My daughter enjoys collecting Pokemon cards, and occasionally on weekends we play some version of a Pokemon video game.  And as you fellow Millennials will remember, back in 1996 all we had were Pokemon Blue and Red versions and the original 151.  Start me off with a Squirtle and give me a Kadabra at some point, and I’d blitz through the entire game on a long baseball road trip bus ride.  But now there are SO MANY ITERATIONS that they need to employ ADJECTIVES to delineate which game you’re playing.  Pokemon Diamond wasn’t good enough…now it’s BRILLIANT DIAMOND.  And there are apparently over 1,000 of these new Pokemon, and most of them are either facsimiles of the originals or make no sense whatsoever.  A dual Water/Ground type?  A creature that’s both Fighting AND Psychic?  No wonder kids are confused these days.

And I find many parallels between Pokemon and the supplement industry.  If you start me off with caffeine and give me some creatine at some point, I don’t even care what sort of Proprietary Blend Pokemon are in your party…I feel good about my chances.  Because half of these supplements are either a recapitulated version of an Original Gangsta or something that makes no sense…300 milligrams of caffeine combined with ashwagandha and 5-HTP?  Some of these “performance aids” are more infuriating than a dual Water/Ground type, and people are spending $400 a month on these things!

And yes, there are a few supplements (and new Pokemon) that can be useful members of your overall Health Plan.  But good luck defeating a Caffeinated Blastoise and a Creatine Kadabra, even if your new supplement has an adjective in front of it!

(On a side note, not all of these 3 million new Pokemon new species are bad…this thing called a Shellos is basically me if I had a slight sunburn and scleral icterus😊)