Growth Without Expertise: The Hidden Risk in the UK Supplement Market

4th September 2026 | Cameron Jones - Director of Operations & Product Development

A Market Growing Faster Than Ever

There has been quite a big shift in the amount of people now involved in the health and fitness industry in the UK. From 2023 to 2025, the market grew by £1.7bn, and currently fitness penetration sits at 16.6%, the highest it has ever been. Working with Asterion, I have seen a colossal shift in the mindset of young adults, buying into the fitness industry with a lot more enthusiasm than when I was of university age. Going to the gym hasn’t necessarily changed, but the fitness disciplines outside of the gym, highlighted by the emergence of Hyrox, have expanded rapidly, giving the everyday gym goer even more opportunity to push compete against their peers and even push into professionalism. Alongside this. The UK supplement market has boomed, with 83% if under-35s now taking a food supplement, and the market reaching a 1bn value for the first time in 2025. All of this sounds like good news, good for the heath and fitness of the UK population and great for companies Asterion, wanting to invest into the market.

But with every rapidly expanding market, comes problems, and in this market, they may be more damaging than we yet realise.

Unlike medicinal products, food supplements are regulated as food products in the UK, there is no requirement for every supplement that goes on the market to undergo the same pre-approval and clinical testing that medicinal products go through. But most of them are taken in the same way; tablets, capsules, gummies or pre-mix powders. The scale of the problem is illustrated by recent UK government testing. In the Food Standards Agency's 2025/26 surveillance programme, 85% of the ashwagandha supplements tested were classed as unsatisfactory. Testing identified two products exceeding the legal maximum for cadmium and three products containing elevated levels of aflatoxins, including one online-purchased ashwagandha powder containing aflatoxin B1 and total aflatoxins above the relevant comparison limits.

The same surveillance programme found problems with other supplement products. Among 40 green powdered supplements tested, five were unsatisfactory, including products containing unauthorised colourants and preservatives that were not declared on the label.

The Supply Chain Problem

There has been a big emergence in UK based companies importing food supplements manufactured in the east, labelling and marketing them and selling them in this country. From my time in the pharmaceutical industry, I have developed a healthy degree of scepticism when assessing the robustness of global manufacturing and supply chains. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it is all bad, but I have some serious concerns. One of the best examples of this distrust, was an audit undertaken on a Chinese raw material supplier who supplied a previous company with an active ingredient in a generic injectable medicine. The Chinese company showed the audit team round a purpose built ‘show facility’ which had been built purely for the purpose of auditing. The very dangerous reality is that they were producing the raw material just around the corner in a dingy industrial factory which resembled a coal mine, unbeknown to the audit team. Distrust in products produced in this part of the world is not uncommon and a lot of UK based companies get around that by third party testing in a UK lab.  

The Limits of Third-Party Testing

But, even where a product is described as “third-party tested,” this does not necessarily mean that everything in the product has been independently verified. Laboratories test only for the parameters they have been commissioned to analyse. A test for heavy metals, for example, does not confirm the identity or potency of the active ingredients, while a potency test does not necessarily identify contaminants, undeclared substances or other ingredients. Testing can therefore provide reassurance without establishing a complete picture of what is present in a finished product.

Why Formulation Expertise Matters

This is where a more advanced understanding of formulation chemistry is so important, leading me nicely onto my next point. Having an understanding of how to design an ingestible product; chemically and from a pharmacological perspective should be sown into UK supplement companies from the top down. This is not something that should be treated like it is an area which can be contracted out or sprinkled in throughout employees. Decision making about product direction comes right from the top, and the lack of expertise in the decision-making vessels of UK supplement businesses is costing quality in the market. You would never get on a commercial flight if you were told Joe Bloggs is piloting the aircraft, he has never flown, but he has a pilot consulting him on the VHF radio.

You may think that is an extreme example, but we think the criticality is the same – these are supplements you are putting in your body, having a regular impact on your biological processes. As consumers become more invested in their health and performance, the supplement industry has a responsibility to match that commitment with scientific expertise, transparency and quality. So next time you pick up a supplement in a shop, or add it to your online basket, go beyond just looking at the label and question whether you know exactly what you're buying and where it has come from. 

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