Proof or Placebo
If your supplement can’t survive contact with PubMed, it doesn’t deserve your wallet.
Consumer-facing supplement evidence intelligence — an automated, opinionated site that grades trending supplements against actual clinical trials, meta-analyses, government fact sheets, and FDA adverse-event reports so normal people can tell the difference between promising compounds, overpriced wishful thinking, and capsules with a body count.
Niche Explored
Consumer-facing supplement evidence grading — automated cross-referencing of popular supplement claims against clinical trial databases, PubMed systematic reviews, and FDA adverse event reports. The $60B+ US supplement market is largely unregulated and consumers have no easy way to evaluate whether their expensive pills actually do anything.
Existing Competition
- Examine.com — excellent but manual, paywalled deep dives, very slow update cycle, text-heavy with no visual evidence scorecards. Charges $29/mo for “professional” access. Doesn’t auto-track trending supplements
- ConsumerLab.com — lab testing focus (contamination, potency), $49/yr paywall, doesn’t synthesize clinical trial evidence visually. More about “is this pill what it says” than “does this substance work”
- WebMD/Healthline supplement pages — generic, SEO-optimized, never opinionated, sponsored content conflicts of interest, no evidence scoring system
- NCCIH Herbs at a Glance — authoritative government resource but rarely updated, extremely dry, no engagement, no trend tracking
- r/Supplements, r/Nootropics — high engagement communities but full of anecdotes, n=1 reports, and bro science. Huge demand for evidence-based content
Key gaps: No free site combines (1) trend-aware supplement discovery, (2) automated clinical evidence synthesis with visual scoring, (3) FDA adverse event data, (4) opinionated verdicts delivered with personality. Examine.com is closest but is manual, expensive, and dry.
Data Sources Found
Primary (API-accessible, free)
- NCBI PubMed E-utilities API —
https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/— Free, 3 req/sec without API key, 10 req/sec with free API key. Returns structured search results for any supplement compound + “systematic review” or “meta-analysis”. Tested: 579 results for “dietary supplement adverse event systematic review”, 369 for “supplement efficacy meta-analysis 2025”. Can pull abstracts via efetch - ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 —
https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies— Free, no key needed. Returns structured JSON with trial status, enrollment, completion dates. Tested: 3,362 completed trials for just ashwagandha/turmeric/creatine/magnesium. Can filter by status, phase, date - FDA CAERS (Food Adverse Event Reporting) —
https://api.fda.gov/food/event.json— Free openFDA API. 148,459+ reports. Can search by product name, industry (dietary supplements), reactions. Tested: returns adverse events with outcomes, reactions, product details - FDA Drug Adverse Events —
https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json— Some supplements appear here too (e.g., turmeric has 52,412 events). Free API - NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — Fact sheets with standardized evidence summaries (scrape-friendly)
- Cochrane Library API — Systematic reviews, gold standard of evidence synthesis
Secondary (for trend detection)
- Google Trends RSS/scraping — what supplements are people searching for NOW
- Reddit API — r/Supplements (1.2M members), r/Nootropics (400K), r/Fitness (11M), r/StackAdvice — track what’s being discussed
- Amazon Best Sellers in Supplements — market signal for what people are actually buying
Supplementary
- Natural Medicines Database (via NCCIH cross-reference)
- WHO Traditional Medicine publications — for global context
- European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) — EU health claim evaluations (rejected claims are especially interesting)
SEO Analysis
- Keywords: “does [supplement] actually work” — high volume, low competition from evidence-based sites
- “ashwagandha evidence” — growing searches, mostly answered by affiliate-heavy sites
- “[supplement name] clinical trials” — moderate volume, very weak content filling these queries
- “supplement fact check” — emerging query with almost no quality content
- “best supplements backed by science” — extremely high volume, but content is listicles from affiliate sites
- Long-tail gold: “creatine meta-analysis results”, “magnesium sleep evidence”, “vitamin D dosage studies”
Communities
- r/Supplements — 1.2M+ members, very active, hungry for evidence-based content
- r/Nootropics — 400K+ members, sophisticated audience
- r/Fitness — 11M+ members, supplement discussion is constant
- r/ScientificNutrition — smaller but highly engaged evidence-focused audience
- Twitter/X #SupplementScience — active health influencer space
- TikTok #SupplementTok — massive viewership, mostly garbage content, huge opportunity for credible counterpoint
Image/Graphic Feasibility
- Evidence scorecards — can be auto-generated with charting libraries (D3, Chart.js). Visual grade cards (A+, B, C, D, F) with confidence bars
- Trial quality pyramids — showing evidence hierarchy for each supplement
- Adverse event heatmaps — which reactions are most common for each supplement
- Before/after trend charts — clinical outcome effect sizes visualized
- “Verdict stamps” — custom generated graphics with ratings (excellent for social sharing)
- All highly automatable with SVG/Canvas generation
Market Numbers
- US dietary supplement market: ~$61B (2024), projected $85B by 2028
- ~77% of US adults report taking supplements (CRN survey 2023)
- Examine.com estimated revenue: $2-5M/yr from subscriptions
- ConsumerLab.com: similar range, built over 20+ years
- Average supplement user takes 3-4 products simultaneously
- Trust gap: 73% of consumers say they want more scientific validation of supplements