Late Monday, you could still buy the body-building diet supplement Craze online from Amazon in candy grape, berry lemonade and piña colada flavors, but it was “currently unavailable” at Driven Sports, Inc., the company that markets the product. Earlier in the day, an international panel of scientists disclosed that one of the ingredients in the dietary supplement peddled to body builders is a chemical compound similar to the illegal drug methamphetamine.
The substance – not disclosed on the label – is called N,alphadiethylphenylethylamine or N,a-DEPEA. It has never been the subject of studies with humans and was probably created by a “criminal chemist” only about three years ago. Driven Sports, Inc., markets Craze to body builders who want to train “BEYOND YOUR LIMITS” and by promising “endless energy.” Writing in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis, researchers from the global public health organization NSF International, the Harvard Medical School, and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands said that Craze contains a meth-like chemical that may be harmful to human health. Craze is widely sold online and in retail stores. “The health risk of using supplements adulterated with a drug should not be underestimated,” said Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard who has conducted extensive research on supplements. The researchers tested Craze samples from three different suppliers, finding the meth-like chemical in all of them in amounts ranging from 20 to 35 milligrams per the recommended serving size for the supplement. Such a dose represents more than might be blamed on contamination in the manufacturing process. Driven Sports did issue a statement saying that Craze does not contain any illegal stimulants. Manufacturers and distributors of dietary supplements are not required to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval before putting a product on the market. Craze won BodyBuilding.com’s new supplement of the year award for 2012. FDA did not comment on the report.
