meal ideas, you'll likely be bombarded with ads for supplements. "Bloom will boost your energy and make your skin glow,” “AG1 Athletic Greens will fill any gaps in your diet," "Magnesium will improve your mood and your sleep," "Lion's mane will enhance your memory," and somehow, all of them promise to increase cognitive function. Influencers are quick to assure us: "You can't trust anyone when they talk about supplements, but you can trust me."
We're trapped in an increasingly dangerous — and mind-bogglingly dull — supplement hell online, all thanks to politicians. And it's probably going to get worse (sorry!).
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The nutritional and dietary supplement industry has exploded in recent years, fueled partly by social media influencers and branded content. But with the Trump administration's enthusiastic push for deregulation, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine and pro-supplement views, the rise of an alternative health movement, social media platforms moving away from fact-checkers, and a healthcare industry that continues to fail its most vulnerable, the fight against the supplement industry has reached a boiling point.
There are plenty of reasons the supplement industry has become a multibillion-dollar powerhouse. Americans facing a dysfunctional medical system and soaring healthcare costs often turn to supplements as a solution, creating a clear pathway to the industry's waiting arms. However, there are other legislative factors at play as well.
The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) classified supplements as food rather than drugs, thus limiting the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) oversight and regulation. While the FDA technically has the power to impose stronger oversight, it has largely refrained from doing so.
Instead, the FDA has become increasingly friendly toward the supplement industry, Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Mashable.
"That's really in contrast to what RFK Jr claims," he said. "[RFK Jr.] will say things like, ‘It's a war with supplements’ or something, and that's the opposite of what the facts on the ground are."
This regulatory gap has allowed supplement companies to operate with minimal red tape — and they've spent significant resources ensuring those regulations stay lax. Between 2004 and 2014, the industry primarily lobbied Republicans, but in 2016, lobbying efforts shifted toward Democrats. By 2024, however, the industry overwhelmingly favored Republicans, with $1.5 million more spent on GOP candidates than Democrats, according to Open Secrets — the widest gap to date.
The shift is easy to understand. Under President Obama, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attempted to crack down on misleading supplement claims by enforcing stricter clinical trial standards. The Trump administration, however, embraced the industry. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump's first FDA commissioner, openly supported nutritional supplements. RFK Jr., a longtime advocate for supplements, has gone so far as to claim that some supplements could stop measles — though experts maintain the best way to prevent measles is through vaccination.
This kind of misinformation about supplements is hurting people. Of the nearly $37 billion Americans spend on dietary supplements annually, about two-thirds is for vitamins and minerals — many of which contain varying amounts of those nutrients from batch to batch, Cohen discovered in his research at Harvard. And recent studies show most vitamins don’t actually improve health. The other third of supplements Americans consume are pills, powders, and tinctures containing — and I can’t stress this enough — who knows what. Tainted supplements send thousands of people to the emergency room each year, as a report from Business Insider shows.
The companies most invested in lobbying also pour significant money into influencer campaigns, although the exact figures aren't public. For instance, Vital Proteins, the company that sells the blue bottle collagen peptides influencers shill, spent nearly $1.2 million during the 2024 election. Of that, only about $5,000 went to Democrats or liberal groups, and none of their political spending went to nonpartisan groups.
Social media, influencers, and the rise of wellness misinformation
In addition to political lobbying, the supplement industry relies heavily on influencer marketing to fuel its growth. "Social media influencers use anecdotes and testimonials to push supplements," Timothy Caulfield, the research director of the University of Alberta's Health Law Institute, told Mashable. "Supplements have become one of, if not the, biggest drivers of the wellness influencer industry."
Influencer marketing is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, which requires users to label sponsored posts as such — but there aren't many other rules.
Both influencers and supplement companies see massive profit margins from social media promotion. It's mutually beneficial, even if it's harmful to everyone else. Caulfield argues that "with the rise of the influencers, we've seen the rise of the belief in supplements," much of which is driven by the "manosphere" — figures like Joe Rogan, the Liver King, aka Brian Johnson, and Andrew Huberman, all of whom are sponsored by supplement brands and the comparably sinister gambling ads. But the phenomenon isn’t limited to men.
Laura Girard started posting fitness content online to grow her personal training business. While she certainly got more attention from potential clients, she also received an onslaught of opportunities to promote supplements through brand deals — agreements between influencers and brands to promote their product, which typically makes up most of an influencer's income. She found it "disheartening" to see how the industry markets health and wellness products to the general public, particularly when there’s a business-first mentality of profiting from people's health.
Her brand promotes health through movement, not aesthetic transformation, and many of her most viral videos push back against fitness myths. Yet, her inbox is still inundated with requests to promote butt-plumping leggings, stomach-slimming devices, and, of course, dietary supplements.
"It's the oldest marketing tactic in the book," she told Mashable. "Invent the problem and then sell people the solution, which generally leads to selling to people's insecurities about their bodies, which I refuse to do."
Influencers have become the new health authorities, with many people trusting them over medical professionals. A study from the National Library of Medicine found that about a third of respondents purchased health products like supplements based on influencer recommendations, while 40 percent followed influencers for health information. Over a third of respondents believed that influencer content benefited their health. It's not difficult to understand why an influencer might be drawn to this kind of brand partnership or sponsored content: it makes them seem authoritative to their audience and makes them a ton of money. Influencers getting these sorts of brand deals — even if they're harmful or of unknown quality — is seen as making it. Why would they question that?
The truth is that Americans increasingly trust influencers over doctors. The consequences? Real health risks and financial exploitation.
Why Americans are so vulnerable to supplement hype — and what comes next
Healthcare in the U.S. is expensive and difficult to access; the average American spent $14,570 per person on healthcare in 2023, which is $4.9 trillion in total. Our trust in traditional healthcare and pharmaceutical companies has been eroded by decades of missteps. There are economic and systemic barriers to accessing reliable healthcare, which are made worse by racial and gender inequities. And, on top of all of this, we've been conditioned to believe that our food supply has been stripped of essential nutrients and Western medicine relies too heavily on pharmaceuticals — both of which can be solved by taking "natural" supplements to replace what's "missing," despite the fact that many supplements are no more natural than pharmaceuticals and experts argue that eating whole foods is actually a lot better for you than taking a pill.
Caulfield told Mashable that supplement companies capitalize on these systemic failures.
"This reality doesn't give me more sympathy for these supplement salesmen," he said. "It makes me more angry at them."
At the same time, Americans are immersed in a culture that glorifies self-optimization and quick fixes.
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"This idea of individualism — you can't turn to public health and the healthcare system, you need to take care of your own health, boost your own immune system — is a ludicrous idea to begin with, especially when it leads to unregulated supplement use," Caulfield said.
Still, we can't place all of the blame on influencers. The U.S. has created the perfect conditions for advertisers to profit: a largely unregulated industry, a broken healthcare system, and an audience primed to trust personal testimonials over clinical evidence.
Even before the rise of RFK Jr., the quality of supplements was already questionable. Some supplements contain way too much of an ingredient, like melatonin; others don't actually even contain the ingredients listed on the label; some are adulterated with foreign substances or prescription drugs. Influencers often fail to address these risks, likely because they’re not even aware of them.
"What we're interested in is what the actual ingredients are in the supplements that are being sold, and how might those ingredients play into the harm that supplements cause in the United States," Cohen said. Cohen launched the Cambridge Health Alliance's Supplement Research Program after noticing that patients taking weight loss, sexual enhancement, or sports supplements were becoming seriously ill.
The problem, he argues, is that "the system is set up so that there's no checking of the contents before supplements are sold." Manufacturers can put whatever they want into the supplement and sell it. Without proper enforcement from the FDA, it's likely to only get worse.
"It's just going to be a more dangerous situation for consumers in these next few years because the industry is not going to feel any qualms about trying any order of compounds or pharmaceuticals because they're unlikely to face any consequences for that behavior," Cohen said.
Other experts share his concerns. Caulfield said he is "very pessimistic about regulation stepping up in this space, especially in the United States, over the next few years."
The unchecked expansion of the supplement industry, coupled with an unregulated influencer economy, is dangerous. However, activists and organizations are pushing for stronger consumer protections. The question is: Will policymakers act before more people get hurt?
