Claims about trainers, sports drinks and supplements allowing athletes to "train harder and achieve better time are usually based on no or flawed evidence," according to a study cited by Denis Campbell of the London GUARDIAN. Drink manufacturers Powerade and Lucozade Sport along with sportswear companies Nike and Puma, "regularly insist their products confer advantages on users." But those claims are difficult to verify "because of a lack of reliable evidence to back them up." A study by a team from Oxford University and the British Medical Journal revealed "it is virtually impossible for the public to make informed choices about the benefits and harms of advertised sports products, based on the available evidence." Half the websites for these products "provide no evidence for these claims and of those that do, half the evidence could not be critically appraised." Panorama on BBC One will broadcast the findings, which suggest that many participants in sports "may have been misled by marketing techniques and dubious claims" and are wasting their money. In addition, the Oxford team was not able to find any "reliable evidence that certain types of trainers help reduce the risk of sports injury" (GUARDIAN, 7/18).
