The herbal pills with NO herbs in them

THERE’S no doubt we like our herbal remedies — as a nation we spend an astonishing £118 million a year on them. But have you wondered how much of the actual herb is in that evening primrose or echinacea pill you are taking?

You might think the label would be a good place to start. Well, think again.

The new series of BBC2’s Trust Me I’m A Doctor decided to find out whether there is actually any ginkgo inside the bottle when it says ginkgo on the lid.

This involved the school of pharmacy at University College London testing more than 70 of the most commonly known products bought from the High Street or online.

Herbal products can be sold as traditional herbal registration (THR) remedies or herbal food supplements. The first are regulated and monitored by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority; the THR stamp means they can make health claims.

Herbal food supplements are not subject to the same legal and manufacturing scrutiny. They fall under the remit of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute at local authority level, who deal only with complaints and do not monitor production.

In some cases, you can buy two versions of the same herbal remedy: one with a THR stamp; one as a herbal food supplement. This distinction may be important. For when they looked at herbal food supplements, the researchers at UCL found that while some did have high amounts of the key ingredient, as many as a third contained very little — or none at all.

In some cases, the researchers identified other compounds instead of the labelled plant — different herbs with known physical effects or unknown synthetic chemicals.

The team tested well-known types of herbal food supplements — ginkgo, milk thistle (pictured) and evening primrose. More than a quarter of the 30 ginkgo food supplements tested had little or no ginkgo extract. In one case of milk thistle, they found unidentified compounds and no herb. Evening primrose, however, performed well. But how can consumers work out the difference?

As expected with the regulated THR remedies, everything on the label was in the product. Professor Michael Heinrich, head of the UCL research team, told the BBC: ‘I think some suppliers of food supplements are lying. In other cases, I think they don’t know what they’re doing.

‘Many of the botanical drugs come from rare or increasingly rare species, so it makes perfect sense to get something cheaper . . . which helps you to get a better price.’

But this saving is not passed on to the consumer. One of the remedies which had none of the plant on the label was the most expensive.

The BBC has given the results of the tests to the FSA’s Food Crimes Unit.

For consumers, the best advice is to look for the THR label. It indicates that a product has been checked, does not contain anything it shouldn’t and does contain everything it should.

Otherwise, when buying unregulated food supplements on the High Street or online, you could be wasting your money.

TRUST Me I’m A Doctor, BBC2, tomorrow, 8pm.