What should you look for in informed sport military list?

Two lists, two tests: what the armed forces actually test for, what a sport programme screens against, where the two overlap, and why there is no military list to look for but a database to search

What should you look for in an informed sport military list is a question asked by servicepeople who train hard, buy supplements and are subject to testing, and the honest first answer is that the phrase joins two things that are not the same list. The armed forces run compulsory drug testing of personnel, and what that testing looks for is controlled drugs: the recreational drugs, the anabolic steroids and the stimulants that are controlled substances, with a positive result carrying consequences for a career. A sport programme such as the one named in the question screens products against a different and much wider list, the anti-doping prohibited list, which includes the controlled drugs and also hundreds of substances that are not controlled at all, beta-2 agonists, diuretics, masking agents, peptide hormones and a long tail of stimulants that are lawful to buy and prohibited only in competition. The two lists overlap in the middle, and the overlap is where a serviceperson's actual risk lives: anabolic steroids and their precursors, which appear undeclared in muscle products; stimulants, which appear undeclared in fat burners and pre-workouts; and the hidden prescription medicines the UK medicines regulator keeps finding in products sold as supplements, which can be controlled, prohibited or both.

There is therefore no military list to look for, because a sport programme does not publish one; what it publishes is a product database, searchable by brand, product, flavour and lot, listing the products it has certified and the lots it has screened. A serviceperson uses that database exactly as an athlete does: finds the product, matches the lot on the tub to a tested lot, and treats a product or lot that is not there as unscreened. The database is built against the wider list, so a lot that passes it has also been screened for everything on the narrower one, which is why the sport programme's screen is a reasonable, if over-inclusive, protection for a serviceperson whose test is for controlled drugs; the reverse is not true, and a product that merely contains nothing controlled may still fail an athlete's test, which matters to the serviceperson who also competes.

The first document is not the database but the unit's own policy. Each service and many units publish guidance on supplements to personnel, stating what the compulsory testing covers, which substances are prohibited to personnel regardless of legality, and whether particular product categories are banned on base; that policy overrides any page, including this one, and a serviceperson reads it before any tub. The second document is the database, and the third is the tub's own label, read for the categories the next section names. A serviceperson who reads the three in that order, policy, database, label, has done what an athlete's support staff do for a living, and it takes less time than the drive to base; a serviceperson who reads only the logo on the tub has read the one thing on it that attests nothing by itself, since a logo is printed and a database entry is earned, and the difference between the two is the whole of the protection.

Two lists and two tests separated and the overlap found, with the categories to avoid entirely, the database search, strict liability for both tests, the worked example and the verdict in the next section.

The categories to avoid entirely because the hidden substances live there; the database search by product and lot; strict liability under both tests; the worked example, not enrolled and in a safe category; and the verdict

The categories to avoid are more useful than any list, because the undeclared substances that fail both tests are found in the same few product types year after year. The medicines regulator's record of supplements found to contain medicines is dominated by four categories: fat burners and weight-loss products, in which prescription stimulants and withdrawn appetite suppressants are found; pre-workouts and energy products, in which undeclared stimulants and their analogues are found; muscle and testosterone products, in which anabolic steroids, their precursors and selective androgen receptor modulators are found; and sexual-enhancement products, in which prescription erectile medicines are found. The contamination surveys of the supplement market find the same pattern, with the plain commodity products, vitamins, minerals, protein and creatine, carrying the lowest contamination rates and the proprietary blends in those four categories carrying the highest. A serviceperson who avoids the four categories entirely, whatever the logo on the tub, has removed most of the risk before the database is even opened, and one who insists on a pre-workout buys only a certified one and checks the lot.

The database search is the same for a serviceperson as for an athlete and is done before each tub rather than once: brand, product, flavour, size and the lot number printed on the tub, matched to a lot the database lists as tested, with a product in the database but a lot not listed treated as an unscreened lot. Strict liability applies under both tests in the sense that matters: a positive compulsory drug test is a positive test whatever the tub said, and an anti-doping positive is an anti-doping positive whatever the label promised, and in neither system is the label a defence. That is the reason a database of screened lots exists, and the reason a serviceperson who is also a competing athlete uses it twice over.

The worked example is not enrolled in any sport programme and says so, and it is sold in a category where the hidden substances never appear: {FL}, 1500mg magnesium bisglycinate stated as 300mg elemental at 80% NRV, two capsules with the evening meal, is a plain mineral with three ingredients, magnesium bisglycinate, the HPMC capsule shell and rice flour, no stimulant, no hormone, no botanical and no blend, batch tested for lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium at an accredited UK lab, UK made under GMP and BRC, 180 capsules for £19.99 at 22p a day; it is outside any banned-substance programme, so a serviceperson whose policy requires a certified product for everything chooses a certified magnesium instead, and this page says that rather than implying a screen the product does not hold. The full label breakdown is here.

The verdict: there are two lists and two tests, and a serviceperson is subject to the narrower one, compulsory testing for controlled drugs, while a sport programme screens against the wider anti-doping list, so that a screened lot covers both and an unscreened tub covers neither. There is no military list; there is the unit's own policy, read first, a product database searched by product and lot before each tub, and four categories, fat burners, pre-workouts, muscle and testosterone products and sexual enhancers, that are avoided entirely because the hidden substances live there. Both tests are strict liability, the label is a defence under neither, and a plain mineral with three ingredients is the kind of product that was never where the risk was.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

Is there an Informed Sport list for the military?

No; a sport programme publishes a product database, searchable by brand, product, flavour and lot, listing the products it has certified and the lots it has screened against the anti-doping prohibited list, and a serviceperson uses it exactly as an athlete does, matching the lot on the tub to a listed lot before each purchase; the list a serviceperson is actually tested against is the narrower list of controlled drugs under the forces' compulsory testing, and the first document to read is the unit's or the service's own supplement policy, which states what is tested for and which categories are prohibited to personnel.

What supplements can get you in trouble in the military?

The ones in which undeclared controlled substances are found, which are the same four categories year after year in the medicines regulator's record and the contamination surveys: fat burners and weight-loss products with prescription stimulants and withdrawn appetite suppressants, pre-workouts and energy products with undeclared stimulants and their analogues, muscle and testosterone products with anabolic steroids, precursors and selective androgen receptor modulators, and sexual-enhancement products with prescription erectile medicines; the plain commodity products, vitamins, minerals, protein and creatine, carry the lowest contamination rates, and a serviceperson who avoids the four categories entirely has removed most of the risk.

Does a certified supplement protect you from a military drug test?

It reduces the risk and is not a defence: a lot screened under a sport programme has been tested for everything on the anti-doping prohibited list, which includes every controlled drug the forces test for, so a matched lot is the best protection available from a tub; but compulsory drug testing is strict liability in the sense that matters, a positive test is a positive test whatever the label said, and the only protection that approaches certainty is not taking products in the four categories where the undeclared substances live, with the database search by product and lot as the second layer for anything else.

Are pre-workouts allowed in the UK armed forces?

That is answered by the unit's or the service's own policy, which overrides any page and may ban particular categories to personnel regardless of their legality; what any page can say is that pre-workouts are one of the four categories in which undeclared stimulants are repeatedly found, that a serviceperson who uses one buys only a certified product and matches the lot on the tub to the database before each purchase, and that a plain caffeine in a known dose does the same job as most pre-workouts with none of the undeclared passengers, which is the honest alternative for someone whose policy allows caffeine and whose career depends on a clean test.

Is this site's magnesium safe for someone in the military?

It is a plain mineral in a category where the undeclared substances never appear, which is the honest answer rather than a certification it does not hold: three ingredients, magnesium bisglycinate, the HPMC capsule shell and rice flour, with no stimulant, hormone, botanical or blend, 300mg elemental at 80% NRV in two capsules with the evening meal, batch tested for four metals at an accredited UK lab, UK made under GMP and BRC, at 22p a day; it is not enrolled in any sport programme, so a serviceperson whose policy requires a certified product for everything chooses a certified magnesium instead, and a serviceperson on any medicine asks a pharmacist about spacing.

Sources

1. The sports supplement certification programmes: Informed Sport, Informed Choice, BSCG and NSF Certified for Sport test products or batches for banned substances, the assurance competing athletes rely on. https://sport.wetestyoutrust.com/
2. The MHRA's borderline guidance: a product is a medicine if it is presented as treating or preventing disease or has a significant pharmacological, immunological or metabolic action, determined case by case on presentation and function. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-guide-to-what-is-a-medicinal-product
3. The international supplement contamination survey commissioned by the Olympic movement: of several hundred non-hormonal supplements bought across thirteen countries, around fifteen percent contained undeclared anabolic steroid precursors, with products from manufacturers that also made hormonal products most affected, the study that created the market for batch testing programmes. PubMed record
4. UK Anti-Doping guidance on supplements: strict liability means an athlete is responsible for any prohibited substance in their sample regardless of how it got there, contaminated supplements have produced UK anti-doping violations, and batch testing under a recognised programme is the risk-reduction step the agency describes while stating no supplement can be guaranteed free of prohibited substances. https://www.ukad.org.uk/athletes/supplements

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