Navigating the Scams of the Amazon Supplement Market
How to spot counterfeit products, fake reviews, & white-label slop
Yesterday I spent all of 15 min on Amazon navigating Black Friday supplement deals until I said enough is enough. Alibaba slop everywhere. And the issue in many cases: it’s not so obvious.
So I dug deeper. Navigated a few different features. Recognized the patterns. And built a filter system. Not a whole lot of good it’s doing if I’m gatekeeping it all. What follows will save you money, time, & your health.
Earlier this year, we published a comprehensive supplement buying guide.
If you haven’t read it, start there. If you have, consider this your Amazon-specific appendix.
Here are the 10 tactics to employ when navigating Amazon deals.
Tactic #1: No Direct-to-Consumer Website
If a supplement brand only exists on Amazon, time to move on.
Reputable supplement companies will invest in their own online presence to build trust & provide transparency.
No DTC site is a telltale symptom of the sketchy white-label supplement company and looks something like this:
Someone finds a generic supplement manufacturer (often overseas)
Slaps a logo on a pre-made formulation (usually inefficacious dosing)
Lists it on Amazon
No research & development happens. No quality oversight beyond what the manufacturer claims. No accountability.
Before you pull the trigger — quick search on Perplexity to make sure there’s an actual site associated with the brand.
Tactic #2: Review “Detailed Seller Information”
This is what I’d consider to be highest ROI here & takes an extra 30 sec.
First — the model: Nootropics Depot.
Nootropics Depot is one of the most transparent supplement brands in the market publishing a Certificate of Analysis for every batch. Let’s use them as a baseline.
Find their MagGly product on Amazon. Look at the lower right corner: “Sold by Nootropics Depot.” Click the seller name.
You’ll see “Detailed Seller Information.” American-based company. Business address checks out. Clean.
The anti-model:
We’ll run the same process here, but this time with a creatine gummy product.
Notice the disconnect: the brand name says “Nutravita” but it’s “Sold by DREAM YUMMY.” Click through to the seller information.
Alibaba-coded trash — all set here. Next.
Tactic #3: Avoid Gummies (60% are trash)
We just subtly alluded to an example in the previous tactic.
The gummy supplement market has skyrocketed in the last 5 years. What most miss is the complexity that comes with creating a product like this. Gummies are formed in hot, acidic liquid. Heat, residual moisture, & citric acid (for flavor) accelerate degradation of active ingredients. For compounds like creatine, the environment is hostile & transforms it to creatinine in a short period. What little survives the manufacturing process is unevenly distributed, tastes bitter, & continues breaking down on the shelf.
Independent lab testing consistently shows gummy supplements contain a fraction of their label claims:
NOW Foods (February 2024) → 6 of 12 failed
SuppCo (June 2025) → 4 of 6 failed
James Smith (July 2025)→ 7 of 11 failed
Grab the capsule. Grab the free-form powder. Fade the gummy.
Tactic #4: Leverage Keepa
Amazon’s discount badges are often meaningless. The discount is calculated against an inflated list price or a brief spike from months ago. Not what the product typically sells for.
Keepa tracks real price history on Amazon. It’s a free browser extension that shows you what an item has actually cost over time.
Example: NOW Foods 500 mg L-Glutamine supplement shows an active price of $9.30 after a 42% discount.
When we take a look at the price history — that discount appears to be based off of a price from late 2023.
Use Keepa on every “deal.” It works for Prime Day, Black Friday, or any promotional period. Takes five seconds to spot fake discounts.
Additional note here: NOW Foods is a legitimate brand. This just demonstrates how Amazon’s discount system misleads even with reputable products.
Tactic #5: Stop Buying Amazon “Peptides”
You’re not getting peptides or any true research chemical from Amazon. Full stop.
The fakes are everywhere in this space now:
“GLP-1” capsules → 400 sold last month
“GLP-1” patches → 5,000 sold last month
You’ll never guess who’s slinging these…
Oral “BPC-157” supplements
Keep in mind: We’re entering the peptide era. People are tired of the centralized bureaucratic system. Exactly why we’re seeing such a sharp increase in decentralized adoption of broscience/n=1 research. For every legitimate peptide product that enters the market, expect 2-3 fakes designed to capitalize on the hype. Stay vigilant on this one.
There’s one valid exception to our rule: Mirror Skin → a copper peptide based (GHK-Cu) skin care serum.
Tactic #6: Suspiciously Cheap = Low Quality Ingredients
Premium ingredients cost money. If the price seems too good to be true, there’s a high chance you’re getting inferior forms or underdosed formulas.
Cheap fish oil? Oxidized, rancid oil high in inflammatory linoleic acid.
Cheap nattokinase? Underdosed. Enough to list on the label. Not enough to be effective.
Cheap multivitamin? Magnesium oxide instead of glycinate. Folic acid instead of methylfolate. Non-chelated minerals your body can’t absorb.
If something feels off, it probably is.
Tactic #7: Reviews Don’t Measure What Matters
Reviews are good for entertainment. Not for understanding efficacy, purity, & potency.
Spend five minutes reading reviews. You’ll rarely find someone who used the product for 90 days and got bloodwork. Instead, you’ll see: “tastes great”, “arrived fast”, or “feel more energized” (after three days). They’re judging the product on factors like taste, texture, shipping speed, packaging, & how taking it makes them think they feel.
A great example: TruHeight Growth Gummies. A proprietary “growth blend” with ashwagandha & spirulina that is more candy than supplement. Besides this being a bizarrely inapplicable set of ingredients, the doses are trace at best. 113 mg “blend” yet minimum clinically tested doses for ashwagandha and glutamine alone are 250 mg & 5 g, respectively.
Nonetheless — many of the reviews look like this:
Never forget: the average person has the average IQ.
Tactic #8: Use Savino Chrome Extension
Amazon is flooded with fake reviews. Bots. Paid reviewers. Review bombing campaigns.
Savino is a free Chrome extension that detects them. It uses on-device AI to analyze review patterns and flag suspicious activity. Then it re-ranks products by authenticity, genuine ratings, & actual value.
Once you’ve installed it, click the Savino icon in the lower right corner of any Amazon search page. Sort and filter by authentic reviews.
Tactic #9: Inspect Packaging Before Opening
There’s been a recent uptick in legitimate brand names getting counterfeited. Someone buys empty bottles → fills them with Alibaba slop → resells them as authentic.
When your order arrives, spend 20 seconds checking the bottle before you open it:
Faded or blurry labels = Sign of unauthorized reproduction
Expired or mismatched dates = Red flag for grey market resellers
Misspellings = Usually a giveaway of counterfeit packaging
Poorly sealed caps or tamper seals = Suggests tampering or refilling
One of these issues is suspicious. Two or more? Time to return.
Tactic #10: Support the Based Bizzes
If you’ve been in this space for any length of time, you know there are legitimate companies building high-quality products with full transparency.
This Friday (November 28), I’m releasing a vetted list of 30+ small businesses in the health and supplement space—all with strong reputations and Black Friday deals worth your attention.
More to come on Friday morning — make sure to subscribe below so you don’t miss this post.
These are good tools to use at all times — not just during the holiday shopping rush. If you’ve got questions or products you’re uncertain on this week — drop them in the comments below.
Alright that’s a wrap for this one. We’ll talk soon for a fun one coming on Friday.
And most importantly — enjoy your Thanksgiving this week (don’t for one second think about denying your mother's or grandmother’s ricotta cookies/pumpkin pie/whatever dessert she makes — punishable offense!)
Stay after it.
Your friend,
Phys
I have a very simple strategy for avoiding fraud in supplements on Amazon. I don’t buy any supplements on Amazon.