Flutterby™! : "Herbal" Supplements

New York Times: Herbal Supplements Are Often Not What They Seem:

Of 44 herbal supplements tested, one-third showed outright substitution, meaning there was no trace of the plant advertised on the bottle — only another plant in its place.

Many were adulterated with ingredients not listed on the label, like rice, soybean and wheat, which are used as fillers.

The paper is BMC Medicine: DNA barcoding detects contamination and substitution in North American herbal products, Newmaster, Grguric, Shanmughanandhan, Ramalingam and Ragupathy (2013) (doi:10.1186/1741-7015-11-222), which summarises results as:

We recovered DNA barcodes from most herbal products (91%) and all leaf samples (100%), with 95% species resolution using a tiered approach (rbcL + ITS2). Most (59%) of the products tested contained DNA barcodes from plant species not listed on the labels. Although we were able to authenticate almost half (48%) of the products, one-third of these also contained contaminants and or fillers not listed on the label. Product substitution occurred in 30/44 of the products tested and only 2/12 companies had products without any substitution, contamination or fillers. Some of the contaminants we found pose serious health risks to consumers.