Mushroom extract supplements are big business right now. It’s hard to scroll social media without being force-fed adverts for one company or another, and even Google’s AI summary, trained on misleading marketing copy, has promoted mushroom extracts for serious conditions.
One such product whose prolific online marketing has been spreading its spores into social media feeds is British Supplements – a company based in Northern Ireland, which prides itself on its outsider status, and defiance of the norms of the supplement industry, creating their own extracts rather than simply rebranding generic products imported from overseas suppliers. Their social media marketing emphasises that, unlike the products of competitors, British Supplement pills are purer, containing more of the (in)active ingredient.
One such post features a series of photos comparing the contents of their supplements with those of a rival company, highlighting on a whiteboard that their turmeric capsules contain 462mg of curcumins and “NO NASTIES”, while their competitor’s equivalent product contains just 58mg, and is mostly a “microcrystalline cellulose” binding agent, and an “ANTI CAKING AGENT: MAGNESIUM STEARATE”. This, British Supplements claims, is an attempt to “pull the wool” over customers’ eyes, with “private-label junk with a fancy label and a marketing twist”. They finish their lengthy ad by promising:
Follow us to see what really goes on behind the scenes, and we’ll keep exposing the snake oil grifters polluting the supplement world.
As a skeptic, this might sound appealing – I, too, believe the supplement world is polluted by ineffective products (though I may stop short of calling them “snake oil grifters”, as many of them may well be sincerely misled). However, the claims of British Supplements only hold up to scrutiny if we are to take their word for the purity of their product, and – more importantly, even – if a higher dose of turmeric meant a commensurate improvement in efficacy, without any compromise to safety. The dose makes the poison. And to understand whether more turmeric equals more health benefits, we have to know what health benefits are being promised. This is where things with British Supplements get murky.
Reading the comments on the post, clearly there are a lot of health claims being made for these products. One comment from Gemma explained that, after seeing the reviews, she was going to order the British Supplement dandelion extract for her daughter’s cancerous tumour, which were causing fluid build-up in her abdomen during her palliative care, so “every little helps”. To which ‘Tracie’ responded:
Try 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon molasses, ½ squeezed lemon, 2 cups water and drink everyday, black seed oil, soursop, apricot seeds only 4-5 a day, higher dose vit C, no sugars of any kind, Turkey Tail and Lion’s Main mushrooms, fenbenzadol, ivermectin…
Tracie seemed to have no issue with offering her “how to cure cancer” recipe to a stranger, incorporating Lion’s Mane and Turkey Tail – two of the main products sold by British Supplements. Other commenters went further afield, highlighting how the Rockefellers shut down homeopathy colleges because they were a threat to pharmaceutical profits, and alluding to the notion that the attacks on 9/11 were an elaborate insurance con to prevent the Rockefellers losing money on the asbestos-filled towers, inviting readers to “draw their own conclusions.”
This may all seem incidental to British Supplements and their claims, but the company evidently courts a conspiracist crowd, with Christine praising the founder, Chris Boyle, for his “enthusiasm for the perfect medication” and his “fight all the time against the Big Pharma Companies that keep trying their best to close you down”.
The concerning conspiracy-tinged claims go beyond Facebook comments. On the home page of the British Supplements website, Chris writes:
“I created this business due to the sorry state that the food industry is in especially supplements.
The Health industry is such a dirty market with so many dirty tactics, do we even know who we are buying from anymore ?
Do we know what is in our products ? Horse meat anyone ? They are all bought and sold for the right price I’m afraid 🙁
Before explaining the benefits of his own supplement range, the British Supplements page detours into highlighting that alternative medicine behemoth and High Street blight Holland and Barrett’s is “owned by an international investment business based in Luxembourg” and that it was “was founded by a Russian oil man, nothing suspicious here let’s move on……..”.
Loathe as I am to defence a business that encourages the public to bring their healthcare questions to medically unqualified retail staff, Holland and Barrett was not founded by a ‘Russian oil man’. Its two founders in 1870 were Major William Holland and Alfred Slapps Barrett, who created the business from a grocery store in Bishop’s Stortford – a town in East Hertfordshire. Unless East Hertfordshire is much farther east than I expected, it is not in Russia.
Even if Boyle were referring to the company’s move into the health store industry in 1970 after acquisition by the Booker Group, Booker is also a British company, founded by George and Richard Booker in 1835. In June 2017, the Holland and Barrett chain was eventually sold to L1 Retail, which was controlled by Russian billionaire businessman Mikhail Fridman, until he stepped down in 2022 following sanctions imposed by the EU after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Outside of the marketing, the British Supplements product range isn’t particularly remarkable – it’s the usual array of mushroom extracts and herbs, all prefaced with the word “Clean” to emphasis how they’re not like other supplements. Their messaging, however, is certainly of interest. Take for example the page for their “Clean Genuine Turkey Tail Mushroom Supplement”, where a month’s supply sells for £17.40. Scroll down to the product details and you’ll learn that each dose includes 558.9mg of Turkey Tail (the “Strongest Supplements available most of the time”). But if you want to know why you should buy Turkey Tail, you might be disappointed:
What is it ? Turkey tail mushroom, known as “Yunzhi” in Traditional Chinese M******e, was historically prized for bolstering the r*********y and digestive systems and enhancing overall vita***y and imm****y. In Japan, where it’s called “Kawaratake”, it is used in c****r treatment since the 1970s.
Various Native American tribes recognized its med*****l attributes, though specific uses varied among tribes. Beyond traditional med*****l applications, recent Western research has explored turkey tail’s potential ther******c and i****e-modulating properties.
Additionally, its vibrant colors made it a historical source for fabric dyes, and in certain cultures, it held symbolic meanings associated with long****y, h****h, and spiritual potency. Before using for med*****l purposes. ***Censored as there is no freedom of speech in the UK due to the ongoing partnership between Big Pharma and the UK Gov (MHRA). ***
It seems fairly clear what’s happening here. It is against regulations to make claims about herbal products for which there is no robust evidence; it is even illegal to make such claims about cancer. Instead, British Supplements has simply starred out parts of the words, to try to censor them. Whether British Supplements realises this or not, this is obviously in no way compliant with advertising regulations, and it is trivially clear what the censored words are, and what explicit health claims they’re continuing to make.
It might be tempting to be charitable, and to assume those starred-out words are censored in a genuine attempt to comply with the law. However, the same charity cannot be extended to the anti-regulation screed which appears on each product page:
Follow up due to ongoing Government attacks
Due to the on going pressure from the UK Authorities such as the Food Stanards Agency (FSA), Trading Stanards and the local Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, who continuously attack your freedom of speech when it comes to leaving reviews on our website in the united Kingdom of North Korea.
Funny how these government agencies never suggest we remove negative reviews when someone says a herb did nothing for them. It is always when there are positive results.
It carries on:
Why are we not taught to eat for nutrition ? to fuel our cells so we can thrive and think more clearly ! Amino acids, electrolytes, peptides ? Haven’t a clue? Pie and Mash ? yes please……..
It is easier to start a business selling cakes with as many chemicals in them as you want, than it is to start a natural health business that actually helps people. You will not get attacked by the above for slowly killing people with death cakes, but you will for helping people in the UK as you are going against the system.
For the avoidance of doubt, if anybody were to sell those ‘death cakes’ while claiming they cured disease, they would be just as subject to regulatory intervention as British Supplements.
They do not want you the public to know anything about herbs. We are not even allowed to put categories such as “bone support”, not allowed to put scientific links to any research and now they want to censor 25K+ reviews on our website. They want us to “cleanse” the reviews of “benefits” so there is zero information on any herbs that we make and sell.
Still, the company offers what it presumably believes is a way to avoid falling foul of regulators, via the Human Rights Act 1998, Article 10, and its protection of the right to freedom of expression “without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” They explain:
The reviews on our website are the opinions from our customers on our products. No public authority can stop you from forming an opinion on our products and leaving a review on that product page.
We will not be censoring any reviews left in our reviews section of our website.
If we use them for marketing reasons we will censor them for obvious reasons as it could be deemed false advertising as everyone doesn’t see the same results. Our reviews section is not advertising, it is a place on each product page that our customers can leave genuine reviews of their experiences with our natural products.
Unfortunately for British Supplements, reviews and testimonials do indeed constitute advertising material, as the Advertising Standards Authority makes clear:
Testimonials must relate to the product advertised and claims in a testimonial that are likely to be interpreted as factual must not mislead or be likely to mislead the consumer (rules 3.48 and 3.49). The Code applies to claims made in testimonials in the same way that they apply to claims elsewhere in advertising. Unless they are clearly subjective, marketers must hold evidence for all claims made in testimonials.
This is particularly concerning, given that the reviews featured by British Supplements on their Turkey Tail page include a claim from “Christina” that her husband bought these supplements to keep his rare testicular cancer in check, alongside other customers explaining that they hope to treat or cure cancer with the product.
So, where did they get that idea? If you search the British Supplements website for “cancer”, you get a single result: their Lion’s Mane Extract product. Neither the results page nor the product description mentions cancer but it appears that, in the backend of the website, there is a ‘collection’ that ties the product to these cancer claims. You can see it in the URL: british-supplements.net/collections/frontpage/cancer. Text at the top of that page states:
Hey this is where all of our products will be. There is no freedom of speech in the UK so we cant write what anything might help with. You guys can help with this tho just leave a review in detail so it can help other people just like you. Then when you use the search bar top right for condition X and its in the reviews it should come up 🙂
It appears that whoever is running the website for British Supplements is knowingly trying to circumvent the regulations – in fact, the law – by making specific products findable when you search for conditions like cancer, and then advising people to leave reviews telling people it helps with cancer.
Reviews are a big thing for Chris’ business, as you might imagine. He likes a positive review. And he absolutely hates a one-star review. In fact, he seems to spend a lot of his time on Trustpilot, responding aggressively to critics. In December 2024, when “Paula” complained that his website had an off-putting attitude, seeming aggressive and a little racist, Chris replied:
Please note our supplements are not suitable for: The uneducated. The woke (mind virus). The MSM / Paper brains of this world. Karens. Snow Flakes
In another response to a one-star review, he told a customer:
Oh no, it’s another Femboy ! who hates everything and everyone………. Get a life or at least go and get a job. The founder and CEO write the replies, and most people love them ! We break our sales records pretty much every month as we dont sell to woke little haters like you ! Onto your next protest of hate ! … Now off you pop and have another mental breakdown sure.
The concerning way in which British Supplements, under the official account of their business name, aggressively dismisses and attacks any criticism makes it hard to believe their intent is to comply with advertising law, or to avoid making misleading claims for their products. This is particularly worrying, given that they allow – and, at times, actively invite – customers to leave reviews that explicitly recommend these supplements for serious health concerns.
It seems likely that the regulators will take notice; sadly, it seems unlikely that British Supplements will be receptive to regulatory intervention. If that’s the case, and if the various regulatory bodies that make up the consumer protection network of the UK can’t prevent a healthcare company from claiming to be able to treat “c****r”, there are serious questions to answer about how fit for purpose our regulatory system really is.
