The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is not pleased with BMPEA as a dietary ingredient, sending warning letters to five companies for mislabeling eight products last month.
Under existing laws, including the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, the FDA has been given the authority to remove products from the market as long as the agency is able to establish that the products in question are unsafe or misbranded.
The FDA called the attention of Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Tribravus Enterprise, LLC d/b/a/ iForce Nutrition; Train Naked Labs LLC; Better Body Sports, LLC; and Human Evolution Supplements, Inc. for listing BMPEA as dietary ingredient on their product labels when it did not meet the standard definition of a "dietary ingredient."
According to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a dietary ingredient is a mineral, vitamin, herb or other botanical substance, amino acid, dietary substance used by people in supplementing their diets by boosting total dietary intake, or a combination, extract, metabolite, constituent or concentrate from the mentioned substances.
As BMPEA is none of these, it means that the ingredient has been inaccurately labeled in the products it was used in. Aside from mislabeling products with BMPEA, two of the companies also incorrectly identified Acacia rigidula as a source for the ingredient. Based on research done by the agency in 2013, it has been established that BMPEA is not an extract or constituent of Acacia rigidula.
Instead, BMPEA is a sympathomimetic. This means it mimics the effects of neurotransmitters like epinephrine, norepinephrine.
A case report involving BMPEA may support the FDA's concern over mislabeled products. A 53-year-old woman in Sweden suffered a hemorrhagic stroke after working out with a routine she's done regularly for the last several years. The only thing she did differently was to take a pre-workout supplement named "Jacked Power" for the first time. An investigation revealed that the supplement contained high doses of BMPEA, an ingredient not listed in the product's label.
"Dietary supplements can legally be sold to improve workouts even when there is zero evidence that they actually work in humans," warned Pieter Cohen, lead author for the case report published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
Consumers are urged to be more vigilant as well since BMPEA may also be indicated in labels as:
- R-beta-methylphenethylamine
- R-beta-methylphenethylamine HCl
- Beta-methylphenethylamine
- β-methylphenylethylamine
- 1-amino-2-phenylpropane
- 2-phenylpropan-1-amine
- 2-phenylpropylamine
- alpha-benzylethylamine
- 1-phenyl-1-methyl-2-aminoethane
- Beta-methylbenzeneethanamine
- Beta-phenylpropylamine
- 2- phenyl-1-propanamine
Photo: Nicola Jones | Flickr
