It starts with a scoop of protein powder. Maybe a fitness aid from a teammate. Or a “natural” booster found online promoted by someone with a six-pack and a discount code. For many athletes, these choices may seem routine. Perhaps they’re on a supplement programme, or they have specific nutritional needs. Or maybe they’re taken in by too-good-to-be-true Insta stories. But the truth is that athletes need to exercise care when making decisions about supplements. 

A new peer-reviewed study published in Drug Testing and Analysis is the latest to confirm what anti-doping organisations have long warned: sports supplements remain a risk for clean athletes. The study, which tested over 200 products from the Australian online market, found that a third of sports supplements—that's one in three—contained substances that are banned in sport. 

But they’ll be easy to avoid, you might think. Just read the list and cross-check the ingredients.  

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. For one, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List, which outlines the substances and methods that are banned in sport, is a hefty 23 pages long. That’s a lot of substances to cross check. And that’s assuming that the substance is on the label at all. In reality, the study found that of the products that contained banned substances 57% failed to list those ingredients on the label. 

And let's say you actually find a substance on the label—we’ll use an example from the study: Citrus aurantium, also known as bitter orange extract. You cross-check it with the Prohibited List and find that it isn’t named. So, it’s safe, right? 

Wrong. The naturally occurring Citrus aurantium itself contains octopamine – a banned stimulant listed by name in the Prohibited List. 

It’s bad enough that the average person could be consuming unknown substances in their supplements, but for high-level athletes, it’s downright dangerous. 

And this isn’t just an issue affecting athletes across the ditch. The study’s results support those of a 2022 Consumer New Zealand survey, in which they found supplement products containing illegal drugs available for sale in New Zealand stores. 

The inconvenient truth is that there’s no such thing as a risk-free supplement. Thanks to inaccurate labelling and the possibility of cross-contamination, you can’t be sure what’s in that scoop of protein powder. If you’re an athlete, you need to think carefully before you use it. Not because you’re guilty, but because in high-performance sport you consider whether it’s a risk you can afford. 

Useful links 

Learn about supplements with online learning. 

Learn about the risks of supplements and how you can mitigate them with our Supplement Decision Making Guide.