NPA highlights difference between steroids and dietary supplements

WASHINGTON While the sporting nation debates whether the records of accused steroid users Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens should receive an asterisk, the Natural Products Association on Friday looked to apply an asterisk of their own.

Steroids and dietary supplements are mutually exclusive, the association stated. “The idea that athletes were unwittingly ingesting steroids in the dietary supplements they innocently purchased at a health food store has been exposed as the ridiculous notion it always was,” the association noted. “The fact that the performance-enhancing substances purchased in the report needed to be obtained surreptitiously by a third party, typically at a high cost, should have been evidence enough to an athlete that the product was likely to be illegal. Clearly, calling such products ‘dietary supplements’ was an attempt to gain legitimacy and mask their real contents.”