In the December issue of MD, there is an article with Hany Rambod in which he discusses L-leucine. (If you follow bodybuilding at all, you know who Hany Rambod is. If you do not, suffice to say he knows what the hell he is talking about.) Anyway, in the article he states that most of the supplemental L-leucine on the market is manufactured in China - no surprise there. However, he goes on to say that most of this L-leucine is extracted and produced from CHICKEN FEATHERS AND HUMAN HAIR, and thus much of it is contaminated.
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Needless to say, this information completely shocked me. I am curious if anyone here has heard this before, but really more curious if anyone knows how else L-leucine can be produced (Hany says there are other ways, and some supps are therefore “clean”). I use BCAAs and L-leucine, and I really don’t want to be ingesting any dirty chicken shit or hair dye or whatever, even at minute levels.
Why are you shocked? Were you expecting them to be extracting it from prime eye fillet beef? It is a basic amino acid so, aside from emotional foibles, it does’nt matter where it comes from, as long as it is not contaminated with heavy metals or other poisons. Ever taken HCG? Well guess where THAT comes from. Jello comes from cow’s hoof (and possible horse as well), and don’t even start me on McDonalds or sausages…
Welcome to 2/3 of the supplement industry. And then they like to vilify the FDA for having as strict rules as they do when it comes to supplements. When you buy tylenol, you know you’re getting exactly 500mg of pure, high quality acetaminophen per tablet. You really don’t know what you’re getting a lot of time with supplement products (not that pharmaceutical companies or the FDA are angels…far from it). I’m honestly really not surprised.
Most of the time when companies need large quantities of a single amino acid, they breed bacteria to produce them as a waste product. So somewhere out there is a huge vat of bacteria that eats sugar and proteins and shits leucine. And then Biotest takes this delicious and anabolic bacteria shit and you add it to your chocolate Quick every morning in hopes that it will add 3" to your Johnson.
[quote]Triceptaurus wrote:
Why are you shocked? Were you expecting them to be extracting it from prime eye fillet beef? It is a basic amino acid so, aside from emotional foibles, it does’nt matter where it comes from, as long as it is not contaminated with heavy metals or other poisons. Ever taken HCG? Well guess where THAT comes from. Jello comes from cow’s hoof (and possible horse as well), and don’t even start me on McDonalds or sausages…[/quote]
You miss the point entirely, which was that (according to Hany) much of the L-leucine IS contaminated. In what manner he doesn’t say, but judging from the surprising source, it may be any number of things.
And re: hCG - placenta is unlikely to be contaminated with anything, unlike human hair, which is actually used to test for potential toxicity in the body before overt symptoms appear. And then there’s the chicken feathers… from China…
Nothing really new here. It’s not just L-leucine that is contaminated, but proteins, creatines, etc.
A lot of the issue is the lack of regulation, in particular in China. There have been large amounts of plastics found in some proteins manufactured there. I doubt Biotest has anything less than quality though as they stake their reputation on it more so than others as a non-mass-distributor. Other companies that do NOT manufacture in China are trueprotein and proteinfactory.