Every athlete is told to read the label. A survey published in Drug Testing and Analysis is a good reason to stop treating the label as the end of the check.
In 2022 Sport Integrity Australia commissioned Human and Supplement Testing Australia to buy 200 sports supplements from the Australian online marketplace and analyse them against the World Anti Doping Agency Prohibited List. The results were published in 2025. 35% of the products, roughly one in three, contained at least one prohibited substance, and 22 contained more than one. [1][2]
These were ordinary products. Protein powders, pre workouts, fat burners, muscle builders, bought online the way an athlete would buy them.
The qualifier that matters
None of the 200 had been independently batch tested.
That is the whole study, and it is the part that falls off when the headline travels. Naomi Speers, Sport Integrity Australia's research director, put it precisely: more than one in three non batch tested supplements purchased online in Australia contained prohibited substances. [3]
So the finding is not that a third of everything on the shelf is contaminated. It measures what an athlete is exposed to when nobody independent has looked at the product first, which is still most of the market and still the pile most athletes buy from.
The label did not always say
The more uncomfortable number is not the 35%. It is that 57% of the products that tested positive did not list the prohibited substance as an ingredient on the packaging or the website. [1]
An athlete could have read every word on that panel, recognised every ingredient, checked each one against a banned list, and still had no way to know. As Speers put it, most of those substances were not even listed on the label. [3]
Sometimes that is contamination introduced during manufacturing. Sometimes an ingredient is simply undeclared. From the athlete's side of the counter the two are indistinguishable, and under strict liability the consequence is identical.
Some categories carried far more risk
The survey found prohibited substances in: [2]
- 53% of muscle builders
- 49% of fat burners
- 34% of pre workouts
Stimulants were the most common class detected, and one detail cuts against a reflex a lot of athletes have. 83% of the prohibited substances found were naturally occurring compounds. Only two of the 200 products contained high levels of synthetic stimulants. [1]
The risk here was mostly botanical, not laboratory chemicals slipped into tubs. A stimulant extracted from a plant is still on the Prohibited List, and "natural", "herbal" and "plant based" tell a tested athlete nothing about whether a product is safe.
What batch testing changes
Batch testing does not make a supplement risk free, and no credible programme claims it does. What it does is put a laboratory between the manufacturing floor and the athlete. Sport Integrity Australia's risk guidance places batch tested products in a lower risk group than products not specifically tested for prohibited substances, while advising that no supplement is completely safe. [4]
The programmes are not interchangeable. Informed Sport and NSF Certified for Sport are built for drug tested athletes, and Informed Sport tests every finished batch before it is released for sale. Informed Choice monitors retail by buying and testing at random through the year, which is real quality assurance but carries no guarantee about the tub in your hand. [6][7]
The NCAA's position lines up with all of it. There are no NCAA approved supplements, products can contain banned substances that are not disclosed on the label, athletes have lost eligibility this way, and any product should be reviewed with the appropriate athletics staff first. [5] Certification is evidence, not permission to stop thinking.
Four questions before a product enters your stack
Is this exact product certified? Not the brand, not the product line. This one.
Has the batch been tested? A logo says the product line is in a programme. The batch number says something about the container in your hand.
Is the certification still active? Products leave programmes. Logos stay printed on packaging.
What is declared, and what is not? 57% is the reminder that this question has a floor a label cannot reach.
All four have to be answered before the product becomes part of a routine, not after a question comes up.
Where Varsity Stack fits
None of this is news to a sports dietitian. The problem was never that athletes lack the rule. It is that following it means identifying the exact product, finding the right certification database, matching the container against an online record, reading the ingredient panel and then telling somebody on staff what you are taking. That is five errands in front of a decision most athletes make in about eleven seconds.
Varsity Stack collapses them into one place. Scan or search a product and its certification status, ingredients and details sit together instead of in four browser tabs. Build a stack, track what you actually take, and share the real list with the staff supporting you. On the team side, nutrition staff can see what athletes are using and review products, so supplement risk is something a programme manages rather than something it finds out about.
The finding underneath this survey is not that supplements are bad. It is that the packaging is not a reliable narrator.
Download Varsity Stack to check and track the products you take, or request access for your program.
A note on reading the number. The survey examined 200 non batch tested sports supplements purchased through the Australian online marketplace in 2022. It should not be read as a finding that 35% of all dietary supplements worldwide contain prohibited substances, and it says nothing about the rate among products that are independently batch tested.
This article is for educational purposes only. Consult a qualified healthcare provider, registered dietitian, or your athletics compliance staff before starting any supplement regimen. Third party testing reduces risk but cannot guarantee that a supplement is appropriate for a particular athlete or eliminate all risk. For questions about specific governing body rules, consult your athletic compliance officer.
Sources
- Barker L, Cawley A, Speers N, Knowler K, Chilman K. Sports Supplement Analysis Survey for the Prevalence of WADA Prohibited Substances in the Australian Online Marketplace. Drug Testing and Analysis. 2025;17(10):1857 to 1864: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Sport Integrity Australia, Sports Supplements Survey Finds Banned Substances: sportintegrity.gov.au
- Survey: One in Three Supplements Contain Banned Substances, reporting comments from Sport Integrity Australia: medicalxpress.com
- Sport Integrity Australia, Supplement Risk Analysis: sportintegrity.gov.au
- NCAA, FAQs About NCAA Banned Substances and Medical Exceptions Procedures: ncaa.org
- INFORMED, Informed Sport vs Informed Choice: sport.wetestyoutrust.com
- NSF Certified for Sport: nsfsport.com
