Who Makes Your Supplements, and How Can You Check?

29 Σεπτέμβριος 2026

Many supplement brands don't make their own supplements. They choose a formula, hire a contract manufacturer, design a label and sell the result. That is legal, and much of the food in any supermarket reaches the shelf the same way.

Outsourcing isn't a quality problem in itself, since a specialist manufacturer can make an excellent product. The problem is opacity: a brand that can't tell you who made its product or what was tested, or show you the results.

In August 2026, the US newsletter Worse on Purpose traced how a small group of contract factories now supply hundreds of American brands, and how cheaply a new one can be launched. Laboratory testing of US products has repeatedly found examples that don't match their labels. European rules differ, but contract manufacturing is common here too.

How Does a Supplement Reach the Market in Germany?

In the EU, food supplements are regulated as food, so no authority approves them before they go on sale (1). In Germany, the company selling a new product has to notify the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL). The BVL checks that the notification is complete and passes it to the state food authorities. It doesn't assess the product (2).

A notification is needed for every new product, and again whenever its recipe or label changes. The BVL got 32,474 in 2025, up from 5,493 in 2014 (3). The US has no such requirement, so the FDA has no complete list of what's on sale; by its own estimates, there could be up to 100,000 products (4).

Checking what is actually inside those products falls to the food control authorities of each state, which test samples once products are already on sale (2).

What Have Tests Found?

In a 2023 study, US researchers analysed 25 melatonin gummies and found 22 inaccurately labelled, with melatonin content ranging from 74% to 347% of the amount on the label. One contained none at all (5). In August 2026, the supplement maker NOW published tests of 25 vitamin C gummy brands sold on Amazon that it considered suspect. Twelve contained almost no detectable vitamin C (6).

German figures are harder to compare, because each state reports separately. Among supplements chosen for official testing, objection rates range from around a quarter to more than 80%, depending on the state (7). These aren't random samples: authorities choose which products to test, often based on risk or complaints, so the figures don't describe the whole market.

The most common reasons for objections are unauthorised health claims and misleading labels, though some products contain ingredients that aren't allowed (8).

What Does a Certificate Prove?

That depends on who issued it and what was checked. An ISO or GMP certificate describes the system a company works under. A supplier's certificate of analysis (COA) is documentation from the supplier about a raw material, not independent verification. A third-party lab report shows what an outside lab measured in the sample it received. None of them proves that a supplement works.

The most useful document is a recent third-party lab test, with a date you can check. Whatever certificate you are looking at, ask who ran the test, on what material, when, and whether it applies to the batch you bought.

How We Make Ours

Most Augment Life supplements are made in our own production facility in Schöneberg, Berlin. We buy the raw ingredients, then encapsulate and pack them ourselves. Three products are exceptions, made for us by specialist manufacturers: our Omega 3 softgels, our Vitamin D3 1000 IU and our magnesium sachets.

Our suppliers work under quality and food safety systems including ISO 9001, ISO 22000 and GMP, depending on the supplier. Their certificate of analysis is documentation from the supplier rather than independent verification, which is why we send new batches to independent laboratories as well. A few ingredients, collagen and hyaluronic acid among them, can't be purity tested the same way, so for those the checks cover contaminants. We publish our independent test reports, with their dates, on our Third Party Analysis page, and our HPMC capsules have been tested independently too.

Orders ship from Berlin or from one of our two fulfilment centres.

Making our supplements ourselves means that if something is wrong with a batch, it is ours to catch, and our name is on it.

The Takeaway

Nobody can judge a capsule by looking at it, so what matters is how transparent a brand is willing to be. The name on an EU label is the company legally responsible for the product, which isn't always the one that made it, so it's fair to ask a brand where its supplements are made. Look for third-party lab reports with dates, and check lebensmittelwarnung.de, the official German food warning portal, for recalls of anything you take.