At least twice a day, I tell a PR person why I don’t write about food supplements: they’re too expensive to test, there are so many that we wouldn’t write about anything else, and most of them give benefits you get by eating well and exercising regularly.

Frankly, a few years ago, I looked closely at many of the feel-good supplements and most of them turned out to be caffeine and a laxative in the form of fiber. That would make anyone perk up.

One day, though, I got a box of suspiciously familiar-looking capsules. The next day, a call from the PR representative touted that a physician had isolated a potato protein guaranteed to reduce your appetite if you popped a couple of pills and drank a glass of water before each meal.

Over my boss’s objections, I took them home and tried them. They worked. Two pills a glass of water a half hour before eating reduced my appetite. But, then, the same thing happened when I tried a quarter slice of toast, one ounce of left over beef, a piece of an apple. Anything I nibbled with a big glass of water a half hour before my meal curbed my appetite — even the big glass of water by itself.

Still, something bothered me. I had 36 capsules. The insides nagged at me. I opened each capsule and twisted the contents into small bowl, and I can’t believe what I saw. I added a half teaspoon of hot water and there it was: instant mashed potatoes.

Someone had put instant mashed potatoes in capsules and pawned them off at close to a dollar a pill as an appetite suppressant.  The feds said nothing because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only checks supplements after they kill someone. Besides, the capsules had potato protein.

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